by Donna Leon
‘You’re right,’ Brunetti said. ‘I didn’t think. All I wanted to do was stop him before he did anything violent.’
‘You’re his boss, Guido, not his father.’
‘Would you do the same thing to stop one of your students from ruining his career?’ he asked, knowing it was not at all the same thing, not really.
‘I probably would,’ she said and got to her feet.
Her answer didn’t change much, he realized. He had done it and would do it again. Where could he find another Pucetti?
‘And so?’ he asked.
She let a moment pass and then said, ‘We were talking about your running away.’
‘You make me sound like a child,’ he said petulantly.
‘Not at all, Guido. I’ve watched you during the last few months, and I agree with you that you need to get away from waiting for the next horrible case you’ll have to work on.’
In all these years, she had never criticized the work he did: she had always been the interested, supportive wife, who listened to him as he described the mayhem he had observed and the consequences of the violence that lay so close to the surface of human behaviour. She had listened to his accounts of murder, rape, arson, violence, and she’d had the grace to ask him questions and had often suggested new ways to view people and events.
And in return, he asked himself, how much interest had he paid to the work that was equally part of her life? He had turned her passion for the prose of Henry James into a running gag and had refused to read more than a few of his books. Murder was for real men, and books were for girls. And now he couldn’t bear it any more, and she was encouraging him to run away from it.
‘I’ve just had a vacation,’ he reminded her.
‘That was two months ago, and you didn’t like it.’
‘It rained all the time,’ he said, remembering how he’d sulked his way through London, Dublin, and Edinburgh, complaining about the rain and the lousy coffee, not caring that his mood dampened his family’s spirits as much as did the weather.
‘We can talk about this when you come home,’ she said. ‘Did they tell you when that will be?’
‘No. Only that they have to do more tests,’ he said, sounding casual.
‘Does that mean they’ve found something?’ Paola asked, sounding anything but casual.
The door opened, and Dottoressa Sanmartini came in. ‘Good afternoon, Signora,’ she said coolly. ‘Might I ask you to leave me alone with my patient?’
Ordinarily, Paola would have reacted to any sarcasm lurking among the words, but there was none, only the request of one polite person to another. She said, ‘Of course, Dottoressa,’ and left the room.
‘Would you like to sit on the bed, Signor Brunetti?’ the doctor asked.
Brunetti sat and waited for her to continue, curious about what a civilian would think of the costs of their work.
When she realized that he was not going to prompt or question her, she went on, ‘You must sometimes have to deal with dreadful people who have done terrible things and are incapable of seeing them as that.’ Had someone played her the tape of the conversation with Ruggieri? he wondered wildly.
‘You’ve certainly seen the results of what people can do to one another,’ she added.
‘You’ve see the same things, Dottoressa, I’d imagine,’ he said.
‘Yes, but my responsibility ends when I cure the victim of her wounds.’ Interesting, Brunetti thought, that she automatically said ‘her’. ‘I don’t have to listen to the person who did it deny what he did or say that he had the right to do it.’
‘And you think this could lead to what’s wrong with me?’ Brunetti asked.
She set the papers down and turned the full attention of her eyes towards him. ‘Signor Brunetti, may I speak frankly?’
‘If you’re my doctor, don’t you have that obligation?’ he asked.
She made a noise, something between a snort and a laugh. ‘Hardly.’
‘Then yes, please speak frankly.’
She indicated the file. ‘I think the results in there have very little to do with what’s wrong with you.’
Brunetti shrugged and waited for her to continue. When she did not, he asked, ‘Then what does?’
‘Your work. The need to do something when you can do nothing.’
She looked down, studying either her answer or her feet. Eyes still lowered, she said, ‘Because of the limits put on your powers, you can only arrest and question people you believe guilty of a crime. You can’t do anything to them, and you have little chance of making them see what it is they’ve done.’
She raised her eyes and looked at him. ‘That’s why I said “need”, Signore. I’m talking about a sense of ethical obligation. Because you consider yourself powerless, you ended up here.’
‘You make it sound like a very simple conclusion, Dottoressa,’ Brunetti said quite amiably.
‘When I look at the results of your tests, it is simple,’ she answered. ‘Would you like to know why?’
‘Yes.’
She picked up the file and opened it, then said, ‘I spent some time looking at these results, and I find no sign that you had a heart attack, nor demonstrable problems with your heart. The electrocardiogram and ultrasound are normal, and there’s no sign of problems with your blood enzymes.’
Brunetti flashed a relieved smile and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘That’s a great relief,’ he said, feeling uncomfortable at continuing with his performance as a worried patient.
‘But your blood pressure is very high: 180 over 110.’
Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his nervousness.
‘In your case, since there’s no sign of damage – of any sort – to the tissue of the heart, what’s left is stress.’
Brunetti interrupted here to ask, ‘Is that better or worse, Dottoressa?’
‘Neither better nor worse, Signore.’ She left him time to digest that, then said, ‘I’ve made copies of our results. You can show them to your own doctor. My diagnosis is that you are at risk because of stress, and you should do something to reduce it.’
‘I’m too old to find a new job, Dottoressa,’ he said.
Finally, she smiled. ‘And too young to retire, I’d venture.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Nonetheless, and regardless of your age, I think what you need, Signor Brunetti, is time away from the circumstances that cause your stress. I’ve indicated that in my report, which says that you are suffering from exhaustion brought on by your work that might have adverse consequences for your heart.’
‘Does that mean what I think it does?’ he asked.
‘I’ve written a letter recommending two weeks – renewable to three – away from your place of work. You should not be contacted for anything to do with your normal duties. Only for emergencies.’ Here she looked at him directly, and he noticed that her nose was bent just minimally to the left, as though from an old injury that had not been attended to properly. ‘Whatever those emergencies might be. And you should not be bothered for normal bureaucratic problems.’
He risked saying, ‘You sound like a person who has worked within a bureaucracy, Dottoressa.’
‘For my sins,’ she said. And then smiled again.
‘And when may I go home?’
‘If your wife will go with you, you can leave now.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Dottoressa,’ he said, trying to mask his relief.
She nodded but said, ‘It’s also very pragmatic of me.’
‘Excuse me.’
‘We need the bed.’
4
Outside the room, Brunetti found Paola, and in the corridor where he had lain while waiting to be seen by a doctor, he found his shoes. Some time later, they emerged, arm in arm, into the pounding light and worse heat of a late afternoon in mid-July. Stepping from the coolness of the enormous entrance hall of the Ospedale, Brunetti felt as though someone had wrapped him in an electric blanket after first
throwing a bucket of hot water over his head. The interrogation room in which he had staged his collapse had been hot, but nothing like this.
Turning to Paola, he said, ‘I should have booked a return ticket with the ambulance.’
‘And gone back to the Questura?’ she asked, opening her bag to search for her sunglasses. Not finding them at once, she retreated into the shade until she did, then emerged with them in place.
‘Let’s go home,’ Brunetti said. ‘This is unbearable.’
They walked slowly, taking the shortest way, deliberately cutting through Campo della Fava to avoid the crowds in Calle della Bissa. When they arrived at the foot of the Rialto bridge, they looked up at it, horrified. Anthill, termites, wasps. Ignoring these thoughts, they locked arms and started up, eyes on their feet and the area immediately in front of them. Up, up, up as feet descended towards them, but they ignored them and didn’t stop. Up, up, up and across the top, shoving their way through the motionless people, deaf to their cries of admiration. Then down, down, down, the momentum of their descent making them more formidable. They saw the feet of the people coming up towards them dance to the side at their approach, hardened their hearts to their protests, and plunged ahead. Then left and into the underpass, where they stopped. Brunetti’s pulse raced and Paola leaned helpless on his arm.
‘I can’t stand it any more,’ Paola said and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. ‘I want Il Gazzettino to have a headline saying there’s cholera in the city. Plague.’
Brunetti kissed the top of her head. ‘Shall I pray for a tsunami?’ he asked.
He felt the motion of her giggle. She pulled away from him and said in her calmest voice, ‘No, I don’t want anything that would hurt the buildings.’
By the time they got to the front door, Brunetti had perspired through his shirt and jacket, and Paola had strings of damp hair falling across her forehead. They climbed the steps, saying nothing, wanting only to get to the top and let themselves into the current of air that flowed from one end of their apartment to the other.
Inside, Brunetti peeled off his jacket, convinced that he heard it suck free from his shirt. He moved into the living room and into the stream of merely warm air that flowed from north to south. He unbuttoned his shirt and flapped its open sides in the breeze. When he turned to Paola, she was running her fingers through her hair to hold it up in the same breeze.
Without thinking, he said,
‘la pastorella alpestra et cruda
posta a bagnar un leggiadretto velo,
ch’a Laura il vago et biondo capel chiuda.’
Paola let her hair fall to her shoulders and smiled at him. ‘If you can watch the shepherdess wash the veil that binds her hair from the wind, then I hope the burning heat of the day will fill you with the chill of love,’ she said, completing the poem.
‘Don’t I ever get to quote something you don’t recognize?’ Brunetti whined.
‘You’ll have to try someone more obscure than Petrarch,’ she answered amiably, and then added, ‘Why don’t you take a shower first? You’re the one who was in the hospital all morning.’
‘My own stupid fault,’ he said and went back to their room to find fresh clothing.
A new man emerged from the shower, one who had stood briefly under a stream of water as hot as he could endure and then switched to cold and stood stoically, though for a far shorter time. It was this man who found his wife sprawled across the sofa, sipping at a glass of pale liquid that, because of the moisture condensing on the outside of the glass, had to be cold. Silently praising his powers of observation, he noted a second glass on the tray in front of the sofa.
‘Mine?’ he asked.
Too tired, or too hot, to make a joking response, Paola contented herself with a nod. He sat beside her and picked up the glass. He set it down after the first sip. ‘Is this lemonade?’ he asked, doing his best not to sound like a policeman.
‘Don’t you like it?’ she asked. ‘I can’t bear the thought of drinking anything else.’
Brunetti took another sip. ‘You’re probably right. I asked only because I’m surprised.’
‘That it’s not wine?’ Paola asked.
The question made him uncomfortable, as if she’d suggested he would not drink anything that did not contain alcohol. ‘It’s fine,’ Brunetti said and took another sip. But it wasn’t a spritz, was it?
When Paola finished her lemonade, she set the glass down and asked, ‘Well?’
Brunetti gave the question some thought. ‘I’ve been authorized two or three weeks of complete rest,’ he finally said.
‘And you’re going to take them?’
‘Yes,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she affirmed. ‘It’s what you need.’
‘If only to stop me from doing stupid things?’ he inquired.
‘What you did wasn’t stupid, Guido, not at all,’ Paola said. ‘Rash, perhaps, or impulsive, but by no means stupid.’
Brunetti wondered if the children reacted the same way to her approval, if they, too, felt uncertainty or guilt fall away the instant she said what they’d done was right. ‘I’m glad you think that,’ he said, unable to stop it from coming out awkwardly.
Ignoring his remark, she asked, ‘What will you do with your two or three weeks?’
Brunetti realized he hadn’t given it any thought, other, that is, than knowing that he would take the time for himself. He kicked off his shoes and put his feet on the table in front of them. How nice a spritz would be, he thought again, and shifted himself down in the sofa. ‘I’d like to go somewhere and look at the water,’ he said.
‘Here in Venice, or somewhere else?’ she asked, as if his remark had been the most natural thing he could possibly have said.
‘Here,’ he said, and then surprised himself by adding, ‘I’d like to go rowing,’ an idea that had just come to him – as much the result of impulse as had been his original response to Pucetti’s action.
‘In this heat?’ she asked.
‘It’s different out in the laguna,’ Brunetti said, recalling his younger self: harder-muscled, harder-headed, and, he had to admit – though only to himself – probably harder- hearted. ‘You don’t feel the heat because there’s always a breeze.’
‘And currents and mosquitoes, and crazy young men in speedboats.’
‘With happy dogs on their prows,’ he countered. ‘And the light on the water, the feel of the boat under your feet, and no sound when you get to the smaller canals,’ he said, but then, seeing that she still failed to swoon at the magic and mystery of the laguna, added, ‘and young girls in bikinis.’
‘And you in your T-shirt, showing all your muscles.’
Brunetti leaned towards her, bent his elbow in an arm-wrestler’s L and made a fist. ‘Go ahead, feel it,’ he said. And when she raised a hand towards him, added, ‘Be careful you don’t hurt your hand.’
Instead of feeling his muscle, she poked him in the ribs, saying, ‘Oh, stop it, Guido. Be serious: where do you want to go?’ But she said it, Brunetti thought, like someone who had an answer in mind.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t got that far. But I could go out and stay on Burano, I guess, or even out to Torcello. There are fewer people there.’
‘In a hotel?’ she asked in her prosecuting magistrate mode, thus enforcing his belief that she already had an answer. ‘And the boat about which you are so rhapsodic? Where do you have that hidden?’
Brunetti shoved himself to his feet and went into the kitchen. He pulled some ice cubes from the freezer and dropped them into two glasses, thought of the heat and poured in a lot of mineral water, added a shot of Campari to both, and opened one of the bottles of prosecco in the door of the refrigerator. He filled the glasses almost to the rims and took them back into the living room.
Handing one to Paola, he sat back down beside her and took a long swallow. ‘I’m ready now,’ he said.
‘For what?’ Paola asked and took a
ladylike sip.
‘For whatever it is you have in mind. Where I can go. And probably where I can have a boat to use, as well.’
She set her drink, barely touched, on the table and leaned back next to him. ‘Zia Costanza’s house,’ she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Well, I suppose it’s really a villa.’
Brunetti paused to try to remember Aunt Costanza, and finally he did: a much-married, much-widowed cousin of his father-in-law’s who had one son and a great deal of property both on the mainland and in Venice as well as on the islands around it.
He had heard talk, over the years, of apartments, the odd palazzo, a few shops, but he failed to recall any mention of a villa. ‘Where?’
‘Out at the tip end of Sant’Erasmo. She has a villa and some land.’
Long familiarity with the Falier family had alerted Brunetti to the need to seek clarity about expressions such as ‘some land’ or, as had happened in the past, ‘a few apartments’.
‘Is it empty?’
‘Sort of,’ Paola answered. ‘The custodian and his family live in another house on the property and keep the main house ready for anyone she might send out to stay there.’
‘You make it sound like the perfect place for a rest cure,’ Brunetti said, smiling as he spoke.
He took a few small sips of his spritz, placed the half-empty glass beside hers and nodded. ‘How big is this place?’ he asked.
Paola pressed her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. ‘I was sent out there for a few weeks most summers when I was in school. It seemed very big to me then. The land around it was covered with artichokes.’
‘Why were you sent out?’ Brunetti asked.
‘My father thought it would be a good thing for me to see what life on a farm was really like.’
