The Waters of Eternal Youth

by Donna Leon

  He went downstairs and into Signorina Elettra’s tiny office. He found her with both hands raised and motionless over the keyboard of her computer, a pianist about to begin the final movement of a sonata. The pause as she decided the precise attack extended as he watched. She read whatever was written on the screen, then her eyes moved up to study his face with no sign that she recognized him. Finally she lowered her hands, sat back and folded her arms across her chest.

  He approached her desk. ‘Problems?’ he asked when she continued to ignore him.

  She looked up but did not smile. Her right hand rose for a moment to place a contemplative forefinger on her lips, then returned to the keys and tapped at a few of them. She waited, tapped in further information, then sat back and studied the screen.

  She remained motionless for so long that Brunetti was forced to escalate and asked, ‘Is it serious?’

  She regarded the computer screen with unwonted wariness, as though it had just given a menacing growl. Then she propped her elbows on the desk and lowered her chin into her hands. Finally, she answered him. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘I read the ­Vice-­Questore’s email this morning and found one with an attachment. The name of the sender was familiar, but the address was new. So I didn’t open the attachment.’

  She stopped here. Since Brunetti had no idea what any of this could mean, he limited himself to saying, ‘Strange,’ which is what he thought she wanted him to say.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What did you do instead?’

  ‘What anyone would,’ she said, leaving him wondering. After a pause, she added, ‘I marked it and the attachment as read, hoping that would be the end of it.’

  She looked at Brunetti, as if to test how much he understood, and his expression must have displayed at least part of the truth, for she added, ‘That’s how they can hack into your system: if you open an attachment.’

  ‘Where did it come from?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I’ve traced it back to an address in the Ministry of the Interior,’ she said.

  Her answer left Brunetti without words. For heaven’s sake, they worked for the Ministry of the Interior. Why should the sender need to get into their system, which was the Ministry’s own system, where there was an internal record of every email or SMS they sent or received?

  Signorina Elettra lapsed again into contemplation of her computer screen, and Brunetti lapsed into the contemplation of possibilities. That there would be official surveillance of their correspondence and phone conversations didn’t surprise him in the least: he had come to believe that everybody was listened to by at least one uninvited person. Perhaps the fact that so many people were busy spying rather than working explained why it was so much more difficult, today, to get anything done. Brunetti was conscious of the Unseen Listener when he spoke on the phone and the Unseen Reader when he sent an email. Surely things were slowed by the constant need to consider the uninvited participants who read what they wrote or listened to what they said.

  Spying at this level would be given into the hands of experts to do, wouldn’t it? A secretary sitting in the office of a ­Vice-­Questore di Polizia in a small city like Venice shouldn’t be able so easily to detect the attempt at detection, should she? Adept spies would be less clumsy.

  ‘Do you know which office?’

  She glanced out of the window behind him. Finally she shook away the question and said, ‘It was a fake address.’

  ‘And the real one?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she confessed. ‘I’ve sent everything along to a friend of mine and asked him to have a look.’

  Because he did not want to know the identity of the assuredly ­non-­authorized friend she had asked to investigate the attempted penetration of a Ministry of the Interior email address by a fraudulent Ministry of the Interior email address – Brunetti felt exhausted by the mere process of working this out – he declined to ask which friend she’d sent it to.

  He had to think carefully about how to phrase any questions he might ask so as not to reveal his ignorance. ‘What would they be after?’

  ‘My first guess is that it’s someone who hopes we use our office computers for our private emails. Once they get in, they can look at anything.’ Did she shudder?

  ‘I don’t have a private email address,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘You don’t have a private email?’ she repeated, quite as if he’d told her he didn’t know how to use a knife and fork.

  ‘No,’ he answered, with the same pose of innocence with which he used to tell people he didn’t have a telefonino. ‘I use Paola’s, but for anything official, I use the one I was given here,’ he said, waving his hand to indicate the entire Questura. ‘I promised Paola I’d never use one of the computers here to check her account.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I prefer to phone people, anyway,’ he added.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered, involuntarily raising her eyes to heaven at the very idea that a person existed who still believed that phones were safe.

  ‘What will you do?’ Brunetti asked.

  The question seemed to energize her, as if having to give a response unleashed her to think and to act. ‘If my friend can tell me where the mail came from, then I’ll have some idea how to treat it. It might just be a case of innocent fishing; some hacker kid who wants to play policeman. I hope it’s that.’

  Brunetti decided not to ask her what else it might be. Changing the subject, he said, ‘I have a favour to ask you.’ He took her glance for assent and continued. ‘Could you have a look at a Contessa ­Lando-­Continui? Demetriana.’ To make his request clear, he nodded in the direction of the computer as he spoke.

  Curiosity filled her face. ‘If I’m thinking about the one you are, she’s eighty if she’s a day.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘She’s a close friend of Paola’s mother, so I have to be very careful with her. She wants to talk to me.’

  Again Signorina Elettra’s face lit up with curiosity. ‘I have a vague memory that something bad happened in her family.’ She paused, waiting for memory, and continued when it arrived. ‘To her granddaughter. A long time ago. She drowned or something.’

  Surprised, Brunetti said, ‘I don’t know anything. Vianello remembered that there was something unpleasant, but not what it was.’

  ‘Drowning certainly is.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti agreed, thought of his family and did his best to try not to. ‘Could you see what you can find?’

  ‘Of course. Is there any hurry?’

  ‘It can wait until your hunt through the offices of the Ministry of the Interior leaves you some time,’ he answered.

  She nodded and dropped her chin into her hands again. Brunetti, seeing her lapse into a trance, decided to return to his office.

  3

  Brunetti told no one where he was going and took the Number One to San Stae, then made his way to Palazzo Bonaiuti, where Contessa ­Lando-­Continui lived. A maid opened the door to the street and led him across the ­herringbone-­patterned courtyard, where chrysanthemums still thrived against the east wall.

  The outside stairway to the first floor was probably original to the palazzo, the lions’ heads worn smooth with age and rain and the caresses of centuries of hands. The maid stepped into the enormous entry hall and held the door open for him.

  ‘The Contessa will join you in the small reading room,’ she said and turned down the corridor. She stopped at the third door on the left and entered without bothering to knock. Brunetti followed her.

  He had been in similar rooms countless times in the last decades. He saw the ­heavy-­footed mahogany tables covered with books and flowers, portraits grown dark with age, tall bookshelves no doubt left untouched since the time of those ancestors, and deep and threateningly uncomfortable chairs.

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sp; Light entered from three windows on the far wall, but Brunetti had no idea which way they faced. Beyond them, at some distance, he saw the wall of a tall palazzo, its brick surface glowing in the richness of the setting sun. Instantaneous computation, the same skill with which pigeons are said to be graced, let Brunetti calculate that the windows looked over the courtyard of the Fondaco del Megio. He walked to one of them to make sure and noticed that the trees had started to toss away their leaves. Putting his face as close to the glass as possible, he looked to the left, to what he remembered was an enclosed sports field.

  Behind him, a woman’s voice said, ‘Commissario?’

  He turned quickly and saw Contessa ­Lando-­Continui in the doorway. She was less imposing than she had been the previous evening, today deprived of the evidence of centur­ies of good taste that had stood guard around her in the borrowed room. He looked again: he saw a small old woman in a sober blue dress.

  ‘Good afternoon, Contessa,’ he said. Then, pointing out of the window, ‘I think I used to play soccer in that park down there.’ She looked at the window but made no move to approach. ‘A long time ago,’ he added with a smile. He walked towards her, and she offered him her hand. Though his easily enveloped hers, her grip was firm.

  In a face less tense, her expression would have been friendly and welcoming: what Brunetti saw was a pro forma smile. ‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ he answered automatically, then quickly added, perhaps still hearing the echo of the flattery he had listened to the previous evening, ‘I’d like to be of help, if I can.’

  ‘Donatella was very kind to let me invite my guests to her home: there are few other people in this city who would do that. She was even kinder to bring you and Paola.’ When Brunetti started to protest, she raised a hand to silence him. ‘We were both grateful that you came,’ she said in understanding of their reluctance. ‘I wanted my other guests, the ­non-­Venetians, to get the chance to meet some of the people whose lives might be improved by their generosity.’

  Before he could speak, she waved him to one of the two chairs that afforded a view out of the windows. When they were seated, he asked, ‘Improved how, Contessa?’

  ‘There will be other Venetian children and grandchildren for yours to go to school with, and perhaps the whole place won’t fall down so soon.’

  ‘That’s not an expression of optimism, if I might take the liberty of saying.’

  There was a discreet knock at the door. When it opened, the same maid came into the room and asked, ‘Would your guest like tea, Contessa?’

  The Contessa looked at Brunetti. ‘I’d prefer coffee.’

  The maid nodded and disappeared.

  ‘There’s no liberty in your saying that, Commissario,’ she said, returning immediately to their conversation. ‘Mine is not an optimistic view. I think it’s the only view possible.’

  ‘And yet you go to the trouble of providing dinner for wealthy foreigners in hopes that they will contribute to your foundation?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Donatella told me you were direct,’ she said. ‘I like that. I don’t have time to waste.’

  ‘Was your time wasted last night?’ he asked, though it was none of his business.

  ‘No, not at all. The banker is eager to join and has offered to underwrite a restoration project.’

  ‘Of the mosaics?’ Brunetti asked.

  Her mouth opened. ‘How did you learn about that?’ she asked.

  ‘Paying attention to what people say.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she whispered and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘After dinner, when you had coffee, you heard them talking, didn’t you?’

  ‘It would have been difficult not to, Contessa,’ Brunetti answered, reluctant to have this woman form the idea that he was a snoop.

  She laughed out loud. ‘She also said you were not a fool.’

  ‘I can’t be if I want to survive in my own home.’

  ‘Paola?’

  Brunetti nodded.

  ‘She was a very clever child,’ the Contessa said. ‘And she’s become a very clever woman.’

  The maid entered, and they stopped talking. She set a loaded tray on a side table and placed a lower table between them, then set the tray on it and left. There was a single cup of coffee, a silver sugar bowl, a spoon, two short glasses of thick cut crystal, and a bottle of whisky whose label made Brunetti stare.

  The Contessa leaned forward and pushed his cup, then the sugar bowl, close to Brunetti. Then she took the bottle, broke the paper tax stamp, and opened it. She poured about two centimetres into one of the glasses and silently tilted the bottle towards him.

  Brunetti nodded, and she poured the same amount into the second glass.

  Brunetti pushed the coffee to one side of the tray and picked up his glass. The liquid was too precious for him to say something as banal as ‘cin cin’, and so he said, ‘Alla Sua salute’, and held his glass up to her.

  ‘And to your health,’ she answered and took a sip.

  Brunetti did the same and thought he’d sell up everything and move to Scotland. Paola could find a job teaching, and the children would find something to do with themselves. Beg, for example.

  ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Contessa?’ he asked, leaning forward to place his glass on the tray.

  ‘You know about my granddaughter?’ she asked.

  ‘I know only that she was involved in an accident some years ago, but I heard that from someone in the Questura, not from anyone in my family.’ He decided to omit telling her that someone was continuing to look for more information.

  She cradled her glass in both hands. ‘You don’t need to defend your family,’ she said, ‘but I’m glad you did.’ She took a small sip and added, ‘I’ve known Donatella for more than forty years, and I’ve trusted her for most of them.’

  ‘Only most?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I think it’s rash to give the gift of trust to people we don’t know well.’

  Brunetti reached for his glass and held it up to the light, admiring the colour. ‘The policeman in me says you’re probably right, Contessa,’ he said and took a small sip. ‘This is glorious.’ He set the glass back on the table. ‘But I assume you are going to trust me. That is, if you want to talk to me.’

  ‘You drink it very sparingly,’ she said, putting her glass beside his to show how much larger her sips had been.

  ‘I think whatever you have to say to me deserves more attention than this whisky, however good it is.’

  She sat back in her chair and grasped its arms. Her eyes closed. ‘My granddaughter was . . . damaged fifteen years ago.’ Brunetti heard her breathing grow difficult and wondered if she were going to collapse or faint. What an odd choice of word: ‘damaged’.

  Some time passed. Her breathing slowed, and she loosened her grip on the arms of the chair. It was then that he realized they had been speaking in Veneziano, not Italian. He had automatically used the formal ‘Lei ’ with her, but he had addressed her in Veneziano from the beginning and without giving it a thought. It was a greater intimacy than using ‘tu ’.

  She opened her eyes and said, ‘She was fifteen, almost sixteen.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘She was pulled from a canal not far from her home, but she had been under the water a long time. No one knows how long, but long enough for it to damage her.’ By force of will, she kept her voice level and dispassionate. Her pain was evident only in her eyes, which could not meet his.

  ­Fifteen-­year-­old Venetians were fish, or at least part fish, Brunetti believed. They went into the water as children, spent their summers on the beach and in the sea, diving off the rocks at the Alberoni, racing through the laguna in their friends’ boats.

  ‘Did she fall?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That’s
what the police said, but I’m not sure any more,’ she said, then immediately clarified. ‘That it was an accident.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Manuela was terrified of the water.’

  Brunetti raised his eyebrows, one Venetian to another. Terrified of the water?

  ‘She almost drowned when she was a little girl,’ the Contessa continued. ‘My ­daughter-­in-­law took her to the beach at the Lido, and she wandered away and into the water. She might have been four, no older. A man on the beach saw her head go under a wave and ran into the water and pulled her out. He gave her artificial respiration and probably saved her life. After that, she was terrified of the water.’

  ‘That’s difficult if you live here,’ Brunetti said. His voice was rich with concern, no trace of irony.

  ‘I know. She couldn’t go on a vaporetto alone: someone had to hold her hand, and they had to stand inside, just beside the door. If there was no one to go with her, she’d walk.’

  ‘Could she manage that?’ he asked, wondering how complicated his life would become if he had to avoid taking boats.

  ‘Yes. She could walk to school and to her friends’ homes. But she was always careful to avoid walking alongside a canal. So long as she was a few metres from the water, she was all right.’

  ‘What about bridges?’ he asked.

  ‘They didn’t seem to bother her,’ she said and noticed his surprise. ‘It sounds strange, I know, but she said she could cross them so long as she kept concentrating on the stairs beneath her feet and didn’t have to see the water on either side. That’s what she was afraid of: the sight of the water. ’

  ‘Did she have to live here?’

  ‘No, she didn’t have to: she wanted to. Her parents were divorced, and my son remarried.’ She gave him a level look and added, ‘Men usually do.’ When Brunetti failed to rise to that, she went on. ‘When Manuela fell into the canal, my son had already had two other children, so it would have been difficult for her to live with them.’

  ‘So she lived with her mother?’