The Death of Faith

by Donna Leon

  Paola, seeing that he was finished talking to Vianello, moved back toward them. Just then, a gust of wind came from behind her and blew her hair back across her face, wrapping the blonde waves around from both sides.

  Laughing, she raised both hands to her face and swept the hair up and away, then shook her head from side to side, as if surfacing from a long dive. When she opened her eyes, she saw Brunetti watching her and laughed again, this time even louder. With his good arm, he reached around her shoulder and pulled her toward him.

  Reduced by surging love to adolescence, he asked, ‘Did you miss me?’

  Catching his mood, she answered, ‘I pined desperately. The children haven’t been fed. My students languish for lack of intellectual stimulation.’

  Vianello left them to it and went up to stand beside Bonsuan.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ Brunetti asked, as if she hadn’t spent most of her time at the hospital with him for the last ten days.

  He felt her change of mood register in her body and pulled her around to face him. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t want to disturb your homecoming,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing could do that, Paola,’ he said and smiled at the simple truth of that. ‘Tell me, please.’

  She studied his face for a moment and then said, ‘I told you that I was going to ask my father for help.’

  ‘About Padre Luciano?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he’s spoken to some people, friends of his in Rome. I think he’s found an answer.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  She did.

  * * * *

  The housekeeper answered the door to the rectory at Brunetti’s second ring. She was a plain woman in her late fifties, with the smooth, flawless skin that he had often observed on the faces of nuns and other women of long preserved virginity.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked. ‘How may I help you?’ She might have once been pretty, with dark brown eyes and a broad mouth, but time had made her forget about that sort of thing or she had lacked the will for beauty, and so her face had faded and gone dull and soft.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Luciano Benevento,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Are you a parishioner?’ she asked, surprised at the use of the priest’s name without his title.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered after only a moment’s hesitation and giving an answer that was at least geographically true.

  ‘If you’ll come into the study, I’ll call Father Luciano.’ She turned away from Brunetti, who closed the front door and followed her down the marble-paved hall. She opened the door to a small room for him, then disappeared down the hall, off in pursuit of the priest.

  Inside, there were two armchairs placed close beside one another, perhaps to facilitate the intimacy of confession. A small crucifix hung on one wall, a picture of the Madonna of Cracow opposite it. A low table held copies of Famiglia Christiana and a few postal contribution forms for those who might be encouraged to make a donation to Primavera Missionaria. Brunetti ignored the magazines, the images, and the chairs. He stood in the centre of the room, mind clear, and waited for the priest to arrive.

  The door opened after a few minutes, and a tall, thin man came into the room. Dressed in the long skirts and high collar of his office, he seemed taller than he was, an impression that was intensified by his erect posture and long-legged stride.

  ‘Yes, my son?’ he said as he came in. He had dark grey eyes, and from them radiated lines caused by frequent smiles. His mouth was broad, his smile one that invited confidence and trust. He smiled at Brunetti and came forward, offering his hand in brotherhood.

  ‘Luciano Benevento?’ Brunetti asked, hands at his side.

  With a soft smile, he corrected Brunetti. ‘Padre Luciana Benevento.’

  ‘I’ve come to speak to you about your new assignment,’ Brunetti said, consciously refusing to address the man by his title.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. What new assignment?’ Benevento shook his head and made no attempt to disguise his confusion.

  Brunetti pulled a long white envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it silently to the other man.

  Instinctively, the priest took it, glanced down, and saw his name written across the front. He was comforted to see that, this time, his title was used. He opened it, glanced up at the silent Brunetti, and pulled out a sheet of paper. Holding it away from him a bit, he read through the paper. When he finished it, he looked at Brunetti and then back down at the paper, and then read it through a second time.

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. His right hand, the one which held the paper, fell to his side.

  ‘I think it should be very clear.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. How can I be transferred? They’re supposed to ask me about that, get my consent, before they do anything like this.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s interested in what you want, not any longer.’

  Benevento could do nothing to hide his confusion. ‘But I’ve been a priest for twenty-three years. Of course, they have to listen to me. They can’t just do this to me, send me away and not even tell me where.’ The priest waved the paper angrily in the air. ‘They don’t even tell me what parish I’m going to go to, not even what province. They don’t give me an idea of where I’m going to be.’ He pulled his arm up and stuck the paper out toward Brunetti. ‘Look at this. All they say is that I’m being transferred. That could be Naples. For heaven’s sake, it could be Sicily.’

  Brunetti, who was familiar with far more than the contents of the letter, didn’t bother to look at it.

  ‘What sort of parish is it going to be?’ Benevento continued. ‘What sort of people will I have? They can’t just assume I’ll go along with this. I’ll call the Patriarch. I’ll complain about this and see that it’s changed. They can’t just send me off to any parish they want, not like that, not after all I’ve done for the Church.’

  ‘It’s not a parish,’ Brunetti said calmly.

  ‘What?’ Benevento asked.

  ‘It’s not a parish,’ Brunetti repeated.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s not a parish?’

  ‘Just what I said. You’re not being assigned to a parish.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ Benevento said with real indignation. ‘Of course I have to be assigned to a parish. I’m a priest. It’s my job to help people.’

  Brunetti’s face was motionless through all of this. His silence provoked Benevento into demanding, ‘Who are you? What do you know about this?’

  ‘I’m someone who lives in your parish,’ Brunetti said. ‘And my daughter is one of the children in your catechism class.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of the children from the middle school,’ Brunetti said, seeing no reason to name his child.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Benevento demanded, his mounting anger audible in his voice.

  ‘It has a great deal to do with it,’ Brunetti said, nodding toward the letter.

  ‘I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,’ Benevento said, then repeated his question, ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m here to deliver the letter,’ Brunetti said calmly, ‘and to tell you where you’re going.’

  ‘Why would the Patriarch use someone like you?’ Benevento asked, coming down with heavy sarcasm on the last word.

  ‘Because he’s been threatened,’ Brunetti explained blandly.

  ‘Threatened?’ Benevento repeated in a quiet voice, looking at Brunetti with a nervousness he tried, badly, to disguise. There was little left of the benevolent priest who had come into the room only minutes before. ‘What can the Patriarch be threatened about?’

  ‘Alida Bontempi, Serafina Reato, and Luana Serra,’ Brunetti said simply, giving him the names of the three girls whose families had complained to the Bishop of Trento.

  Benevento’s head flew back as though Brunetti had slapped him three times
across the face. ‘I don’t know . . .’ he began to say, but then he saw Brunetti’s face and stopped speaking for a moment.

  He smiled a man-of-the-world smile at Brunetti. ‘You believe the lies of hysterical girls like that? Against a priest?’

  Brunetti didn’t bother to answer him.

  Benevento grew angrier. ‘Do you honestly mean to stand there and tell me that you believe the horrible stories those girls invented against me? Do you think that a man who has dedicated his life to the service of God could possibly do the things they said?’ When Brunetti still didn’t answer, Benevento slapped the letter angrily against the side of his leg and turned away from Brunetti. He walked over to the door, opened it, but then slammed it closed and turned back toward Brunetti. ‘Where is it they think they’re going to send me?’

  ‘Asinara,’ said Brunetti.

  ‘What?’ Benevento cried.

  ‘Asinara,’ Brunetti repeated, sure that everyone, even a priest, would know the name of the maximum security prison in the middle of the Thyyhenean Sea.

  ‘But that’s a prison. They can’t send me there. I’m not guilty of anything.’ He took two long steps across the room, as if he hoped to push some sort of concession out of Brunetti, even if only by force of his own anger. Brunetti stopped him with a look. ‘What do they expect me to do there? I’m not a criminal.’

  Brunetti met his eyes at that but said nothing.

  Benevento shouted into the silence that radiated out from the other man. ‘I’m not a criminal. They can’t send me there. They can’t punish me; I’ve never even had a trial. They can’t just send me to prison because of what some girls say, without a trial or a conviction.’

  ‘You haven’t been convicted of anything. You’ve been assigned as chaplain.’

  ‘What? Chaplain?’

  ‘Yes. To care for the souls of sinners.’

  ‘But they’re dangerous men,’ Benevento said in a voice he fought to keep calm.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re men. There are no young girls on Asinara.’

  Benevento looked wildly around the room, seeking some sane ear to listen to what was being done to him. ‘But they can’t do this. I’ll leave. I’ll go to Rome.’ By the last sentence, Benevento was shouting.

  ‘You’re to leave on the first of the month,’ Brunetti said with iron calm. ‘The Patriarchate will provide a launch and then a car that will take you to Civitavecchia and see that you get on the weekly boat to the prison. Before that time, you are not to leave this rectory. If you do, you will be arrested.’

  ‘Arrested?’ Benevento blustered. ‘For what?’

  Brunetti didn’t answer this question. ‘You have two days to get ready.’

  ‘And what if I choose not to go?’ Benevento asked with the tones usually delivered from positions of high moral strength. Brunetti failed to respond, and so he repeated his question, ‘What if I don’t go?’

  ‘Then the parents of those three girls will receive anonymous letters, telling them where you are. And what you’ve been doing.’

  Benevento’s shock was evident, and then his fear, so immediate and palpable that he couldn’t prevent himself from asking, ‘What will they do?’

  ‘If you’re lucky, they’ll contact the police.’

  ‘What do you mean, if I’m lucky?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. If you’re lucky.’ Brunetti allowed a long silence to expand between them and then said, ‘Serafina Reato hanged herself last year. She’d tried for a year to get someone to believe what she said, but no one would. She said that she did it because no one would believe her. They do now.’

  Benevento’s eyes opened wide for a moment, and his mouth contracted into a tight little circle. Both the envelope and the letter fell to the floor, but Benevento didn’t notice.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘You have two days,’ was Brunetti’s answer. He stepped over the two pieces of paper that lay forgotten on the floor and went over toward the door. His hands ached from being kept in tight fists at his sides. He didn’t bother to look back at Benevento when he left. Nor did he slam the door.

  Outside, Brunetti walked away from the rectory and turned into a narrow calle, the first one he saw that would take him all the way down to the Grand Canal. At the end, his progress blocked by the water, he stood and stared across at the buildings opposite. A bit to the right was the palazzo where Lord Byron had lived for a time, and next to it the one where Brunetti’s first girlfriend had lived. Boats passed, taking the day and his thoughts with them.

  He felt no triumph in this cheap victory: if anything, he felt only a thick sadness at the man and his miserable, crippled life. This priest had been stopped, at least for as long as he could be kept on the island by Count Orazio’s power and connections. Brunetti thought of the warning he had been given by the other priest and of the power and connections that lay behind that threat.

  Suddenly, with a splash that sent water up onto Brunetti’s shoes, a pair of black-headed gulls landed just at his feet, fighting over a piece of bread. They squabbled, beak to beak, pulling at the bread, cawing and screaming all the while. Then one of them gobbled it down, and after that the two of them grew quiet and bobbed peacefully on the waters side by side.

  He stayed there for a quarter of an hour, until the stiffness went out of his hands. He put them in the pockets of his jacket and, bidding farewell to the gulls, went back up the calle and towards home.