Suffer the little Children

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti stood. The woman extended her hand, saying, 'Good afternoon, Signor Brunini.' Brunetti expressed his pleasure in meeting her. He noticed the reason for the hair style: a thick layer of makeup attempted - and failed - to cover the rough pitting left by acne or some other skin disease. The scars, confined to the sides of her cheeks, were almost completely hidden by her hair. 'I'm Dottoressa Fontana, Dottor Calamandri's assistant. I'll take you to him.'

  Signorina Elettra, secure in the presence of far less competition than that offered by the woman at the desk, could afford a gracious smile. She. took Brunetti's arm, suggesting that she might need his help to make whatever distance it was to Dottor Calamandri's office.

  Dottor Fontana led them down a corridor where the elegance of the waiting room gave way to the practical sense of a medical institution: the floor was made of square grey tiles, and the prints on the walls were black and white city prospects. The doctor's legs looked as good from the back as from the front.

  Dottor Fontana stopped at a door on the right, knocked, and opened it. Allowing Brunetti and Signorina Elettra to precede her into the room, she followed them in and closed the door.

  A man somewhat older than Brunetti sat behind a. desk the surface of which made no pretence to anything other than chaos. Stacks of files and loose papers lay everywhere, brochures, magazines, boxes of prescription drugs, pencils, pens, a Swiss Army knife, medical reviews abandoned as though the reader had been called away.

  The same disorder was evident in the doctor himself, whose loosened tie showed at the top of his lab coat. Pencils and what might be a thermometer stuck up from the breast pocket of the jacket; his name was stitched into the top of the pocket. He had a faintly distracted air, as if he were not quite sure how this mess had accumulated before him. Clean-shaven and round-faced, he glanced up and smiled, reminding Brunetti of the doctors of his youth, men willing to be called out at night to visit people in their homes, men to whom the health of their patients was worth any time or effort.

  Brunetti gave the room a quick glance and saw the usual: framed medical degrees on the walls, glass-fronted cabinets filled with boxes of pharmaceuticals, and the end of a paper-sheeted exarnining table emerging from behind a portable screen.

  Calamandri got to his feet and leaned across his desk to offer his hand, first to Signorina Elettra and then to Brunetti. He said good afternoon and indicated two of the chairs in front of his desk. Dottor Fontana took the remaining seat to their right.

  'I have your file here,' Calamandri said in a businesslike voice. From a pile of folders, with unerring aim, he pulled out a brown manila one. He pushed papers to one side to clear a space and opened the file. He placed his right palm, fingers spread, on the contents and looked at them. Tve seen the results of all of your tests and exams, and I think the best thing I can do is tell you the truth.' Signorina Elettra raised a hand halfway to her mouth. Calamandri went on, ‘I realize this will not be the news you came here hoping for, but it's the most honest information I can give you.'

  Signorina Elettra let out a small sigh as her hand fell to her lap, where it joined the other in grasping at her handbag. Brunetti glanced at her and put a comforting hand on her arm.

  Calamandri waited for her to speak, or Brunetti, but when neither did, he went on, ‘I could suggest that you have the tests done again’

  Signorina Elettra cut him off with a violent shake of her head. 'No. No more tests’ she said in a harsh voice. Turning to Brunetti, she said, voice grown softer, ‘I can't do that again, Guido’

  Calamandri raised a comforting hand and said, addressing Brunetti, 'I'm afraid I agree with your, er...' Failing to find the word to describe her connection with Brunini, Calamandri turned his attention to Signorina Elettra directly and repeated, ‘I'm afraid I agree with you, Signora.' She responded with a small, pained smile.

  Glancing back and forth between Brunetti and Signorina Elettra to show that what he had to say now was intended for both of them, Calamandri added, 'The tests you've had, both of you, are definitive. You've had them twice, so there is really no purpose in your bothering with them again.' He looked at the papers in front of him, then towards Brunetti. 'In the second test, the count is even lower’

  Brunetti thought of lowering his head in shame at this blow to his masculinity but refused the temptation and continued to meet the doctor's eye, but he did so nervously.

  To Signorina Elettra, Calamandri said, ‘I don't know what the other doctors have told you, Signora, but from what I read here, I'd say that there is almost no likelihood of conception.' He turned a page, glanced at whatever had been concocted there by Rizzardi and his friend at the lab, then back at her. 'How old were you when this happened?' he asked.

  'Eighteen’ she answered, meeting his glance.

  'If I might ask, why did you wait so long to have the infection treated?' he asked, managing to keep any sign of reproach out of his voice.

  'I was younger then’ she answered and gave a small shrug, as if to distance herself from that younger person.

  Calamandri said nothing, and his silence eventually prodded her into self-justification. 'I thought it was something else. You know, a bladder infection or something like that; one of those fungus things you get.' She turned to Brunetti and took his hand. 'But by the time I went to a doctor, the infection had spread.'

  Brunetti was careful to keep his eyes on her face, gazing at her as though she were rearing a sonnet or singing a lullaby to the child they could not have, instead of referring to a bout of venereal disease. He hoped Calamandri had enough experience to recognize a man gone stupid through love. Or lust. Brunetti had seen enough of bom to believe the signs were identical.

  'Did they tell you then what the consequences of the infection were likely to be, Signora?' Calamandri asked: 'that you probably would not be able to have children?'

  'I told you’ she said, making no attempt to disguise the anger that underlay her embarrassment, 'I was younger then.' She shook her head a few times and pulled her hand back from

  Brunetti's to wipe at her eyes. Then she looked at Brunetti and said, with an intensity that suggested no one was in the room with them, 'That was before I met you, caro, before I wanted to have a baby. Our baby’

  ‘I see,' the doctor said, and closed the file. He folded his hands and placed them very sombrely on top of it. He glanced at his colleague and said, 'Do you have anything to add, Dottoressa?'

  She leaned forward and spoke to Brunetti, who sat on the other side of Signorina Elettra. 'Before. I looked at the file, I thought assisted conception might be possible, but after seeing the X-rays and reading the report from the doctors at the Ospedale Civile, I no longer think that’s feasible.'

  Signorina Elettra burst out, 'Don't blame me.'

  As if she had not spoken, Dottoressa Fontana continued, turning her attention to her colleague, 'As you say, Dottore, the sperm count is too low, so I don't think it's likely that conception could take place in the normal fashion in any case, regardless of the Signora's condition’ She turned to Signorina Elettra and said coolly, 'We're doctors, Signora. We don't blame people; we simply try to treat them’

  'So what does that mean?' Brunetti asked before Signorina Elettra had a chance to speak.

  'I'm afraid it means,' said Calamandri with a small tightening of his lips, 'that we can't help you’

  'But that's not what I was told,' Brunetti blustered.

  'By whom, Signore?’ Calamandri inquired. 'By my doctor in Venice. He said you worked miracles.'

  Calamandri smiled and shook his head. 'I'm afraid only il Signore can work miracles, Signor Brunini. And even He had to have something to work with: the bread and fishes or the water at the wedding.' He glanced at their faces and saw that the reference, which Brunetti acknowledged with a nod, was lost on his companion.

  'But I have the money,' Brunetti said. 'There's got to be something you can do.'

  'I'm afraid the only thing I can do, Signore,' Calamandri sai
d with a very conspicuous glance at his watch, 'is to suggest that you and your wife consider the possibility of adoption. The process is a long one and perhaps not the easiest, but in your circumstances, it's the only route I can see that might be open to you.'

  How did she manage to blush, Brunetti wondered? How on earth did Signorina Elettra manage to have her entire face, even her ears, flush a bright red and remain that way for long seconds as she looked down into her lap and began to snap open and closed the hinge on her bag?

  'We're not married,' Brunetti said in order to end the silence, something no one else in the room seemed willing or able to do. 'I'm separated from my wife. Well, not legally, that is. And Elettra and I have been together now for more than a year’ His wife, the joy of his life, was in Venice and he was in Verona, so he was indeed separated from her. There existed no legal separation between them and, please heaven, let that possibility remain always as absurd as it was at this moment. And Signorina Elettra had been working at the Questura for a decade now, so he and she had been together, surely, for more than a year. Whatever their profound deceit, then, all of his statements were quite literally true.

  He glanced aside at Signorina Elettra and saw that she was still staring at her lap, though her hands were quiet now, and her face had grown a deathly white. 'So, you see,' he said, looking back at Calamandri, 'we can't adopt. That's why we hoped to be able to have a baby. Together.'

  After quite a long time, Calamandri said, ‘I see.' He closed Brunetti's file and slid it to his right. He glanced at Dottoressa Fontana, but she had nothing to say. Calamandri got to his feet. Dottoressa Fontana followed suit, as did Brunetti. When Signorina Elettra remained in her seat, Brunetti bent down and placed a hand on her shoulder. 'Come on, cara. There's nothing more we can do here.'

  She turned a tear-streaked face to him and said, voice pleading, 'But you said we'd have a baby. You said you'd do anything.'

  Kneeling at her side and pulling her weeping face into his shoulder, Brunetti said softly, but not so softly that the other two would not hear, ‘I did promise. I promise on my mother's head. I'll do anything.' He looked at Calamandri and Fontana, but they were already leaving.

  When they had closed the door behind them, Brunetti helped Signorina Elettra to her feet and placed his arm around her shoulders. ‘Come on, Elettra, we'll go home now. There's nothing else here for us.'

  'But you promise, you promise you'll do something?' she pleaded.

  'Anything’ Brunetti repeated, and led the weeping woman towards the door.

  15

  They remained in role until they were on the train back to Venice, sitting across from one another in the all but empty first-class carriage of the Eurocity from Milano. They had not spoken while they waited in the clinic for the taxi the receptionist called, nor in the taxi itself. But in the train, with no remaining chance that they would be seen or overheard, Signorina Elettra sat back in her seat and took a deep breath. Brunetti thought he saw her real persona return to take possession of her, but since he was never quite sure just what that persona was, he was not certain that this had actually taken place.

  ‘Well?’ Brunetti asked her.

  'No, not yet’ she said. ‘I'm still exhausted from all those tears’

  ‘Now did you do it?' Brunetti asked. 'What? Cry?'

  'Yes.' In over a decade, he had seen her cry only once, and then it had been for real. Many of the tales of human misery and malice that unfolded at the Questura were such as to cause a stone to weep, but she had always maintained a professional distance from them, even when many others, including the impenetrably unimaginative Alvise, were moved.

  'I thought about the masegni,' she said with a small smile.

  She had made odd remarks in the past, but to suggest that she could cry at the thought of paving stones was not something he was prepared for. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, all thought of Dottor Calamandri momentarily forgotten, 'why do you cry at the thought of the masegni?'

  'Because I'm Venetian,' she answered, aiding understanding no further.

  The conductor passed by at that moment, and when he was finished checking their tickets and had moved down the compartment, Brunetti said, 'Could you explain?'

  'They're gone, you know? Or hadn't you noticed?' she asked.

  Where would paving stones go? Brunetti wondered. And how? Perhaps the stress of the last hour had ...

  'During the repaving of the streets,' she continued, preventing him from completing the thought. 'When they raised the sidewalks against acqua alta,' she added, raising her eyebrows in silent comment on the folly of that attempt. 'They dug up all the masegni, the ones that had been there for centuries’ Hearing her, he remembered the months he had spent watching the workmen, as campi and colli were torn up, pipes and phone wires installed or renewed, then everything put back again.

  'And what did they replace them with?' she asked. Brunetti tried never to encourage the asking of rhetorical questions by dignifying them with an answer, and so he remained silent.

  'They replaced them with machine-cut, perfectly rectangular stones, every one a living example of just how perfect four right angles can be’

  Brunetti remembered now being struck by how well the new stones did fit together, unlike the old ones with their rough edges and irregular surfaces.

  'And where did the old ones go, I wonder?' she asked, raising her right index finger in the air in a ritual gesture of interrogation’When Brunetti still made no answer, she said, 'Friends of mine saw them, stacked up neatly in a field in Marghera.' She smiled, and went on: 'carefully bound in wire, as if ready for shipment to somewhere else. They even photographed them. And there has been talk of a piazza somewhere in Japan where they were used.'

  Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his confusion. Japan?' he asked.

  That's just talk, sir’ she said. 'Since I haven't seen them myself, only the photographs, I suppose all of this could be nothing more than urban myth. And there's no proof, well, no proof aside from the fact that they were there, thousands of them, centuries-old stones, when the work started, and now most of them aren't there. So unless they decided to turn themselves into lemmings and jump into the laguna one night when no one was watching, someone took them and didn't bring them back’

  Brunetti was busy calculating the sheer volume of stone. There would have been boatloads, truckfuls, whole acres of the things. Too many of them to hide, enormously expensive to transport, how could anyone organize such a thing? And for what purpose?

  Almost as if he had posed the questions out loud, she said. To sell them, Commissario. To dig them up and take them away at the city's expense - hand-cut, centuries-old volcanic rock paving stones - and sell them. That's why’ He thought she had finished but she added, 'Even the French and the Austrians, when they invaded - and God knows they stripped us clean - at least they left us the paving stones. Just thinking about it is enough to make me weep.'

  As it would, Brunetti realized, any Venetian. He found his imagination working, wondering who might have organized this, who would have had to be complicit in order for it to have been done, and he liked none of the possibilities that occurred to him. From nowhere, the memory arose of an expression his mother had often used, that Neapolitans 'would steal the shoes from your feet while you were walking7. Well, how much more clever we Venetians, for some of us manage to steal the paving stones from under our own feet.

  'As to Dottor Calamandri,' she said, reeling in Brunetti's wandering attention, lie seemed like a very busy doctor who wanted to be honest with his patients. He at least wanted them not to have any illusions about the possibilities that were open to them. And to discourage false illusions.' She gave that time to register and then asked, 'And you?'

  'Pretty much the same. He could very easily have recommended that we have the whole series of tests done again. At his clinic. In his lab.'

  'But he didn't,' she agreed. 'Which is a sign of an honest man.'

  'Or one who wants to
appear to be honest,' Brunetti suggested.

  Those would have been my next words,' she said with a smile; The train began to slow as it approached the Mestre station. On their left, people hurried into and out of the station, into and out of McDonald's. They watched the people on the platform and in the other train to their right, and then the doors slammed shut and they were moving again.

  They talked idly, discussing Dottoressa Fontana's chilly manner and agreeing that the only thing now was to wait to see if Brunini would receive a phone call from someone saying they worked with the clinic. Failing that, perhaps either Pedrolli or his wife would be more form-coming, or Signorina Elettra would find a way to worm her way into the records of the ongoing Carabinieri investigation.

  A few minutes later, the smokestacks of Marghera came into view on their right, and Brunetti wondered what sort of comment Signorina Elettra would have to make about them today. But it seemed that her ration of indignation had been used up by the masegni, for she remained silent, and soon the train drew into Santa Lucia.

  As they walked towards the exit, Brunetti looked up at the clock and saw that it was thirteen minutes after six. He could easily catch the Number One that left at six-sixteen: like a baby penguin that has imprinted the image of his mother in his memory, Brunetti had known for more than a generation that the Number One left from in front of the station at ten-minute intervals, starting at six minutes after the hour.

  'I think ‘I’ll walk’ she said as they started down the steps, threading their way through the mass of people rushing for their trains. Neither of them discussed the possibility, or the duty, of going back to the Questura.