by Donna Leon
‘That would be very kind of you, Signora,’ he said.
She pointed to a straight-backed chair that faced hers, and Brunetti moved to sit in it, though not before noticing that the woven wicker seat was worn, or chewed, through in a number of places. He sat down carefully and looked around the room. He saw the signs of desperate poverty: the cement sink with only one faucet, the lack of refrigerator or stove, the moldy patches on the walls. He smelled, more than he saw, the poverty, smelled it in the fetid air, the stink of sewer common on the ground floors of Venice, of the salami and cheese left open and unrefrigerated on the counter, and smelled it from the raw, unwashed odor that seeped across to him from the blankets and shawls heaped on the old woman’s chair.
With motions grown circumscribed by age and lack of space, she poured coffee from an espresso pot into a low saucepan and walked haltingly toward the kerosene stove, on top of which she placed the pan. Slowly she made her way back to the cement counter beside the sink and returned to place two chipped cups on the table beside her chair. Then back again, this time to return with a small crystal sugar bowl that held a mound of grubby, solidified sugar in its center. Sticking her finger into the saucepan and judging the temperature correct, she poured its contents into the two cups, one of which she shoved roughly toward him. She licked her finger clean.
She stooped to pull back the covers on her chair and then, like a person about to slip into bed, lowered herself into the chair. Automatically, as if after long training, the covers slipped down from the back and arms of the chair to cover her.
She reached beside her to take her cup from the table, and he noticed that her hands were knobbed and deformed with arthritis, so much so that the left had become a sort of hook from which protruded a thumb. He realized that the same disease caused her slowness. And then, as the cold and damp continued to lay siege to his body, he considered what it must be like for her to live in this apartment.
Neither of them had said a thing during the preparation of the coffee. Now they sat in an almost congenial silence until she leaned forward and said, ‘Have some sugar.’
She made no move to unwrap herself, so Brunetti picked up the single spoon and chipped away a piece of sugar. ‘Allow me, Signora,’ he said, and dropped it into her cup, using the spoon to move it around. He chopped off another piece of sugar and put it into his own cup, where it lay, solid and undissolvable. The liquid he sipped was thick, lukewarm, and lethal. A lump of sugar banged against his teeth, having done nothing to fight the acrid taste of the coffee. He took another sip, then set it down on the table. Signora Santina left her own untouched.
He sat back in his chair and, making no attempt to disguise his curiosity, looked around the room. If he had expected to find any evidence of a career as meteoric as it was brief, he was mistaken. No poster of past opening nights hung upon these walls, no photos of the singer in costume. The only object that might have been a sign from her past was a large portrait photo in a silver frame that stood on top of a chipped wooden bureau. Arranged in a formal, artificial V, three young women, girls really, sat and smiled at the camera.
Still ignoring the cup at her side, she asked abruptly, ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Is it true that you sang with him, Signora?’
‘Yes. The season of 1937. But not here.’
‘Where?’
‘Munich.’
‘And what opera, Signora?’
‘Don Giovanni The Germans were always mad for their own. And the Austrians. So we gave them Mozart.’ She added, with a small snort of contempt, ‘And Wagner. Of course he gave them Wagner. He loved Wagner.’
‘Who? Wellauer?’
‘No. L’imbianchino,’ she said, using the word for house-painter and, with it, conveying the sentiments that had cost countless people their lives.
‘And the Maestro, did he like Wagner as well?’
‘He liked anything the other one liked,’ she said with contempt she made no effort to disguise. ‘But he liked him on his own, liked Wagner. They all do. It’s the brooding and pain. It appeals to them. I think they like suffering. Their own or others’.’
Ignoring this, he asked, ‘Did you know the Maestro well, Signora?’
She looked away from Brunetti, over toward the photo, then down at her hands, which she held carefully separated, as if even the most casual contact could cause them pain. ‘Yes, I knew him well,’ she finally said.
After what seemed a long time, he asked, ‘What can you tell me about him, Signora?’
‘He was vain,’ she finally said. ‘But with reason. He was the greatest conductor I ever worked with. I didn’t sing with them all; my career was too short. But of those I sang with, he was the best. I don’t know how he did it, but he could take any music, no matter how familiar it was, and he could make it seem new, as if it had never been played, or heard, before. Musicians didn’t like him, usually, but they respected him. He could make them play like angels.’
‘You said your career was too snort. What caused it to end?’
She looked at him then, but she didn’t ask how anyone who said he was a fan of hers could fail to know the story. After all, he was a policeman, and they always lied. About everything. ‘I refused to sing for II Duce. It was in Rome, at the opening night of the 1938 season. Norma. The general manager came backstage just before the curtain and told me that we had the honor of having Mussolini in the audience that night. And . . .’ Her voice trailed off, seeking a way to explain this. ‘And I was young and brave, and I said I wouldn’t sing. I was young and I was famous, and I thought that I could do something like that, that my fame would protect me. I thought that Italians loved art and music enough to allow me to do that and be safe.’ She shook her head at the thought.
‘What happened, Signora?’
‘I didn’t sing. I didn’t sing that night, and I didn’t sing in public again. He couldn’t kill me for that, for not singing, but he could arrest me. I stayed in my home in Rome until the end of the war, and when it was over, when it was over, I didn’t sing anymore.’ She shifted around in her chair. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘About the Maestro, then. Is there anything else you can remember about him?’ Though neither of them had mentioned his death, both of them spoke of him as among the dead.
‘No, nothing.’
‘Is it true, Signora, that you had personal difficulties with him?’
‘I knew him fifty years ago.’ She sighed. ‘How can that be important?’
‘Signora, I want only to get an idea of the man. All I know about him is his music, which is beautiful, and his body, which I saw and which was not. The more I know about him, the more I might be able to understand how he died.’
‘It was poison, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ There was no malice, no venom in her voice. She could have been remarking on a passage of music or a meal, for all the enthusiasm she showed. He noticed that her hands were joined together now, fingers nervously weaving in and out. ‘But I’m sorry someone killed him.’ Which was it? he asked himself. ‘Because I would have liked it to be suicide, so he would damn his soul as well as die.’ Her tone remained level, dispassionate.
Brunetti shivered; his teeth started to chatter. Almost involuntarily, he got up from his seat and began to walk around in an effort to bring some warmth back into his limbs. At the bureau, he stopped in front of the photo and studied it. The three girls wore the exaggerated fashions of the thirties: long lace dresses trailing to the floor, open-toed shoes with immense heels. All three had the same dark, bow-shaped lips and razor-thin eyebrows. Under the makeup and marcelled hair, he could see that they were very young. They were arranged in descending order of age, the oldest to the left. She might have been in her early twenties, the middle one a few years younger. The last seemed little more than a child, perhaps in her early teens.
‘Which one are you, Signora?’
‘In the center. I was the
middle one.’
‘And the other two?’
‘Clara. She was older. And Camilla. She was the baby. We were a good Italian family. My mother had six children in twelve years, three girls and three boys.’
‘Did your sisters sing too?’
She sighed, then gave a small snort of disbelief. ‘There was a time when everyone in Italy knew the three Santina sisters, the Three C’s. But that was a long time ago, so there is no reason that you should know.’ He saw the way she looked at the photo and wondered if they were still, to her, the way they were in that photo, young and beautiful.
‘We began singing in the music halls, after the films. There was little money in our family, so we sang, the daughters, and we made some money. Arid then we began to be recognized, so there was more money. Somehow I discovered that I had a real voice, so I started singing in the theaters, but Camilla and Clara continued to sing in the music halls.’ She stopped talking and picked up her coffee, drank it down in three quick swallows, then hid her hands under the warmth of the blankets.
‘Did your trouble with him involve your sisters, Signora?’
Her voice was suddenly tired and old. ‘That was too long ago. Does it matter?’
‘Did it involve your sisters, Signora?’
Her voice shot up into the soprano register. ‘Why do you want to know? What does it matter? He’s dead. They’re dead. They’re all dead.’ She pulled the loose covers more tightly around her, protecting herself from the cold and from the cold sound of his voice. He waited for her to continue, but all he heard was the low puff and hiss of the kerosene heater giving voice to its futile attempt to keep the killing chill from the room.
Minutes passed. Brunetti could still taste the bitterness of the coffee in his mouth, and he could do nothing to lessen the cold that continued to seep into his bones.
Finally, she spoke, her voice absolute. ‘If you’ve finished your coffee, you can go.’
He went back to the table and took the two cups over to the sink. When he turned, she had unburied herself and was already at the door to the room. She shuffled ahead of him down the long corridor, which, if possible, had grown even colder while they had been in the other room. Slowly, scrabbling at the locks with her twisted hands, she pulled back the bolts and held the door open enough for him to slip through. As he turned to thank her, he heard the bolts being driven home. Though it was early winter and cold, he sighed with relief and pleasure at the faint touch of the afternoon sun on his back.
* * * *
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As the boat carried him back to the main island, he tried to think of who would be able to tell him what had happened between the singer and Wellauer. And between him and her sister. The only person he could think of was Michele Narasconi, a friend of his who lived in Rome and somehow managed to make a living as a travel and music writer. Michele’s father, now retired, had done the same sort of thing, though with far greater success. He had been, for two decades, the leading reporter of the superfluous in Italy, a nation that demanded a steady stream of that sort of information. The older man had written, for years, weekly columns in both Gente and Oggi, and millions of readers had depended upon him for reports—accuracy being no requirement—about the various scandals of the Savoia family, stars of stage and screen, and the limitless flock of minor princelings who insisted upon migrating to Italy both before and after their abdications. Though Brunetti had no clear idea of what he was looking for, he knew that Michele’s father would be the person to ask for it.
He waited until he was back at the office to place the call. It had been so long since he had spoken to Michele that he had to ask the interurban operator for the number. While the phone rang, he tried to think of a way to ask for what he wanted without insulting his friend.
‘Pronto. Narasconi,’ a woman’s voice answered.
‘Ciao, Roberta,’ he said. ‘It’s Guido.’
‘Oh, Guido, it’s so nice to hear from you again. How are you? And Paola? And the children?’
‘We’re all fine, Roberta. Listen, is Michele there?’
‘Yes; let me go and get him for you.’ He heard the solid clunk of the phone’s being set down, Roberta’s voice calling to her husband. Various slammings and thumps ensued, and then Michele’s voice said, ‘Ciao, Guido. How are you, and what do you want?’ The laugh that followed the question removed any possibility of malice from it.
Brunetti decided not to waste time or energy in being coy. ‘Michele, this time I need your father’s memory. It’s too far back for yours. How is he?’
‘Still working. RAI wants him to write a program about the early days of television. If he does, I’ll let you know so you can watch it. What is it you want to know?’ A reporter by instinct as well as profession, Michele wasted no time.
‘I want to know if he remembers an opera singer named Clemenza Santina. She sang right before the war.’
Michele made a faint noise. ‘Sounds faintly familiar, though I can’t remember why. If it was around the war, Papà will remember.’
‘There were two other sisters. They all sang,’ Brunetti explained.
‘Yes, I remember now. The Singing C’s, or the Beautiful C’s; something like that. What do you want to know about them?’
‘Anything at all, anything he can remember.’
‘Is this related to Wellauer?’ Michele asked out of an instinct that was seldom wrong.
‘Yes.’
Michele gave a long, appreciative whistle. ‘Is it yours?’
‘Yes.’
Again, the whistle. ‘I don’t envy you that, Guido. The press will eat you alive if you don’t find out who did it. Scandal to the Republic. Crime against Art. All that stuff.’
Brunetti, who had already had three days of this, said a simple ‘I know.’
Michele’s response was immediate. ‘Sorry, Guido, sorry. What do you want me to ask Papà?’
‘If there was ever any talk about Wellauer and the sisters.’
‘The usual kind of talk?’
‘Yes, or any other kind of talk. He was married at the time. I don’t know if that’s important.’
‘Is that the one who committed suicide?’ So Michele had read the papers too.
‘No; that was the second one. He was still married to number one. And I wouldn’t mind if your father could remember anything about that, as well. But this was right before the war—’38, ‘39.’
‘Wasn’t there some sort of political trouble she got herself into? Insulted Hitler or something?’
‘Mussolini. She spent the war under house arrest. If she had insulted Hitler, she would have been killed. I want to know what her connection to Wellauer was. And, if possible, the sister’s.’
‘How urgent is this, Guido?’
‘Very.’
‘All right. I saw Papà this morning, but I can go over this evening. He’ll be delighted. It’ll make him feel important, being asked to remember. You know how he likes to talk about the past.’
‘Yes, I do. He was the only person I could think of, Michele.’
His friend laughed at this. Flattery was still flattery, no matter how true it happened to be. ‘I’ll tell him you said that, Guido.’ Then, laughter gone, he asked, ‘What about Wellauer?’ This was as close as Michele would permit himself to come to asking a direct question, but that is what it was.
‘Nothing yet. There were more than a thousand people in the theater the night it happened.’
‘Is there a connection with the Santina woman?’
‘I don’t know, Michele. I can’t know until I hear what your father remembers.’
‘All right. I’ll call you tonight after I talk to him. It’ll probably be late. Should I still call?’
‘Yes, I’ll be there. Or Paola will. And thanks, Michele.’
‘It’s nothing, Guido. Besides, Papà will be proud you thought of him.’
‘He’s the only one.’
‘I’ll be sure to tell him.’
<
br /> Neither of them bothered to say they had to get together soon; neither had the time to travel half the country to see an old friend. Instead they said goodbye and wished each other well.
When he had finished speaking to Michele, he realized it was time to go back to the Wellauer apartment for his second talk with the widow. He left a message for Miotti, saying he wouldn’t be back in the office that afternoon, and scribbled a short note, asking one of the secretaries to place it on Patta’s desk at eight the next morning.
He was a few minutes late getting to the Maestro’s apartment. This time it was the maid who let him in, the woman who had been sitting in the second row of pews at the funeral mass. He introduced himself, gave her his coat, and asked if he might trouble her for a few words after he had spoken to the signora. She nodded and said no more than ‘Si,’ then led him to the room where he had spoken with the widow two days before.
