Suffer the little Children

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti's profession had made him a master of pauses: he could distinguish them the way a concert-master could distinguish the tones of the various strings. There was the absolute, almost belligerent pause, after which nothing would come unless in response to questions or threats. There was the attentive pause, after which the speaker measured the effect on the listener of what had just been said. And there was the exhausted pause, after which the speaker needed to be left undisturbed until emotional control returned.

  Judging that he was listening to the third, Brunetti remained silent, certain that she would eventually continue. A sound came down the corridor: a moan or the cry of a sleeping person. When it stopped, the silence seemed to expand to fill its place.

  Brunetti glanced at her then and nodded, a gesture that could be read as agreement or as encouragement to continue. She apparently took it as both and went on, 'After we had the results, we had no choice but to resign ourselves. To not having a baby. But then Gustavo - it must have been a few months after we went to the clinic - he said that he was examining the possibility of private adoption.'

  It sounded to Brunetti as if she were repeating a statement she had prepared in advance. ‘I see, he said neutrally. 'What sort of possibility?'

  She shook her head and said, her voice barely above a whisper, 'He didn't say.'

  Though Brunetti doubted this, he gave no indication and merely asked, 'Did he mention the clinic?'

  She gave him a puzzled glance, and Brunetti explained. The clinic where you had the tests.'

  She shook her head. 'No, he never mentioned the clinic, only that there was a possibility that we could have a baby.'

  'Signora,' Brunetti said, 'I can't force you to tell me these things.' In a certain sense this was true, but sooner or later someone would have the authority to force her to do so.

  She must have realized this, for she continued, 'He didn't say from where, said he didn't want me to get my hopes up, but that it was something he thought he could arrange. I assumed it was because of his work or because of people he knew.' She looked through the window, then at Brunetti. 'If I have to tell the truth, I suppose I didn't want to know. He said that everything would be in regola and that it would be legal. He said he had to claim that the child was his, but it wouldn't be: he told me that.'

  Had he been questioning a suspect, Brunetti would have asked, voice pumped full of scepticism, 'And you believed him?' Instead, in the voice of concerned friendship, he asked, 'But he didn't tell you how this would happen, Signora?' He allowed three beats to pass and added, 'Or did you think to ask him?'

  She shook the question away. 'No. I think I didn't want to know. I just wanted it to happen. I wanted a baby.'

  Brunetti gave her a moment to recover from what she had said, then asked, 'Did he tell you anything about the woman?'

  'Woman?' she asked, genuinely confused.

  'Whose baby it was.'

  She hesitated but then tightened her lips. 'No. Nothing.' Brunetti had the strange sensation that she had aged during this conversation, that the lines formerly confined to her neck had migrated up to the sides of her mouth and eyes.

  'I see,' Brunetti said. 'And you never learned any more?' Surely, thought Brunetti, the man must have told her something; she must have wanted to know.

  He saw that her eyes in fact were light grey and not green. 'No,' she said, lowering her head. 'I never discussed it with Gustavo: I didn't want to. He thought - Gustavo, that is - well, I suppose he thought it would upset me to know. He told me he wanted me to think from the very beginning that the baby was ours, and...' She stopped herself, and Brunetti had the feeling that she had forced herself not to add some vital final phrase.

  'Of course,' Brunetti muttered when he realized she was not going to end the sentence. He had no idea how much more he could induce her to tell him, and he did not want to continue to question her if, by displaying curiosity rather than concern, he weakened the confidence she appeared to have developed in him.

  Sandra opened the door to the room down the corridor and gestured to Signora Marcolini.

  'Your husband's very agitated, Signora. Perhaps you could come and speak to him.' Her concern was evident, and Pedrolli's wife responded to it instantly by joining her at the door, then closing it after them.

  Assuming that she would be some time in the room with her husband, Brunetti decided to try to find Dottor Damasco and ask if there had been any change in Pedrolli's condition. He knew the way to neurologia, and when he got there he started down the corridor toward where he knew the doctors had their offices.

  He found the door, but when he knocked, a male nurse who was passing told him that the doctor was just finishing his rounds and usually came back to his office after that. When he added that this should be within the next ten minutes or so, Brunetti said he would wait. When the nurse was gone, he sat in one of the now-familiar, and familiarly uncomfortable, orange chairs. Without anything to read, Brunetti leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, the better to consider what he might ask Dottor Damasco.

  'Signore? Signore?' was the next thing he heard. He opened his eyes and saw the male nurse. 'Are you all right, Signore?' the young man asked.

  'Yes, yes,' Brunetti said, pushing himself to his feet. It all came back, and he asked, 'Is the doctor free now?'

  The nurse gave a nervous smile. 'I'm sorry, Signore, but he's gone. He went home as soon as he finished his rounds. I didn't know he'd gone, and when someone mentioned it, I came down here to tell you. I'm sorry,' he repeated, sounding as if he were responsible for Dottor Damasco's disappearance.

  Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that more than half an hour had passed. 'It's all right,' he said, suddenly aware of just how tired he was. He wished that, like Dottor Damasco, he could just finish his rounds and go home.

  Instead, making a pretence of being fully awake, he thanked the young man and started back towards the reception desk. Passing the nurses' station, he approached the glass doors that led to the ward. He was stunned to see, halfway down the corridor, a few paces from the closed door of Pedrolli's room, the unmistakable back of his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. Brunetti recognized the broad shoulders in the cashmere overcoat and the thick head of silver hair. What he did not recognize was the attentive, posture of the Vice-Questore, who was leaning towards a man, all of whom save an outline was blocked from view by Patta's body. Patta raised his right hand and patted at the air between them in a conciliatory manner, then lowered if to his side and moved back a step as if to allow more room for the man's response.

  Beta dog deferring to alpha dog, was Brunetti's instant thought, and he retreated until he was partly hidden behind the chest-high counter of the nurses' station. Should Patta start to turn towards him, he would have time to back away and out of sight while he decided if he wanted his superior to discover him; he could take a few steps down the corridor, turn, then give vent to the very real surprise he felt at seeing his superior here at this hour.

  The other man, most of his considerable bulk still obscured by Patta's body, raised both hands in what could be exasperation or surprise, then jabbed an angry finger repeatedly towards the closed door of Pedrolli's room. In response, Patta's head shook from side to side, then nodded up and down, much in the manner of a toy dog in the back of a car that had just hit a rough patch.

  Suddenly the other man wheeled away from Patta and started down the corridor away from him. All Brunetti saw before he ducked behind the counter was the man's back: neck almost as thick as his head, short buzz-cut white hair, a body almost as wide as it was tall. When Brunetti looked again, he saw that Patta had made no motion to follow the man. As Brunetti watched, the man reached the doors at the end of the corridor and shoved them open, slamming the right one back against the wall with a crack that reverberated down the corridor.

  Brunetti's impulse was to approach Patta and feign surprise, but good sense propelled him backwards, down a corridor, then through ano
ther set of doors. He waited there a full five minutes, and when he returned to neurologia, there was no sign of Patta.

  9

  Brunetti went back to the corridor outside Pedrolli's room, waiting for Signora Marcolini to emerge so that he could slip back into his role of sympathetic listener. He reached into his jacket pocket for his telefbnino but discovered that he had left it at home. He did not want to miss Signora Marcolini when she emerged, but he did want to call Paola and tell her he would not be home for lunch and had no idea when he would be.

  He sat in the plastic chair and stared into space, careful to keep his head forward and away from the temptation of the wall behind him. After less than a minute, he went to the end of the corridor and read the list of instructions for evacuation in case of fire, then the list of doctors working on the ward. Gina came through the door on the other side of the desk.

  'Signora Gina, excuse me, but could I use the phone?'

  She gave him a very small smile and said, 'Dial nine first.' He picked up the phone behind the nurses' desk and dialled his home number.

  'Si?' he heard Paola answer.

  'Still too tired to talk?' he couldn't resist asking.

  'Of course not,' she answered. Then, 'Where are you?'

  'At the hospital.' Trouble?'

  'The Carabinieri over-reacted making an arrest, it seems, and the man is here. He's a doctor, so at least he's assured of good care.'

  'The Carabinieri attacked a doctor?' she said, incapable of keeping the shock from her voice.

  ‘I didn't say they attacked him, Paola,' he said, though what she said was true enough. ‘I said they over-reacted.'

  'And what does that mean, that they drove their boats too fast taking him to the hospital? Or made too much noise and disturbed the neighbours when they were kicking in his door?'

  Though Brunetti tended to share Paola's scepticism about the overall competence of the Carabinieri, he did not, in his caffeine-and-sugar-induced state, want to have to listen to her voice it. 'It means he resisted arrest and broke the nose of one of the men who were sent to get him.'

  She was on to him like a hawk. 'One of the men? How many were there?'

  'Two’ Brunetti chose to lie, marvelling at how quickly he had been manoeuvred into defending the men who had assaulted Pedrolli.

  'Armed men?' she asked.

  Suddenly tired of this, Brunetti said, 'Paola, I'll tell you everything when I see you, all right?'

  'Of course,' she answered. 'Do you know him?'

  'No’ Having heard enough about the doctor to have formed a favourable opinion of him did not count as knowing him, Brunetti told himself.

  'Why did they arrest him?' she asked.

  'He adopted a baby a year and a half ago, and it seems now that he did it illegally’

  'What happened to the baby?' Paola asked.

  'They took him away,' Brunetti said in a neutral voice.

  'Took him away?' Paola asked with all of her former belligerence. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'He was taken into care.'

  'Into care as in given back to his real mother, or into care as in put in an orphanage?'

  'The latter, I'm afraid,' Brunetti admitted.

  There was a long pause, after which Paola said, as if to herself, 'A year and a half,' and then she added, 'God, what heartless bastards they are, eh?'

  Betray the state by agreeing with her or betray humanity by demurring: Brunetti considered the options open to him and gave the only response he could. 'Yes’

  'We'll talk about it when you get home, all right?' said a suddenly accommodating Paola.

  'Yes,' Brunetti said and replaced the phone.

  Brunetti was relieved he had not told Paola about the other people, the ones who had been kept under surveillance for almost two years. Alvise - even Brunetti himself - had focused on that number, that year and a half that a knowing authority had allowed the new parents to keep the child. That's when a man becomes a father, Brunetti knew, or at least he remembered that it was during that first year and a half that his own children had been soldered into his heart. Had either of them been taken from him, for any reason, after that time, he would have gone through life with some essential part of himself irreparably damaged. Before that conviction could fully take shape in his mind, Brunetti realized that, had either child been taken from him at any time after he first saw them, his suffering would have been no different than if he had had them for eighteen months, or eighteen years..

  Back in his chair, he resumed his consideration of the wall and of the strange fact of Patta's presence, and after another twenty minutes, Signora Marcolini let herself out into the hallway and walked over to him. She looked far more tired than when she had gone back into the room.

  'You're still here?' she said. ‘I’m sorry, but I've forgotten your name’

  'Brunetti, Signora. Guido,' he said as he got to his feet. He smiled again but did not extend his hand. ‘I’ve spoken to the nurses here, and it seems your husband is very well regarded. I'm sure he'll be well taken care of’

  He expected a sharp response, and she did not disappoint. 'That could begin by keeping the Carabinieri away from him’

  'Of course. I'll see what I can do about arranging that,' Brunetti said, though he wondered if this would be possible. Changing the subject, he asked, 'Can your husband understand what you say, Signora?'

  'Yes’

  'Good’ Brunetti's grasp of the workings of the brain was rudimentary, but it seemed to him that, if the man could understand language, then there might be some likelihood of his being able to regain speech. Was there some way that Pedrolli's powers could be tested? Without language, what were we?

  '... away from the media,' he heard her say.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Signora. I didn't hear that: I was thinking about your husband.'

  'Is there any way that all of this can be kept out of the media?' she repeated.

  Presumably, she meant the accusations of false adoption that would be brought against them, but Brunetti's mind flashed to the Carabinieri's brutal tactics: surely it was in the best interests of the state that those be kept from the press. But in the event that the arrests became public knowledge -and the memory of that morning's television news interrupted to tell him that they already had - then it was in the best interests of the Pedrollis that their treatment at the hands of the Carabinieri became so, too.

  'If I were in your place, Signora, I'd wait to see how they choose to present this.'

  'What do you mean?' she asked.

  'You and your husband have erred out of love, it seems to me’ Brunetti began, aware that he was coaching a witness, even aiding a suspect. But so long as he confined himself to discussing the behaviour of the media, he saw nothing improper in anything he might say or any warning he might offer. 'So they might decide to treat you sympathetically.'

  'Not if the Carabinieri talk to them first’ she said, displaying a remarkable clear-sightedness about the ways of the world. 'All they’ve got to do is mention the wounded officer, and they'll be all over us’

  'Perhaps not, Signora, once they learn about your husband's treatment - and yours, of course.'

  At times, Brunetti worried about the growing ferocity of his contempt for the media. All a criminal had to do, it seemed to him at times, was present himself as a victim, and the howl would be heard in Rome. Plant a bomb, rob a bank, cut a throat: it hardly, mattered. Once the media decided that the accused had been subjected to ill-treatment or injustice, of any sort and however long ago, then he or she was destined to become the subject of long articles, editorials, even interviews. And here he was, all but coaching a suspect to present herself in just this way.

  Brunetti hauled himself from these ideas and returned his attention to Signora Marcolini.

  .. back to my husband,' he heard her say.

  'Of course. Would it be possible for me to speak to you again, Signora?' he asked, knowing that he had the authority to take her down t
o the Questura and keep her there for hours, should he choose to.

  'I want to see a lawyer first,' she said, raising herself in Brunetti's estimation. Knowing the name of the family that was likely to surround and protect her, Brunetti had no doubt that her legal representation would be the best available.

  Brunetti considered asking her about the man who had so clearly dominated Patta in the brief scene outside her husband's room, but thought it might be better to keep his knowledge of that to himself. 'Of course, Signora,' he said, taking one of his cards from his wallet and giving it to her. 'If there's any way in which I can help you, please call me.'

  She took the card, slipped it into the pocket of her skirt without looking at it, and nodded before re-entering her husband's room.

  Brunetti walked away from the ward and then from the hospital, heading back toward the Questura, musing on his last exchange with Signora Marcolini. Her concern for her husband seemed genuine, he told himself. His thoughts turned to Solomon and the story of the two women who claimed to be the mother of the same baby. The real mother, for love of her son, renounced all claim to him when faced with Solomon's decision to cut the baby in half so that each claimant could have a part, while the false claimant made no objection. The story had of course been told endlessly and had thus become one of the set pieces that had entered into the common memory.

  Why, then, had Signora Marcolini displayed no curiosity about the fate of the baby?

  10

  As soon as Brunetti got back to the Questura, he decided to stop and see if Patta had returned, but when he went upstairs, he was surprised to find Signorina Elettra at work behind her desk. She looked, at first glance, like a rainforest scene: her silk shirt was wildly patterned with leaves and violently coloured birds; a pair of tiny monkey legs peeked out from under her collar. Her scarf was the red of a baboon's buttocks, contributing to the tropical effect.

  'But it’s Tuesday,' Brunetti said when he saw her.