Death at La Fenice cgb-1

by Donna Leon

  She stubbed out her cigarette in a potted palm the size of an orange tree. ‘How would a person get it?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you, Doctor.’

  She paused and considered for a few moments before she suggested, ‘In a pharmacy, a laboratory, but I’m sure it would be a controlled substance.’

  ‘It is and it isn’t.’

  She, being an Italian, understood immediately. ‘So it could disappear and never be reported, or even missed?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. One of my men is checking the pharmacies in the city, but we could never hope to check all the factories in Marghera or Mestre.’

  ‘It’s used for developing film, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, and with certain petrochemicals.’

  ‘There’s enough of that in Marghera to keep your man busy.’

  ‘For days, I’m afraid,’ he admitted.

  Noticing that her drink was gone, he asked, ‘Would you like another?’

  ‘No, thank you. I think I’ve had enough of the count’s champagne for one evening.’

  ‘Have you been here other evenings?’ he asked, frankly curious.

  ‘Yes, a few. He always invites me, and if I’m free, I try to come.’

  ‘Why?’ The question slipped out before he had a chance to think.

  ‘He’s my patient.’

  ‘You’re his doctor?’ Brunetti was too astonished to disguise his response.

  She laughed. What was more, her amusement was entirely natural and without resentment. ‘If he’s my patient, then I suppose I’ve got to be his doctor.’ She relented. ‘My office is just on the other side of the campo. I was the servants’ doctor first, but then, about a year ago, I met the count when I was here to visit one of them, and we began to talk.’

  ‘About what?’ Brunetti was astonished at the possibility that the count was capable of an action so mundane as talking, especially with someone as unpretentious as this young woman.

  ‘That first time, we talked about the servant, who had influenza, but when I came back, we somehow started to talk about Greek poetry. And that led to a discussion, if I remember correctly, of Greek and Roman historians. The count is particularly fond of Thucydides. Since I’d gone to the classical liceo, I could talk about them without making a fool of myself, so the count decided I must be a competent doctor. Now he comes to my office every so often, and we talk about Thucydides and Strabo.’ She leaned back against the wall and crossed her ankles in front of her. ‘He’s very much like my other patients. Most of them come to talk about ailments they don’t have and pain they don’t feel. The count is more interesting to talk to, but I suppose there’s really not much difference between them. He’s lonely and old, just like them, and he needs someone to talk to.’

  Brunetti was shocked to silence by this assessment of the count. Lonely? A man who could pick up the phone and triumph over a Swiss bank’s code of secrecy? A man who could find out the contents of a man’s will before the man was buried? So lonely that he would go and talk to his doctor about Greek historians?

  ‘He talks about you sometimes as well,’ she said. ‘About all of you.’

  ‘He does?’

  ‘Yes. He carries your pictures in his wallet. He’s shown them to me a number of times. You, your wife, the children.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this, Doctor?’

  ‘As I told you, he’s a lonely old man. And he’s my patient, so I try to do whatever I can to help him.’ When she saw that he was going to object, she added, ‘Whatever I can, if I think it will help him.’

  ‘Doctor, is it normal for you to accept private patients?’

  If she saw where this was leading, she made no sign of it. ‘Most of my patients are public health patients.’

  ‘How many private patients do you have?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, Commissario.’

  ‘No, I suppose it’s not,’ he admitted. ‘Would you answer one about your politics?’ It was a question that, in Italy, still had some meaning, the parties not yet all being carbon copies of one another.

  ‘I’m Communist, of course, even with the new name.’

  ‘Yet you accept as your patient one of the richest men in Venice? Probably one of the richest in Italy?’

  ‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘I just told you. Because he’s a very rich man.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with my accepting him as a patient?’

  ‘I thought that...’

  ‘That I’d have to refuse him as a patient because he’s rich and can afford better doctors? Is that what you meant, Commissario?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise her anger. ‘Not only is that personally offensive, but it also shows a rather simplistic vision of the world. I suppose neither surprises me very much.’ That last made him wonder what the count might have said about him during their talks.

  He felt that the entire conversation had gotten out of hand. He had intended no offense, had not meant to suggest that the count could find better doctors. His surprise was entirely about this doctor’s having accepted him. ‘Doctor, please,’ he said, and held out a hand between them. ‘I’m sorry, but the world I work in is a simplistic one. There are good people.’ She was listening, so he dared to add, with a smile, ‘. . . like us.’ She had the grace to return his smile. ‘And then there are people who break the law.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, her anger not diminished, after all. ‘And does that give us all the right to divide up the world into two groups, the one we’re in and all the others? And I get to treat those people who share my politics and let the rest die? You make it sound like a cowboy film—the good guys and the lawbreakers, and never the least bit of difficulty in telling the difference between the two.’

  Struggling to defend himself, he said, ‘I didn’t say which law; I just said they broke the law.’

  ‘Isn’t there only one law in your vision of the world—the law of the state?’ Her contempt was open, and he hoped it was for the law of the state and not for him.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he answered.

  She threw up her hands. ‘If this is when poor old God gets dragged down from heaven and put into the conversation, I’m going to get more champagne.’

  ‘No, let me,’ he said, and took her glass from her. He soon returned with a fresh glass of champagne and some mineral water for himself. She accepted the champagne and thanked him with an entirely friendly and normal smile.

  She sipped, then asked him, ‘And this law of yours?’ She said it with such real interest and lack of rancor that the last exchange was entirely erased. On both sides, he realized.

  ‘Clearly, the one we have isn’t enough,’ he began, surprised to hear himself saying this, for it was this law he had spent his career defending. ‘We need a more human—or perhaps more humane—one.’ He stopped, aware of how foolish it made him feel to say this. And, worse, to mean it.

  ‘That would certainly be wonderful,’ she said with a blandness that made him immediately suspicious. ‘But wouldn’t that interfere with your profession? After all, it’s your job to enforce that other law, the law of the state.’

  ‘They’re really the same.’ Realizing how lame and stupid this sounded, he added, ‘Usually.’

  ‘But not always?’

  ‘No, not always.’

  ‘And when they’re not?’

  ‘I try to see the point where they intersect, where they’re the same.’

  ‘And if they’re not?’

  ‘Then I do what I have to do.’

  She burst into laughter so spontaneous that he joined her, aware of how much he had sounded like John Wayne just before he went out to that last gunfight.

  ‘I apologize for baiting you, Guido; I really do. If it’s any consolation to you, it’s the same sort of decision we doctors have to make, though not too often, when what we think is right isn’t the same as what the law says is right.’

  He
was, they both were, saved by Paola, who came up to him and asked if he was ready to go.

  ‘Paola,’ he said, turning to present her to the other woman. ‘This is your father’s doctor,’ hoping to surprise her.

  ‘Oh, Barbara,’ Paola exclaimed. ‘I’m so glad to meet you. My father talks about you all the time. I’m sorry it’s taken us this long to meet.’

  Brunetti watched and listened while they talked, amazed at the ease with which women made it obvious that they liked each other, at their enormous mutual trust, even at first meeting. United in a common concern for a man he had always found cool and distant, these two were talking as though they had known each other for years. There was none of the abrasive moral stocktaking that had transpired between him and the doctor. She and Paola had performed some sort of instant evaluation and been immediately pleased with what they found. He had often observed this phenomenon but feared he would never understand it. He had the same ability to become quickly friendly with another man, but somehow the intimacy stopped a few layers down. This immediate intimacy he was watching went deep, to some central place, before it stopped. And evidently it hadn’t stopped; it had only paused until the next meeting.

  They had arrived at the point of discussing Raffaele, the count’s only grandson, before Paola and Barbara remembered that Brunetti was still there. Paola could tell from his restless foot-shifting that he was tired and wanted to leave, so she said, ‘I’m sorry, Barbara, to tell you all this about Raffaele. Now you’ll have two generations to worry about, instead of one.’

  ‘No, it’s good to get a different view about the children. He’s always so worried about them. But so proud of both of you.’ It took Brunetti a moment before he realized she meant him and Paola. This was becoming, indeed, a night of many marvels.

  He didn’t notice how it was done, but the two women decided it was time for them all to leave. The doctor set her glass down on a table beside her, and Paola turned to take his arm at the same moment. They exchanged farewells, and he was again struck by how much warmer the doctor was with Paola than with him.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  As fortune would have it, it was the next morning that his first report was due on Patta’s desk ‘before eight.’ Since the clock, when he opened his eyes and saw it, read eight-fifteen, that was clearly going to be impossible.

  A half hour later, feeling more recognizably human, he came into the kitchen and found Paola reading L’Unità, which reminded him : it was Tuesday. For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: ‘I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.’ Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong. Today it was the Communist lie; tomorrow the Christian Democrats would get their chance.

  He bent and kissed her on the back of the neck. She grunted but didn’t bother to look up. Silently, she pointed to the left, where a plate of fresh brioches sat on the counter. As she turned a page, he poured himself a cup of coffee, spooned in three sugars, and took the seat opposite her. ‘News?’ he asked, biting into a brioche.

  ‘Sort of. We don’t have a government as of yesterday afternoon. The President’s trying to form one, but it looks like he hasn’t got a chance. And at the bakery this morning, all anyone talked about was how cold it’s turned. No wonder we have the sort of government we do: we deserve it. Well,’ she said, pausing over the photo of the most recent President-designate, ‘perhaps we don’t. No one could deserve that.’

  ‘What else?’ he asked, falling into the decade-old ritual. It allowed him to learn what was happening without having to read the papers, and it also usually gave him a very precise idea of her mood.

  ‘Train strike next week, in protest to the firing of an engineer who got drunk and drove his train into another one. The men who worked with him had been complaining about him for months, but no one paid any attention. So three people are dead. And now, because he’s been fired, the same people who complained about him are threatening to go on strike because he was fired.’ She turned a page. He took another brioche. ‘New threat of terrorist attacks. Maybe that will keep the tourists away.’ She turned another page. ‘Review of opening night at the Rome opera. A disaster. Lousy conductor. Dami told me last night that the orchestra had been complaining about him for weeks, all during rehearsals, but no one listened. Makes sense. No one listens to the men who run the trains, so why should anyone listen to musicians who get to hear him all during rehearsals?’

  He set his coffee down so suddenly that some of it splashed onto the table. Paola’s only response was to pull the paper closer to her.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Hmm?’ she asked, not really listening.

  ‘What did you say about the conductor?’

  She looked up because of the tone, not the words. ‘What?’

  ‘About the conductor, what did you just say?’

  As happened with most of the dicta she delivered each morning, this one appeared to have been forgotten as soon as she was free of it. She flipped back to the page where the article appeared and looked at it again. ‘Oh, yes, the orchestra. If anyone had paid any attention to them, they would have known he was a lousy conductor. After all, they’re the best sort of judge about how good a musician is, aren’t they?’

  ‘Paola,’ he said, pushing the paper down from in front of her, ‘if I weren’t married to you, I’d leave my wife for you.’

  He was glad to see he had surprised her; it was something he rarely achieved. He left her like that, peering over her reading glasses, not at all sure what she had done.

  He ran down all the ninety-four steps, eager to get to work and start making phone calls.

  When he arrived fifteen minutes later, there had still been no sign of Patta, so he dictated a short paragraph and sent it to be placed on his superior’s desk. That done, he called the main office of the Gazzettino and asked to speak to Salvatore Rezzonico, the chief music critic. He was told he was not at the office but could be found either at home or at the music conservatory. When he finally located the man, at home, and explained what he wanted, Rezzonico agreed to speak to him later that morning at the conservatory, where he was teaching a class at eleven. Next Brunetti called his dentist; he had once mentioned a cousin who played first violin in the La Fenice orchestra. Traverso was his name, and Brunetti called and arranged to speak to him before the performance that night.

  He spent the next half hour talking with Miotti, who had come up with little more at the theater, save for another member of the chorus who was sure he had seen Flavia Petrelli go into the conductor’s dressing room after the first act. Miotti had further learned the reason for the portiere’s obvious antipathy for the soprano: his belief that she was somehow involved with ‘l’americana.’ Beyond this, Miotti had learned nothing. Brunetti sent him off to the archives of the Gazzettino to look for anything about a scandal involving the Maestro and an Italian singer, sometime ‘before the war.’ He avoided Miottits look at the vagueness of this and suggested that there might be a filing system that would facilitate things.

  Brunetti now left his office and walked across the city to the music conservatory, fitted into a small campo near the Accademia Bridge. After much asking, he found the professor’s classroom on the third floor and the professor waiting there, either for him or for his students.

  As so often happened in Venice, Brunetti recognized the man from having walked past him many times in that part of the city. Though they had never spoken to one another, the warmth of the man’s greeting made it obvious that he was familiar with Brunetti for the same reason. Rezzonico was a small man with a pallid complexion and beautifully manicured nails. Clean-shaven, with hair cut very
short, he wore a dark-gray suit and a somber tie, as if he were intentionally dressing for the role of professor.

  ‘What is it I can do for you, Commissario?’ he asked after Brunetti had introduced himself and taken a seat at one of the desks that filled the classroom.

  ‘It’s about Maestro Wellauer.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ responded Rezzonico, his voice growing predictably somber. ‘A sad loss to the world of music’ This was, after all, the man who had written his obituary.

  Brunetti waited for the requisite time to pass, then continued. ‘Were you going to review that performance of Traviata for the paper, Professor?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘But the review never appeared?’

  ‘No, we decided—that is, the editor decided—that out of respect for the Maestro and because the performance was not completed, we would wait for the new conductor and review one of his performances.’