Suffer the little Children

by Donna Leon

  'Oh, no, you can't try to hide in there. Not at all. It's time to go to sleep.' He lifted the boy and placed him on his back in the cot. He pulled up the woollen blanket, making sure his son's chest was covered.

  'Sweet dreams, my little prince,' he said, as he had said every night since Alfredo had begun to sleep in the cot. At the door he lingered, but only for a moment, so that the boy would not develop the habit of trying to delay his father's exit from the room. He looked back at the tiny lump and found tears in his eyes. Embarrassed at the thought that Bianca would see them, he wiped them away as he turned from the open door.

  When he reached the kitchen, Bianca had her back to him, just pouring the penne through the strainer. He opened the refrigerator and took a bottle of Moet from the bottom shelf. He put it on the counter, then took a pair of crystal flutes, from a set of twelve that Bianca's sister had given them as a wedding present.

  'Champagne?' she asked, as curious as she was pleased.

  'My son called me Papa’ he said and peeled the golden foil from the cork. Avoiding her sceptical glance, he said, 'Our son. But just this once, because he called me Papa, I want to call him my son for an hour, all right?'

  Seeing his expression, she abandoned the steaming pasta and moved to his side. She picked up the glasses and tilted them towards him. 'Fill both of these, please, so we can toast your son’ Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

  As in the first days of their marriage, the pasta grew cold in the sink, and they drank the champagne in bed. Long after it was gone, they went into the kitchen, naked and famished. Ignoring the dry pasta, they ate the tomato sauce on thick slices of bread, standing at the sink and feeding chunks to one another, then washed it down with half a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Then they went back to the bedroom.

  He lay suspended in the afterglow of the evening and marvelled that, for some months now, he had feared that Bianca had somehow changed in her ... in her what? It was natural - he knew this from his practice - for a mother to be distracted by the arrival of a new child and thus to seem less interested in or responsive to the father. But that night, with the two of them behaving like teenagers gone wild at the discovery of sex, had eliminated any uncertainties.

  And he had heard that word: his son had called him Papa. His heart filled again and he slid himself closer to Bianca, half hoping she would wake and turn to him. But she slept on, and he thought of the morning, and the early train to Padova he had to catch, so he began to will himself towards sleep, ready now to drift off to that gentle land, perhaps to dream of another son, or a daughter, or both.

  He became vaguely conscious of a noise beyond the door to the bedroom, and he forced himself to listen, to hear if it was Alfredo calling or crying. But the ringing noise was gone, and so he followed it, his lips curved in memory of that word.

  As Doctor Gustavo Pedrolli sank into the first and most profound sleep of the night, the sound came again, but he no longer heard it, nor did his wife, sleeping beside him, naked and exhausted and satisfied. Nor did the child in the other room, sunk in happiness and dreaming, perhaps, of the wonderful new game he had learned that night, hidden and safe under the protection of the man he now knew was Papa.

  Time passed, and dreams played in the minds of the sleepers. They saw motion and colour; one of them saw something that resembled a tiger; and all of them slept on.

  The night exploded. The front door of the apartment burst inward and slammed against the wall: the handle gouged a hole in the plaster. A man leaped into the apartment: he wore a ski mask, something that resembled a camouflage uniform, and heavy boots; and he carried a machine-gun. Another masked man, similarly uniformed, followed him. Behind them came another man in a dark uniform but without a mask. Two more men in the same dark uniform remained outside the house.

  The two masked men ran through the living room and down the hall towards the bedrooms. The man without a mask followed more cautiously. One of the masked men opened the first door, and seeing it was a bathroom, left it open and moved down the hallway towards an open door. He saw the cot, the mobiles moving slowly in the draught created by the open door.

  'He's here,' the man called out, making no attempt to keep his voice down.

  The second masked man went to the door of the bedroom opposite. Still holding his machine-gun, he ran in, the other man close behind him. The two people in the bed sat up, startled by the light from the hallway: the third man had switched on the light before going into the room where the baby slept.

  The woman screamed and pulled the covers up over her breasts. Dottor Pedrolli launched himself from the bed so suddenly that the first intruder was taken by surprise. Before he could react, the naked man was on him, one fist crashing down on his head, the other slamming into his nose. The intruder cried out in pain and went down as Pedrolli screamed to his wife, 'Call the police, call the police!'

  The second masked figure raised his gun and pointed it at Pedrolli. He said something, but the mask over his mouth distorted the words, and no one in the room could understand them. Pedrolli was beyond hearing him, anyway, and came at him, hands raised to attack. Instinctively, the masked man reacted. Raising the butt of his gun towards the head of the approaching figure, he caught him above the left ear.

  The woman screamed, and from the other room the baby sent up an answering wail, that high keening noise of infant panic. She pushed back the covers and, driven by instinct and no longer conscious of her nakedness, ran towards the door.

  She stopped abruptly when the man without a mask stepped into the doorway, blocking her escape. She raised her arms to cover her breasts in a gesture she was not conscious of making. Seeing the tableau in the room, he moved quickly to the side of the man with the rifle that pointed at the naked man who lay motionless at his feet. 'You fool,' he said and grabbed at the thick material of the other's jacket. He pulled the man around in a semicircle and pushed him stumbling away. He turned back towards the woman and raised his hands, palms towards her. 'The baby's all right, Signora. Nothing will happen to him.'

  She stood, frozen in panic, unable to scream.

  The tension was broken by the masked man on the floor, who moaned and then struggled, as if drunkenly, to his feet. He put one gloved hand over his nose, and when he pulled it away he seemed shocked by the sight of his own blood. 'He broke my nose,' he said in a muffled voice, then pulled his mask over his face and let it fall to the floor. Blood continued to drip from his nose on to the front of his jacket. As he turned towards the man who appeared to be in charge, the woman saw the single word spelled out in iridescent letters on the back of his padded jacket.

  '"Carabinieri?"' she asked, her voice, barely audible over the continued screams of the baby.

  ‘Yes, Signora. Carabinieri’ said the man who had spoken to her. ‘Didn't you know we'd come, Signora?' he asked, something close to sympathy in his voice.

  3

  Guido Brunetti lay just on the edge of the sleep of the just, curled round the back of his wife. He was in that cloudy space between sleeping and waking, reluctant to let go of the happiness of the day. His son had casually mentioned at dinner how stupid one of his classmates was to fool around with drugs and had failed to see the look of relief that passed between his parents. His daughter had apologized to her mother for an angry remark made the previous day, and the words 'Mohammad' and 'mountain' sounded just at the edge of Brunetti's consciousness. And his wife, his sweet wife of more than twenty years, had surprised him with an outburst of amorous need that had inflamed him as though those two decades had never passed.

  He drifted, full of contentment and greedy to run each of the events through his mind again. Unsolicited repentance from a teenager: should he alert the press? What caused him to marvel even more was Paola's assurance that this was not an attempt on Chiara's part to achieve some quid pro quo in return for the seemly expression of sentiments proper to her age and station. Surely, Chiara was smart enough to realize how effective a ploy this w
ould be, but Brunetti chose to believe his wife when she said that Chiara was fundamentally too honest to do that.

  Was this the greatest delusion, he wondered, our belief in the honesty of our children? The question, unanswered, slipped away from him, and he drifted into sleep.

  The phone rang.

  It rang five times before Brunetti, in the thick voice of the drugged or mugged, answered it. 'SI?' he muttered, his mind flashing down the hall but instantly comforted by the memory of having wished both of his children goodnight as they went to bed.

  'It's Vianello,' the familiar voice said. 'I'm at the hospital. We've got a mess.'

  Brunetti sat up and turned on the light. The urgency in Vianello's voice, as much as the message, told him he would have no choice but to join the Inspector at the hospital. 'What sort of mess?'

  'There's a doctor here, one of the paediatricians. He's in the emergency room, and the doctors are talking about possible brain damage’ This made no sense to Brunetti, regardless of his fuddled state, but he knew Vianello would get to it quickly, so he said nothing.

  'He was attacked in his home,' the Inspector continued. Then, after a long pause, he added, 'By the police’

  'By us?' Brunetti asked, astonished.

  'No, the Carabinieri. They broke in and tried to arrest him. The captain who was in charge says he attacked one of them,' Vianello said. Brunetti's eyes narrowed as the Inspector added, 'But he would say that, wouldn't he?'

  'How many of them were there?' Brunetti asked.

  'Five,' Vianello answered. Three in the house and two outside as backup.'

  Brunetti got to his feet. I'll be there in twenty minutes.' Then he asked, 'Do you know why they were there?'

  Vianello hesitated but then answered, 'They went to take his son. He's eighteen months old. They say he adopted the child illegally’

  Twenty minutes’ Brunetti repeated and put the phone down.

  It was only as he was letting himself out of the house that he bothered to check the time. Two-fifteen. He had thought to put on a jacket and was glad of it now, in the first chill of autumn. At the end of the calle he turned right and headed towards Rialto. He probably should have asked for a launch, but he never knew how long one would take, while he was sure to the minute how long it would take to walk.

  He ignored the city around him. Five men to take an eighteen-month-old baby. Presumably, especially if the man was in the hospital with brain damage, they had not rung the doorbell and politely asked if they could come in. Brunetti himself had taken part in too many early morning raids to have any illusions about the panic they caused. He had seen hardened criminals whose bowels had loosened at the sound and sight of armed men bursting in upon them: imagine the reaction of a doctor, illegally adopted baby or no. And the Carabinieri - Brunetti had encountered too many of them who loved bursting in and imposing their sudden, terrifying authority, as if Mussolini were still in power and no one to say them nay.

  At the top of the Rialto, he was too preoccupied with these thoughts to think of looking to either side but hurried down the bridge and into Calle de la Bissa. Why should they need five men and how would they get there? Surely they'd need a boat, and by whose authority were they carrying out an action like this in the city? Who had been informed, and if official notice had been given, why had nothing been said to him about it?

  The portiere seemed to be asleep behind the window of his office: certainly he did not look up as Brunetti entered the hospital. Blind to the magnificence of the entrance hall though aware of the sudden drop in temperature, Brunetti worked his way right and left and then left again until he arrived at the automatic doors of the emergency room. They slid aside to let him enter. Inside the second set of doors, he pulled out his warrant card and approached the white-jacketed attendant behind the glass partition.

  The man, fat and jolly-faced and far more cheerful than either the time or the circumstances warranted, glanced at Brunetti's card, smiled at him and said, 'Down to the left, Signore. Second door on the right. He's in there.'

  Brunetti thanked him and followed the directions. At the door, he knocked once and went in. Though Brunetti did not recognize the man in battle fatigues who lay on the examining table, he recognized the uniform of the man standing at the window. A woman in a white lab coat sat beside the man on the table, smoothing a strip of plastic tape across his nose. As Brunetti watched, she cut a second strip and placed it parallel to the other. They anchored a thick cotton bandage to the man's nose; both nostrils were plugged with cotton. Brunetti noticed that there were already dark circles under his eyes.

  The second man leaned comfortably against the wall, arms and legs crossed, observing. He wore the three stars of a captain and a pair of high black leather boots more appropriate for riding dressage than a Ducati.

  'Good morning, Dottoressa,' Brunetti said when the woman looked up. I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti, and I'd be very grateful if you could tell me what's going on.'

  Brunetti expected the Captain to interrupt him here, but was both surprised and disappointed by the man's continued silence. The doctor turned back to her patient, pressing the ends of the tape a few times until they were secure on the man's face. 'Keep this in place for at least two days. The cartilage has been pushed to one side, but it should reattach itself without any trouble. Just be careful with it. Take the cotton out tonight before you go to bed. If the bandage comes loose, or if it starts to bleed again, see a doctor or come back in here. All right?'

  'Si,' the man agreed with rather more sibilance than might have been heard in his normal voice.

  The doctor extended a hand, and the man took it. She held him steady as he lowered his feet to the ground and stood, his other hand propped on the examining table. He needed a moment to steady himself. The doctor crouched down and looked upwards, at the cotton wadding in the man's nose, but evidently it did not trouble her, so she stood up and stepped back. 'Even if nothing happens, come back in three days, all right, and I'll take another look.' The man gave a very cautious nod, and looked as if he wanted to say something, but she cut him off and added, 'And don't worry. It should be fine.'

  The man glanced at the Captain, then turned back to the doctor. ‘I’m from Verona, Dottoressa’ he said in a muffled voice.

  'In that case’ she said briskly ’see your own doctor after three days or if it starts to bleed again. All right?'

  He nodded and then turned to the Captain. 'And work, sir?'

  I don't think you'd be much use to anyone with that’ the Captain said, pointing at the bandage, then added, ‘I’ll call your sergeant and explain.' He turned to the doctor and said, 'If you'd give him some sort of letter, Dottoressa, he can go on sick leave for a few days.'

  Something, perhaps nothing more than a sense of theatre or the habit of suspicion, made Brunetti wonder if the Captain would have been so gracious had he not been there as witness and if he had not introduced himself as a police officer. The doctor walked to the desk and pulled a pad towards her. She wrote a few lines, tore off the paper, and handed it to the injured man, who thanked her, then saluted the Captain and left the room.

  'I was told that another man came in with them, Dottoressa’ Brunetti said. 'Could you tell me where he is?'

  She was young, he noticed now, far younger than a doctor had any right to be. She was not beautiful, but she had a pleasant face, the sort that would wear well through life, becoming more attractive as she grew older.

  'He's a colleague of mine, the assistant chief of pediatria,' she began, emphasizing the title as though offering it as sufficient proof that the Carabinieri had no business being involved with him. I didn't like the look of his injuries' - this with a glance towards the Captain - 'so I sent him up to neurologia and called the assistant primario at home.' Brunetti was aware that she had the Captain's attention as well as his own. 'His pupils wouldn't dilate, and he. had trouble placing his left foot, so I thought someone from neurologia should take a look at him.'

 
At this, the Captain interrupted from his place against the wall. 'Couldn't it have waited until later, Dottoressa? There's no need to get a doctor out of bed because a man's hit his head, is there?'

  She turned her attention to the Captain, and the look she gave him made Brunetti prepare for a barrage. Instead, she said in an entirely neutral voice, ‘I thought it wiser, Captain, as he seems to have hit his head against the butt of a rifle.'

  So much for you. Captain, Brunetti thought. He caught the look the officer gave her in response and was surprised to see that the young man actually looked embarrassed.

  'He said that, Dottoressa?' the Captain asked.

  'No. He didn't say anything. Your man did. I asked what had happened to his nose, and he told me.' Her voice remained neutral.

  The Captain nodded and pushed himself away from the wall. He approached Brunetti and put out his hand. 'Marvilli,' he said as they shook hands. Then he turned to the doctor and said, Tor what it's worth, Dottoressa, he's not my man. As he told you, he's from the command in Verona. All four of them are.' When neither Brunetti nor the doctor acknowledged this remark, the Captain revealed his youth and his uncertainty by explaining, 'The officer who was supposed to come with them had to replace someone in Milano, so they assigned me to the operation because I'm stationed here.'

  'I see,' the doctor said. Brunetti, who had no idea of the extent - even the nature - of the operation, thought it wisest to remain silent.

  Marvilli seemed to have run out of things to say, so after a pause, Brunetti said, 'I'd like to see this man, if I may, Dottoressa. The one in neurologia.'

  'Do you know where it is?'

  'Next to dermatologiaT Brunetti asked.

  'Yes.'

  "Then I see no reason why you can't go up,' she said.