Unto Us a Son Is Given

by Donna Leon

  Dessert came, then coffee, and then some magnificent apricot schnapps a friend of Lodo in Val Venosta sent him every year. Few people showed any desire to linger after the schnapps. Most gave their thanks and took their leave by eleven.

  Gonzalo had not noticed Brunetti, or at least not acknowledged him, though he had spoken to Paola, it seemed with great affection. Brunetti lingered behind, not wanting to force a meeting, thanking Lodo and his wife until everyone else had left.

  ‘Well?’ Lodo asked as he and his wife accompanied Paola and Brunetti to the door.

  ‘It was a wonderful dinner, Lodo,’ Paola said, thus cutting off the possibility of any conversation regarding Gonzalo, the younger man, or her father. ‘I hadn’t seen Margherita in such a long time,’ she continued, driving a second nail into the coffin of discussion of Gonzalo and his young friend. ‘She really looks wonderful, and she seems so happy, proud of her job.’

  ‘She is that,’ Lodo agreed, thus acknowledging that there would be no embarrassing talk about his client, Paola’s father’s friend. So, discussing Margherita’s professional success, they continued to the door of the apartment, where there was a flurry of kisses and wishes of thanks and goodwill.

  As they turned toward the Accademia Bridge, Brunetti asked, ‘Well?’

  ‘You’re not asking what I thought of the food, are you?’ Paola answered.

  ‘If I were a clever man, I’d say I spent more time paying attention to the bait than the food.’

  ‘If you’re talking about Gonzalo,’ Paola answered as they entered Campo Santo Stefano, ‘I’d say he took the bait a long time ago and is safely and securely hooked and landed.’

  ‘That’s the impression I had,’ Brunetti agreed, ‘but you were sitting closer to him and probably heard more of what went on.’

  ‘I heard a fair bit.’ She stopped and looked at the moon, visible above Palazzo Franchetti. She didn’t call his attention to it in any way, merely stood and observed the disc in the sky. When they had had enough of that, they continued across the campo, towards the new bridge.

  ‘And,’ Brunetti prompted.

  ‘And il Marchese Attilio thinks Quentin Tarantino is a genius.’

  ‘And I’m Galileo Galilei,’ Brunetti said. ‘Did they spend the whole dinner talking about cinema?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. You would have screamed. I almost did.’

  ‘Why? I thought you liked films.’

  ‘I do. I just don’t like having to listen to people talk about them. Most people talk rubbish about film. Worse, it’s pretentious rubbish.’

  Before she could continue, Brunetti asked, ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I think Gonzalo is in love, and I think il Marchese is taking care that he stays that way.’

  ‘Hummm,’ was the best answer Brunetti could come up with.

  ‘He has shark’s eyes,’ Paola said.

  ‘Il Marchese?’

  ‘No. Gonzalo.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Remember when we met and you decided you liked me?’

  ‘You’ve always been given to understatement,’ Brunetti said. ‘It’s because you were educated in England, I think.’

  Ignoring what he said, Paola went on. ‘For a time, you had shark’s eyes. I’ve seen them in men all my life. It happens when they’re overcome by passion and can’t control it.’

  ‘Me?’ Brunetti asked in a peeping voice.

  ‘You. For about a week. And then you began to like me, and then you realized you loved me, and your eyes stopped being shark’s eyes and went back to being your eyes.’

  Brunetti decided not to pursue this and asked, ‘And Gonzalo has shark’s eyes?’

  ‘Or else I’m Galileo Galilei,’ Paola said, and they started to cross the bridge.

  9

  The person who brought him coffee at eight the next morning set the cup and saucer on the table next to him and bent to kiss his left ear. ‘Coffee,’ she said.

  Still not free from sleep, he mumbled, ‘Paola?’

  ‘No,’ she said brightly and slipped into French. ‘It’s Catherine Deneuve, and I’ve left everything behind to come to you, my darling.’ She bent and used both hands to pump the mattress up and down a few times, then switched back to Italian to say, ‘You told me to wake you up at eight because Patta wanted to talk to you.’

  Brunetti turned and hauled himself up against the headboard. He reached for the coffee and drank it in three quick sips. He shook his head. ‘I’ll never forgive him for this.’

  ‘For what?’ she asked, confused.

  ‘That I had Catherine Deneuve in my bedroom but had to tell her I couldn’t stay because I had a meeting with my boss.’

  She smiled and turned towards the door. ‘I told you you’d lost your shark’s eyes.’

  She was gone before he could throw a pillow at her.

  Patta did indeed want to speak to Brunetti, Signorina Elettra informed him, but not until after eleven. This gave Brunetti more than an hour to wait. Back in his office, his mind returned to the events of last night, but then they wandered off to consider adoption as a means to take a family name forward in time. Caesar had done it and given the Roman world his nephew Octavian, who had rebranded himself as Augustus and ruled in relative peace for forty years. But then had quickly come trouble: Tiberius, Caligula and Nero.

  Brunetti was trying to remember the exact succession of the emperors when his phone rang, and Signorina Elettra told him the Vice-Questore was free. Downstairs, he found the door to Patta’s office open, walked silently past Signorina Elettra and entered, saying, ‘Buondì, Vice-Questore.’ He was about to ask in what way he could be helpful that morning but, remembering Vianello’s warning, realized how servile it would make him sound, and so said no more.

  Patta was behind his desk, his silver hair freshly cut, a bit shorter than usual at the sides, as though he had chosen to imitate so many of the young men they arrested these days and thus would soon arrive with his hair shaved to the level of his ears, a long crest running from the front to the back of his head. On a head that noble, atop a face so handsome, it might well work and propel Patta to the cutting edge of fashion.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Commissario. Please have a seat, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you,’ Patta said, giving a toothy smile that set Brunetti’s own teeth on edge.

  ‘Yes, Vice-Questore?’ Brunetti inquired neutrally.

  ‘Actually,’ Patta began, his teeth now hidden behind his lips, perhaps being sharpened for their next appearance. ‘It’s about my … it’s about my wife.’

  ‘Ah,’ was all Brunetti would permit himself. He decided it would be best to seek shelter, so placed a look of mild concern on his face and hid behind that.

  ‘There was a … a disturbance at my home last night,’ Patta began. Brunetti sensed, but did not see, the force it took his superior to remain calm as he spoke.

  Brunetti nodded.

  ‘You’ve heard about it?’ Patta asked, fear mixed with anger. ‘Already?’

  ‘No, Dottore,’ Brunetti said. ‘I merely nodded to show I’d heard what you said.’

  ‘Are you lying to me, Brunetti?’ the old Patta demanded.

  ‘No, Signore. I swear it.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Patta said quickly. ‘There’s no way you could have, I suppose.’ He lapsed into silence and stared at the surface of his desk, perhaps looking for the cue cards that would show him how to tell this story.

  Brunetti, who had met Patta’s wife once or twice but never done more than shake her hand and nod his pleasure at meeting her, said nothing. He remembered a woman taller than Patta, with a small nose and a broad face, who had a general air of eagerness, as if she were waiting to be shown the next thing to enjoy. He had done nothing more than exchange names with her, but he had liked her, not least because of Patta’s devotion to her, the sincerity of which had always pulled him back from the brink of any attempt to dismiss the possibility of Patta’s hum
anity.

  Patta glanced at the small crossed flags of Italy and the European Union planted in the brass penholder on his desk, and as he stared at it, Brunetti saw desolation cross Patta’s face. His first thought was illness, but Patta would not want to see him if that were the case; in matters concerning his family, the Vice-Questore was usually a private person.

  Patta’s eyes rose and met his. ‘You’re Venetian,’ he said and stopped.

  ‘Sì, Signore,’ Brunetti answered.

  ‘So you understand them?’ Patta asked, as though he were speaking of Hottentots or Pygmies.

  ‘Venetians, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Who else were we talking about?’ he said with his more usual tone.

  ‘If you give me a bit more information, sir, I might be able to be of help.’ Brunetti followed this with a smile he was careful to make seem entirely natural.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Patta said in a softer tone. He leaned forward and ran his fingers through his hair but pulled them away in surprise as soon as they touched the short stubble at the sides. He latched his hands together and set them on the desk in front of him where they could not cause him any more trouble.

  ‘We have neighbours,’ Patta said. Brunetti nodded and resisted the impulse to remark that many people did. ‘They’re Venetian.’ This time Brunetti did not remark that, in recent times, many people’s neighbours no longer were. Instead, he nodded again.

  ‘We’ve had trouble with them,’ Patta said, leaving Brunetti no choice but to offer up in sacrifice to the Madonna of Medjugorje his request for her help in maintaining silence in the face of this Occasion of Sin. With her aid, Brunetti refrained from saying he was not surprised and, instead, made a small humming noise that was enough to encourage Patta to add, ‘Recently.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Dottore,’ Brunetti said and surprised himself with the realization that he meant it. Few crosses were heavier to bear than that of bad neighbours. Only incidents of domestic violence were worse to respond to in terms of the aggression and calculated nastiness that the police might encounter.

  Before Brunetti could ask where these people were in relation to Patta’s apartment – directly above or next door were the worst because of the noise – Patta added, ‘They’re below us.’ Bad luck. Brunetti knew because of the water: if it came from above, it was their fault, and no discussion. Burst pipe, forgotten bath, coming initially from the roof: it made no difference to the damage it would do, and water was the worst.

  While Brunetti was considering this, Patta hastened to add, ‘It was never a question of water. There’s never been a leak, not in all these years.’

  ‘Then what is it, sir? If I might ask.’

  ‘Their son insulted my wife,’ Patta said. Then he added, before Brunetti could say anything, ‘More than once.’

  It passed through Brunetti’s mind to ask if he was going to spend the rest of his career taking care of family problems. Into Patta’s continuing silence, he chose to say, ‘I hope the parents did something.’

  Patta laughed, though not with amusement. ‘They did nothing. They told my wife she was inventing it, and their son was an angel.’ The snort of disgust Patta gave told Brunetti how ridiculous he believed the claim to be.

  ‘How long ago was this, Signore?’

  ‘Seven months ago, just after the beginning of the school year.’

  ‘How old is the child?’

  ‘He’s eight.’

  ‘Can you tell me what he said, Signore?’

  Patta looked up, and then away. Brunetti waited for him to answer.

  Finally Patta said, ‘He said she was a filthy whore.’ He watched Brunetti raise his eyebrows in surprise and added, ‘I’m not sure he knows what it means, except that it’s something he shouldn’t say to a woman.’

  Because ‘porca puttana’ was so often said in response to disappointment or surprise, Brunetti asked, ‘Was he speaking directly to your wife when he said it?’

  ‘You mean, was he saying “porca puttana” because he tripped on the steps and not calling my wife “una sporca puttana“?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My wife said she was coming down the stairs and met the boy at the front door. When he saw her, he stopped and looked at her and said, “Tu sei una sporca puttana.” So there was no linguistic confusion, Commissario: he meant to say it to her.’

  Brunetti no longer recalled when he had first understood what a puttana was, but he did know that if either of his parents had found out he’d said it to a woman, any woman, the consequences would have been swift, physical, and unpleasant. Times had changed, so it was no longer unthinkable that a child would also use the familiar ‘tu’ with an adult: in his case, it would have doubled the offence.

  ‘Did your wife speak to the parents?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That evening. She went down to see them before dinner and when the mother answered the door, she told her what her son had said.’

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘She closed the door in her face.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘My wife told me about it when I got home, and I went down and asked to speak to the father. He came to the door – I was standing on the landing – and said his wife had told him what mine had said, and he thought my wife was crazy.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘There was nothing I could do, was there?’ Patta said.

  ‘This was seven months ago?’ Brunetti asked. At Patta’s nod, he continued, ‘What’s happened since then, Signore?’

  ‘We’ve met occasionally on the steps, but we haven’t spoken. The parents, that is. If my wife passed the boy on the steps, and they were alone, he made noises at her, but he never said anything. Then, about two months ago, when my wife came home and had got as far as the first landing, she heard someone running down the steps, so she stopped on the landing to move out of the way of whoever it was. When the boy got to the landing, he switched his schoolbag to his other hand and banged it into my wife’s legs.’ Patta seemed to have finished, but then added, ‘He was gone before she could do anything, not that there was anything she could have done. Not to a child.’

  Taking courage from Patta’s confidences, Brunetti asked, ‘And last night, sir?’

  ‘It was the same: he was coming down the stairs, and when he saw my wife coming up, he stood in front of her and refused to move, saying the stairs were his and he got to say who went up and down them. She had two bags of groceries and she set them down beside her.’ As Patta approached what Brunetti thought might be the crucial moment, he thought of Oedipus and Laius confronting one another at the crossroads: this way trouble comes.

  ‘She said they stared at one another for a long time, and then he jumped down two steps and landed on one of the bags, then kicked everything in it down the stairs.’ Patta’s voice grew so tight that Brunetti was glad his superior had not been a witness to the scene.

  ‘What did your wife do?’

  Patta took a few deep breaths, as if to expel some of his anger. ‘She grabbed him by his arm and started to pull him up the stairs. He kicked at her, she said, so she grabbed him by both arms and shook him until he stopped. And then she walked him up to his apartment and rang the bell.

  ‘When his mother came, my wife told her what the boy had done and told her she was free to go downstairs and see her bags on the stairs.’

  ‘And the other woman?’

  ‘She grabbed the boy and pulled him inside and slammed the door. My wife could hear him screaming for the next half-hour.’ Patta stopped as if that was all he had to tell.

  He picked up a pen and started to draw rectangles on the border of a letter that bore what looked like the letterhead and seal of the Ministry of the Interior.

  ‘After dinner, his father came up and said he knew I was a policeman, and so he had no chance of winning any case he might bring against my wife for having assaulted their son.’ He looked at Brunetti to measure his reaction to this, and in the face of Brunett
i’s failure to give any reaction at all, he added, ‘He said that this was the sort of thing that happened once they let Southerners live in the building.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti let escape his lips.

  ‘Then he said that if my wife continued to cause his wife and son trouble, he’d have no choice but to speak to his father.’

  ‘Who is?’ Brunetti asked.

  Patta grimaced as at a bitter taste and said, ‘Umberto Rullo.’

  A dark fin broke the waters of Brunetti’s memory and disappeared without a sound, leaving a few concentric rings expanding.

  When the circles stopped, Brunetti repeated the name and asked, ‘How is he involved?’

  ‘He’s the managing director of the company where Roberto works. They make fertilizers.’ Another flash and then the memory.

  ‘Your younger son?’

  Patta nodded.

  No stranger to the modern age, Brunetti asked, ‘What sort of contract does he have?’

  ‘Temporary,’ Patta said, adding with a voice as bleak as his expression, ‘He’s had a temporary contract for five years. They renew it twice a year.’ He ran his fingers along the hair on the sides of his head. ‘Five years getting a degree in Economia e Commercio, and he’s got a contract that lasts six months.’

  He looked at Brunetti, a father who had no important connections, not in the North, to use in order to find a better job for his son. ‘If he loses this job, he’ll never find another one. Not up here, at least.’ He raised his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘And there’s no work at home.’ Brunetti knew Patta meant Palermo and not Venice.