Anonymous Venetian

by Donna Leon

  ‘Probably because someone wouldn’t let them talk to the person they wanted to, Chiara.’

  ‘Oh, Papà, you’re always so silly. Here she is.’

  Silly? Silly? He thought he had sounded entirely serious.

  ‘Ciao, Guido,’ Paola said. ‘You’ve just heard? Our child is a ghoul.’

  ‘When did you get there?’

  ‘About half an hour ago. We had to have lunch on the train. Disgusting. What have you been doing? Did you find the insalata di calamari?’

  ‘No, I just got in.’

  ‘From Mestre? Did you have lunch?’

  ‘No, there was something I had to do.’

  ‘Well, there’s insalata di calamari in the refrigerator. Eat it today or tomorrow; it won’t keep very long in this heat.’ He heard Chiara’s voice in the background, and then Paola asked, ‘Are you coming up tomorrow?’

  ‘No, I can’t. We’ve identified his body.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Mascari, Leonardo. He’s the director of the Banca di Verona here. Do you know him?’

  ‘No, never heard of him. Is he Venetian?’

  ‘I think so. The wife is.’

  Again, he heard Chiara’s voice. It went on for a long time. Then Paola was back. ‘Sorry, Guido. Chiara’s going for a walk and couldn’t find her sweater.’ The very word made Brunetti more conscious of the heat that simmered in the apartment, even with all the windows open.

  ‘Paola, do you have Padovani’s number? I looked in the phone book here, but it’s not listed.’ He knew she wouldn’t ask why he wanted the number, so he explained, ‘He’s the only person I could think of to answer questions about the gay world here.’

  ‘He’s been in Rome for years, Guido.’

  ‘I know, I know, Paola, but he’s got a house here for when he comes up every couple of months to review art shows, and his family’s still here.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ she said, managing to sound not at all convinced. ‘Wait a second while I get my address book.’ She set down the phone and was gone long enough to convince Brunetti that the address book was in another room, perhaps another building. Finally she was back. ‘Guido, his Venice number is 5224404. If you talk to him, please say hello for me.’

  ‘Yes, I will. Where’s Raffi?’

  ‘Oh, he was gone the minute we set down the bags. I don’t expect to see him until dinner-time.’

  ‘Give him my love. I’ll call you this week.’ With mutual promises of calls and another admonition about theinsalata di calamari, they hung up, and Brunetti thought about how strange it was for a man to go away for a week and not call his wife. Perhaps if there were no children, it made a difference, but he thought not.

  He rang Padovani’s number and got, as was increasingly the case in Italy these days, a machine telling him that Professore Padovani was not able to come to the phone at the moment but would return the call as soon as possible. Brunetti left a message asking Padovani to ring, and hung up.

  He went into the kitchen and pulled the now-famous insalata from the refrigerator. He peeled back the plastic wrap from the top and picked out a piece of squid with his fingers. Chewing on it, he pulled a bottle of Soave from the refrigerator and poured himself a glass. Wine in one hand, insalata in the other, he went out on to the terrace and set them both down on the low glass table. He remembered bread, went back into the kitchen to grab a panino, and while there, remembering civilization, he took a fork from the top drawer.

  Back on the terrace, he broke off a piece of the bread, put another piece of squid on top of it, and popped them into his mouth. Certainly, banks had work to be done on Saturday - no holiday for money. And certainly whoever was working on the weekend wouldn’t want to be disturbed by a phone call, so he’d say it was a wrong number and then not answer the next call. So as not to be disturbed.

  The salad had rather more celery than he liked, so he pushed the tiny cubes to the side of the bowl with his fork. He poured himself more wine, and he thought of the Bible. Somewhere, he thought it was in Mark, there was a passage about Jesus’ disappearance when he was going back to Nazareth after he’d first been taken up to Jerusalem. Mary thought he was with Joseph, travelling with the men, and that sainted man believed the boy to be with his mother and the women. It wasn’t until their caravan stopped for the night that they spoke to one another and discovered that Jesus was nowhere to be found: he turned out to be back in Jerusalem, teaching in the Temple. The Bank of Verona believed Mascari to be in Messina; hence, the office in Messina must have believed him to be somewhere else, or they surely would have called to check.

  He went back into the living-room and found one of Chiara’s notebooks on the table, left there in a muddle of pens and pencils. He flipped through the notebook; finding it empty and liking the picture of Mickey Mouse on the cover, he took it and one of the pens out to the terrace.

  He began to jot down a list of things to do on Monday morning. Check the Bank of Verona to see where Mascari was supposed to go and then call that bank to see what reason they’d been given for his failure to arrive. Find out why there had been no progress on finding where the shoes and dress came from. Start digging into Mascari’s past, both personal and financial. And take another look at the autopsy report for any mention of those shaved legs. He also had to see what Vianello had managed to learn about the Lega and about Avvocato Santomauro.

  He heard the phone ring and, hoping it would be Paola but knowing it couldn’t be, he went inside to answer it.

  ‘Ciao, Guido, it’s Damiano. I got your message.’

  ‘What are you a professor of?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Oh, that,’ the journalist answered dismissively. ‘I liked the sound of it, so I’m trying it on my message machine this week. Why? Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Of course I like it,’ Brunetti found himself saying. ‘It sounds wonderful. But what are you a professor of?’

  A long silence emanated from Padovani’s end of the phone. ‘I once gave a series of classes in painting in a girls’ school, back in the seventies. Do you think that counts?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Brunetti admitted.

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s time to change the message. How do you think Commendatore would sound? Commendatore Padovani? Yes, I think I like that. Would you like me to change the message, and you call me back?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, Damiano. I’d like to talk to you about something else.’

  ‘Just as well. It takes me forever to change the message. So many buttons to push. The first time I did it, I recorded myself swearing at the machine. No one left a message for a week, until I thought the thing wasn’t working and called myself from a phone booth. Shocking, the language the machine used. I dashed home and changed the message immediately. But it’s still very confusing. Are you sure you don’t want to call me back in twenty minutes?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, Damiano. Do you have time to talk to me now?’

  ‘For you, Guido, I am, as an English poet says in an entirely different context, “as free as the road, as loose as the wind”.’

  Brunetti knew he was supposed to ask, but he didn’t. ‘It might take a long time. Would you be willing to meet me for dinner?’

  ‘What about Paola?’

  ‘She’s taken the kids up to the mountains.’

  There was a moment’s silence from Padovani, a silence which Brunetti could not help but interpret as entirely speculative. ‘I’ve got a murder case here, and the hotel’s been reserved for months, so Paola and the kids have gone up to Bolzano. If I get through with this on time, I’ll go up, as well. That’s why I called you. I thought you might be able to help me.’

  ‘With a murder case? Oh, how very exciting. Since this AIDS business, I’ve had so little to do with the criminal classes.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Brunetti said, momentarily at a loss for a suitable rejoinder. ‘Would you like to meet for dinner? Any place you like.’

  Padovani considered this for a m
inute then said, ‘Guido, I’m leaving to go back to Rome tomorrow, and I’ve got a house full of food. Would you mind coming here to help me finish it up? It won’t be anything fancy, just pasta and whatever else I find.’

  ‘That would be fine. Tell me where you live.’

  ‘I’m down in Dorsoduro. Do you know the Ramo degli Incurabili?’

  It was a small campo with a running fountain, just back from the Zattere. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Stand with your back to the fountain looking at the little canal, and it’s the first door on the right.’ Far clearer than giving a number or street name, this would get any Venetian to the house with no difficulty.

  ‘Good, what time?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Can I bring anything?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Anything you bring, we just have to eat, and I’ve already got enough here for a football team. Nothing. Please.’

  ‘All right. I’ll see you at eight. And thanks, Damiano.’

  ‘My pleasure. What is it you want to ask me about? Or would I say, “whom”? This way, I can sort through my memory, or I might even have time to make a few phone calls.’

  ‘Two men. Leonardo Mascari—’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Padovani interrupted.

  ‘And Giancarlo Santomauro.’

  Padovani whistled. ‘So you people finally tumbled to the saintly Avvocato, eh?’

  ‘I’ll see you at eight,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Tease,’ Padovani said with a laugh and hung up.

  At eight that evening, Brunetti, freshly showered and shaved and carrying a bottle of Barbera, rang the bell to the right of the small fountain in the Ramo degli Incurabili. The front of the building, which had only one bell and which, consequently, was probably that greatest of all luxuries, a separate house owned by only one person, was covered by jasmine plants which trailed up from two terracotta pots on either side of the door and filled the air around them with perfume. Padovani opened the door almost immediately and extended his hand to Brunetti. His grip was warm and firm and, still holding Brunetti’s hand, he pulled him inside. ‘Get out of the heat. I’ve got to be out of my mind to go back to Rome in the midst of this, but at least my apartment there is air-conditioned.’

  He released Brunetti’s hand and stepped back. Inevitably, like any two people who have not seen one another for a long time, they tried, without being obvious about it, to see what changes had taken place. Was he thicker, thinner, greyer, older?

  Brunetti, seeing that Padovani still appeared to be the thickset ruffian he very clearly was not, turned his eyes to the room in which they stood. The central part of it soared up two floors to a roof inset with skylights. This open space was surrounded on three sides by an open loggia reached by an open wooden staircase. The fourth side was closed in and must hold the bedroom.

  ‘What was it, a boathouse?’ Brunetti asked, remembering the little canal that ran just outside the door. Boats brought for repair could easily have been dragged inside.

  ‘Good for you. Yes. When I bought it, they were still working on boats in here, and there were holes in the roof the size of watermelons.’

  ‘How long have you had it?’ Brunetti asked, looking around and giving a rough estimate of the quantity of work and money that must have gone into the place to make it look the way it did now.

  ‘Eight years.’

  ‘You’ve done a lot. And you’re lucky not to have neighbours.’ Brunetti handed him the bottle, wrapped in white tissue paper.

  ‘I told you not to bring anything.’

  ‘It won’t spoil,’ Brunetti said with a smile.

  ‘Thank you, but you shouldn’t have,’ Padovani said, though he knew it was as impossible for a dinner guest to show up without a gift as it was for the host to serve chaff and nettles. ‘Make yourself at home and look around while I go and take a look at the dinner,’ Padovani said, turning towards a door with a stained-glass panel that led to the kitchen. ‘I put ice in the bucket in case you’d like a drink.’

  He disappeared behind the door, and Brunetti heard the familiar noises of pots and lids and running water. He glanced down and saw that the floor was a dark oak parquet; the sight of a charred semicircle of floor that stood in front of the fireplace made Brunetti uncomfortable because he couldn’t decide whether he approved of the placing of comfort over caution or disapproved of the ruining of such a perfect surface. A long wooden beam had been set into the plaster above the fireplace, and along it danced a multicoloured parade of ceramic Commedia dell’Arte figurines. Paintings filled two walls; there was no attempt to order them into styles or schools: they hung on the walls and fought for the viewer’s eye. The keenness of the competition gave evidence of the taste with which they had been selected. He spotted a Guttoso, a painter he had never liked much, and a Morandi, whom he did. There were three Ferruzzis, all giving joyous testimony to the beauty of the city. Then, a little to the left of the fireplace, a Madonna, clearly Florentine and probably fifteenth-century, looked adoringly down at yet another ugly baby. One of the secrets Paola and Brunetti never revealed to anyone was their decades-long search for the ugliest Christ Child in western art. At the moment, the title was held by a particularly bilious infant in Room 13 of the Pinacoteca di Siena. Though the baby in front of Brunetti was clearly no beauty, Siena’s title was not at risk. Along one wall ran a long shelf of carved wood that must have once been part of a wardrobe or cabinet. On top of it rested a row of brightly coloured ceramic bowls whose strict geometric designs and swirling calligraphy clearly marked them as Islamic.

  The door opened and Padovani came back into the room. ‘Don’t you want a drink?’

  ‘No, a glass of wine would be good. I don’t like to drink when it’s so hot.’

  ‘I know what you mean. This is the first summer I’ve been here in three years, and I’d forgotten how awful it can be. There are some nights, when the tide is low, and I’m anywhere on the other side of the Canal, that I think I’ll be sick with the smell.’

  ‘Don’t you get it here?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No, the Canale della Giudecca must be deeper or move more quickly, or something. We don’t get the smell here. At least not yet. If they continue to dig up the channels to let in those monster tankers - what are they called, supertankers? - then God alone knows what will happen to the laguna.’

  Still talking, Padovani walked over to the long wooden table, set for two, and poured out two glasses from a bottle of Dolcetto that stood there, already opened. ‘People think the end of the city will come in some major flood or natural disaster. I think the answer is much easier,’ he said, coming back to Brunetti and handing him a glass.

  ‘And what is that?’ Brunetti asked, sipping at the wine, liking it.

  ‘I think we’ve killed the seas, and it’s only a question of time before they begin to stink. And since thelaguna is just a gut hanging off the Adriatic, which is itself a gut hanging from the Mediterranean, which... well, you get the idea. I think the water will simply die, and then we’ll be forced either to abandon the city or else fill in the canals, in which case there will no longer be any sense in living here.’

  It was a novel theory and certainly no less bleak than many he had heard, than many he himself half believed. Everyone talked, all the time, of the imminent destruction of the city, and yet the price of apartments doubled every few years, and the rents for those available continued to soar ever higher above what the average worker could pay for one. Venetians had bought and sold real estate through the Crusades, the Plague, and various occupations by foreign armies, so it was probably a safe bet that they would continue to do so through whatever ecological holocaust awaited them.

  ‘Everything’s ready,’ Padovani said, sitting in one of the deep armchairs. ‘All I’ve got to do is throw the pasta in. But why don’t you give me an idea of what you want so I’ll have something to think about while I’m stirring?’

  Brunetti sat on the sofa facing him. He took another
sip of his wine and, choosing his words carefully, began. ‘I have reason to believe that Santomauro is involved with a transvestite prostitute who lives and, apparently, works in Mestre.’

  ‘What do you mean by “involved with”?’ Padovani asked, voice level.

  ‘Sexually,’ Brunetti said simply. ‘But he also claims to be his lawyer.’

  ‘One does not necessarily exclude the other, does it?’

  ‘No. Hardly. But since I found him in the company of this young man, he has tried to prevent me from investigating him.’

  ‘Which him?’

  ‘The young man.’

  ‘I see,’ Padovani said, sipping at his wine. ‘Anything else?’