Through a glass, darkly cgb-15

by Donna Leon

  The room was like every interrogation room Brunetti had ever known: the floor might have been washed that morning—it might have been washed ten minutes ago—but grit crunched underfoot, and two plastic coffee cups lay on the floor beside the wastepaper basket. It smelled of smoke and unwashed clothing and defeat. Entering it, Brunetti wanted to confess to something, anything, if only it would get him out of there quickly.

  After about ten minutes Zedda came back, leading a man taller than himself yet at least ten pounds lighter. Brunetti often noticed that people who were arrested or held overnight in police custody quickly came to shrink inside their clothing: such was the case here. The bottoms of the man's trousers touched the ground, and his shirt bunched up and overflowed his buttoned jacket. He had apparently not been able to shave that morning, and his hair, thick and dark, stuck up on one side. His ears jutted out and gave him an ungainly look that went with the outsize clothing. He looked at Brunetti without expression, but on seeing Vianello he smiled with relief and pleasure, and when his face softened Brunetti saw that he was younger than he had first seemed, perhaps in his mid-thirties.

  'Assunta found you?' the man asked, embracing Vianello and clapping him on the back.

  The Inspector seemed surprised at the warmth of the greeting but returned Ribetti's embrace and said, 'Yes, she called me before I left for work and asked if there was anything I could do.' He took a step back and turned to Brunetti. "This is my commander, Commissario Brunetti. He offered to come with me.'

  Ribetti put out his hand and shook Brunetti's. 'Thank you for coming, Commissario.' He looked at Vianello, at Brunetti, then back to Vianello. 'I didn't want to . . .' He left the sentence unfinished. 'That is, I didn't want to cause you so much trouble, Lorenzo.' And to Brunetti, 'Or you, Commissario.'

  Vianello walked over to the table, saying, 'It's no trouble, Marco. It's what we do all the time, anyway: talk to people.' He pulled out two of the chairs on one side of the table and then the one at the head, which he held for Ribetti.

  When they were all seated, Vianello turned to Brunetti, as if handing over to him. 'Tell us what happened,' Brunetti said.

  'Everything?' Ribetti asked.

  'Everything,' Brunetti answered.

  'We've been out there for three days,' Ribetti began, looking at the two men to see if they knew about the protest. When both nodded in acknowledgement, he said, 'Yesterday there were about ten of us. With placards. We've been trying to convince the workers that what they're doing is bad for all of us.'

  Brunetti had few illusions as to how willing workers would be to give up their jobs when told that what they were doing was bad for countless people they didn't know, but he nodded again.

  Ribetti folded his hands on the table and looked at his fingers.

  'What time did you get there?' Brunetti asked.

  'It was in the afternoon, about three-thirty,' he answered, looking at Brunetti. 'Most of us on the committee have jobs, so we can go out only after lunch. The workers come back at four, and we like them to see us, maybe even listen to us or talk to us, when they go in.' A look of great perplexity came over his face, reminding Brunetti of his son, as Ribetti said, 'If we can make them understand what the factory is doing, not only to them, but to everyone, then maybe .. .'

  Again, Brunetti kept his thoughts to himself. It was Vianello who broke the silence by asking, 'Does it do any good, talking to them?'

  Ribetti answered this with a smile. 'Who knows? If they're alone, sometimes they listen. If there's more than one of them, though, they just walk past us, or sometimes they say things.'

  'What sort of things?'

  He looked at the two policemen, then at his hands. 'Oh, they tell us they aren't interested, they have to work, they have families’ Ribetti answered, then added, 'or they get abusive.'

  'But no violence?' Vianello asked.

  Ribetti looked at him and shook his head. 'No, nothing. We've all been trained not to react, not to argue with them, never to do anything that could provoke them.' He continued to look at Vianello, as if to convince him of the truth of this by the sincerity of his expression. 'We're there to help them’ he said, and Brunetti believed he meant it.

  'But this time?' Brunetti asked.

  Ribetti shook his head a few times. 'I have no idea what happened. Some people came up to us—I don't know where they came from or whether they were with us or were workers— they started to shout, and then the workers did, too. Then someone pushed me and I dropped the placard I was carrying, and after I picked it up, it looked like everyone had suddenly gone crazy. People were shoving and pushing one another, then I heard the police sirens, and then I was on the ground again. Two men pulled me up and put me in the back of a van, and they brought us here. It wasn't until almost midnight that a woman in uniform came into the cell and said I could call someone.' He hurried through this summary, his voice sounding as confused as the events he described.

  He turned back and forth between Brunetti and Vianello, then said to the latter, ‘I called Assunta and told her where I was, what had happened, and then I thought of you. And I asked her to see if she could find you and tell you what had happened.' His voice changed as he asked, 'She didn't call you then, did she?' he asked, forgetting that Vianello had already told him.

  Vianello smiled. 'No, not until this morning.'

  Brunetti noticed that Ribetti seemed relieved to hear this.

  'But you didn't have to come all the way out here for me’ Ribetti said, using the plural. 'Really, Lorenzo: I don't know what I was thinking of when I asked her to call you. I guess I panicked. I thought you could make a phone call to someone here or something, and everything would be all right.' He raised a hand in Vianello's direction and said, 'Really, it never occurred to me that you'd have to come out here.' Then, to Brunetti, 'Or that you'd have to come, Commissario.' He looked at his hands again. 'I didn't know what to do.'

  'Have you ever been arrested before, Signor Ribetti?' Brunetti asked.

  Ribetti looked at him with an astonishment he could not disguise: Brunetti might as well have slapped him. 'Of course not,' he said.

  Vianello interrupted to ask, 'Do you know if any of the others have ever been arrested?'

  'No, never,' Ribetti said, voice rising with the force of his insistence. 'I told you: we're trained not to cause trouble.'

  'Isn't a protest like yours a form of trouble?' Brunetti asked.

  Ribetti paused, as if he were playing the question back in his mind to check for sarcasm. Apparently finding none, he said, 'Of course it is. But it's non-violent, and all we're trying to do is make the workers understand how dangerous what they do is. Not only for us, but for themselves even more.'

  Brunetti noticed that Vianello accepted this, so he asked, 'What dangers, Signor Ribetti?'

  Ribetti looked at Brunetti as though he had just asked the sum of two plus two, but he wiped the expression away and said, 'The solvents and chemicals they work with, more than anything else. At least at the paint factory. They spill them and splash them on themselves and breathe them in all day. And that's not even to mention all the waste they have to get rid of. Somewhere.'

  Brunetti, who had been hearing this kind of thing from Vianello for some time, avoided the Inspector's glance. He asked, 'And do you think your protests will change things, Signor Ribetti?'

  Ribetti threw his open hands in the air. 'God knows. But at least it's something, some little protest. And maybe other people will see that it's possible to protest. If we don't,' he said, his voice mournful and filled with conviction, 'they'll kill us all'

  Precisely because he had had this kind of conversation with Vianello many times, Brunetti did not have to ask Ribetti who 'they' were. Brunetti realized how much he too had come to believe, how much he had been converted, in recent years, and not only because of Vianello's ecological conscience. He increasingly noticed articles about global warming, about the ecomafia and their unbridled dumping of toxic waste all over the South; he h
ad even come to believe that there was a connection between the murder of a RAI television journalist in Somalia some years before and the dumping of toxic waste in that poor afflicted country. What surprised him was that there were people who could still believe that protesting against such things, in their small way, would make some difference. And, he confessed to himself, he did not like to admit that it surprised him.

  'But to more practical matters,' Brunetti said abruptly. 'If you've never had any trouble with the police before, then it might be possible for us to do something.' He looked at Vianello. If you stay here, I'll go and talk to Zedda and have a look at the report. If no one's been hurt and if no charges have been brought, then I see no reason why Signor Ribetti has to remain in custody.'

  Ribetti cast him a glance of mingled fear and relief. 'Thank you, Commissario,' he said, and then quickly added, 'Even if you can't do anything or if nothing happens, still, thank you.'

  Brunetti stood up. He went to the door and was glad to find it unlocked. Out in the corridor, he asked for Zedda, whom he found in his office, an office only a quarter the size of his own, with one window that looked out over a parking lot.

  Even before Brunetti could ask, Zedda said, 'Take him home, Brunetti. Nothing's going to come of this. No one got hurt, no one has made a denuncia, and we certainly don't want any trouble with them. They're a pain in the ass, but they're harmless. So just pack up your friend and take him home.'

  A younger Brunetti might have thought it necessary to make clear that Ribetti was Vianello's friend and not his, but after so many years working with the Inspector, Brunetti could no longer make this distinction, so he thanked Zedda and asked if there were any forms to be signed. Zedda waved him away, saying that it had been good to see Brunetti again, and came around his desk to shake hands.

  Brunetti returned to the interrogation room, told Ribetti that he was free to go and could come with them if he chose, then led the others out to the waiting police car.

  3

  The three of them emerged from the main entrance of the Mestre Questura and started down the steps. Vianello put an arm around Ribetti's shoulder and said, 'Come on, Marco, the least we can do is give you a ride back to Piazzale Roma.' Ribetti smiled and thanked him. He wiped a hand over his eyes and drew it down one side of his face, and Brunetti could almost feel it graze across his unshaven cheek. As they continued down the steps towards the waiting car, a taxi pulled up and a short, squat man with white hair got out. He leaned in to hand money to the driver and turned to look up at the building. And saw them.

  He gave a savage shove to the door of the taxi, slamming it shut behind him. 'You stupid bastard!' he shouted, starting across the pavement. The taxi drove off. The old man stopped, one hand raised, waving it at them. 'You stupid bastard’ he shouted again and started up the steps towards them. Brunetti and the others stopped halfway down, frozen with astonishment.

  The man's face was distorted with anger and livid with years of drink. So short he would not reach Brunetti's shoulder, he was almost twice as broad, with a thick torso that was moving downward as muscle turned to paunch. 'You and your animals and your trees and your nature, nature, nature. Go out there and cause trouble and get arrested and get your name in the paper. Stupid bastard. You never had any sense. Now those bastards at the Gazzettino are calling me.'

  Brunetti placed himself between the old man and Ribetti. 'I'm afraid there's been some misunderstanding, Signore. Signor Ribetti has not been arrested. Quite the contrary: he's here to help the police with their inquiries.' Brunetti had no idea why he lied. There would be no investigation, so there was no way Ribetti could help with it, but the old man needed to be stopped, and usually people of his age were most easily stopped by mention of the forces of order.

  'And who the hell do you think you are?' the old man demanded, tilting his head back to stare up at Brunetti. Without waiting for an answer, he tried to step around Brunetti, who moved to the left and then to the right to stand in his way.

  The old man stood still and raised a finger to the height of his own shoulder and poked Brunetti in the chest, saying, 'Look, you bastard, get out of my way. I don't want any interference from strangers.' He took a half-step to the left, but Brunetti blocked him again. 'I said get out of my way!' the old man shouted, this time putting his hand on Brunetti's arm. It could not be said that the old man grabbed Brunetti's arm, nor that he pulled at it, but it was certainly not the casual contact of a man trying to get his friend's attention to make a point.

  Vianello came down two steps and stood to the old man's left. 'I think you'd better take your hand off the Commissario, Signore.'

  The old man, however, had been carried beyond hearing by his fury. He tore his hand from Brunetti's arm and pointed at Vianello. 'And don't you think you can get in my way, either, you bastard.' His face had grown puce, and Brunetti wondered if he would have some sort of seizure: he had seldom seen a man so easily catapult himself into rage. Sweat stood on the old man's forehead, and Brunetti saw his hands tremble. Spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes, small and dark, appeared to have grown even smaller.

  From behind him, Brunetti heard Ribetti say, 'Please, Commissario; he won't cause any trouble.'

  Vianello could not hide his surprise, and Brunetti's was apparent to the old man. 'That's right, Signor Commissario whoever you are: I won't cause any trouble. He's the one who causes trouble. Stupid bastard.' He turned his glance from Brunetti to Ribetti, who now stood to Brunetti's left. 'He knows me because he married that fool, my daughter. Went right where he knew the money was and married her. And then filled her with his shitty ideas.' The old man made as if to spit at Ribetti but changed his mind. 'And gets himself arrested’ he added, looking at Brunetti to make it clear that he did not believe what he had been told.

  Ribetti caught Brunetti's attention by placing his hand on his arm. 'Thank you, Commissario’ he said, and then to Vianello, 'And you, too, Lorenzo.' Ignoring the old man completely, he moved off to the left and started down the steps. When he reached the sidewalk, Brunetti saw him look at the parked police car, but he continued past it, walked to the next corner, and disappeared around it.

  'Coward,' the old man shouted after him. 'You're brave enough when you try to save your goddamn animals or your goddamn trees. But when you have to face a real man . ..' Suddenly the old man ran out of abuse. He looked at Vianello and Brunetti as if he wanted to commit their faces to memory, then pushed past them and went up the steps and into the Questura.

  'Well?' Brunetti asked.

  'I'll tell you about it on the way back’ Vianello said.

  The story that Vianello told Brunetti on the way back to Venice was one he had followed during the six months that a former classmate of his had worked as a maestro in the glass factory of Giovanni De Cal, the old man on the steps, before quitting and moving to a different fornace. It began as a typical story of romance and marriage. She dropped a bag full of oranges at Rialto, and a stranger turned around from buying shrimp to chase the oranges and try to collect them for her. She laughed and thanked him, offered him a coffee for his help, and they talked for an hour over the coffee. He walked her to her boat, took her telefonino number, subsequently called and asked her if she wanted to see a film, and four months later they were living together. Her father, Giovanni De Cal, objected, insisted the young man was a fortune hunter. No longer young, never very pretty, the only job Assunta had ever had was in her father's factory . . . who'd want a woman like that if not for her money? Behind this was the less publicly expressed question of who would look after him if she married and left him, a widower, alone in a ten-room house, too busy running his business to be able to take care of it himself. She married him. Worse was in store when the young man's principles and politics, his concern for the environment and suspicion of the current government, came into conflict with his father-in-law's philosophy: it's a dog-eat-dog world, and workers are meant to work, not to lie around collecting mone
y from their employers for doing nothing; growth and progress are always good, and more is better.

  Even worse, from the old man's point of view, were the young man's education and profession. Not only was he a university graduate and thus one of those useless 'dottori' who had studied everything and yet knew nothing; he compounded the fault by working as an engineer for the French company that had won the contract to build garbage dumps in the Veneto, for which he conducted site analyses of location, proximity to rivers and ground water, and soil composition. He wrote reports that obstructed the building of garbage dumps, wrote further reports that made their construction more expensive, and all paid for by money taken from the pockets of people like factory owners, who paid taxes so that the lazy and weak could suck off the public tit and engineers could force cities to spend money just so that some fish and animals wouldn't get dirty or sick.

  Ribetti and his wife, Assunta De Cal, lived in a house on Murano that had been left to her by her mother. Caught between father and husband, she tried to keep both peace and house: because she worked in her father's factory all day, neither task was easy. De Cal, as Brunetti and Vianello had observed, was a choleric man, the owner of a glass factory on Murano that had been in his family for six generations.

  Vianello paused at this point in the story and said, 'You know, hearing myself tell you all this, I'm not sure why I know this much about them. It's not as if Pietro told me all this while he was working there. I mean, even though Marco and I went to school together, we lost touch until about three years ago, so it doesn't make any sense that I know all this. It's not like we're close friends or anything, and he's never talked about the old man.' Vianello was sitting in the back seat of the car taking them across the Ponte della Liberta, so as he spoke, he saw Brunetti's head framed by the smokestacks of Marghera.

  It occurred to Brunetti that Vianello might still, after all this time, not realize the full extent of his ability to draw people into conversation and then into confidence with him. Perhaps it was a natural gift, like perfect pitch or the ability to dance, and those who had it were incapable of seeing it as in any way unusual.