The Temptation of Forgiveness

by Donna Leon

  ‘To some degree,’ Brunetti answered.

  ‘The major damage is to the parietal bone, which was fractured during his fall, perhaps when he hit the railing, perhaps when he hit the pavement. This created a subdural haematoma, and until the brain absorbs the blood, his condition won’t change.’

  Brunetti didn’t know whether the doctor expected him to question this; he decided not to. ‘Have you spoken to his wife?’ he asked, instead.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She hears the words and understands the phrases, but she doesn’t want to understand the significance, or the possible consequences, of what I’ve told her.’ When Brunetti did not comment, the doctor said, ‘I suppose you’re familiar with this kind of response, Commissario.’

  ‘Yes. Unfortunately.’

  Stampini’s voice slowed and grew warmer. ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘No, Dottore. I’ve left a message. I hope she’s gone home.’

  Stampini said instantly, ‘I think she’s still here. She told me this morning that she’d spoken with her sister and sent the children to stay with her.’

  When it seemed the doctor had finished, Brunetti asked, ‘Has anyone come to the hospital to see her?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘What do you suggest, Dottore?’

  ‘I think it would help if someone would come and take her home. She has to get some rest, or go somewhere where she can be with people she knows. There’s no sense in her staying here.’ Before Brunetti could speak, the doctor went on, ‘The only thing she’s told me is that you were very kind to her.’

  This surprised Brunetti, who had no memory of being anything but firm. ‘Is there some message you’re giving me, Dottore?’

  Stampini laughed or sighed: Brunetti couldn’t tell. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. I think you might be able to persuade her to go home for a while. He’s not going to wake up,’ the doctor said but quickly added, ‘not for a long time. She should go home, or go to her sister and be with her children. Something. But get away from here.’

  Brunetti thought about what he might do. Finally, he said, ‘Will you be there much longer?’

  ‘All morning, at least until noon,’ the doctor said, trying to sound professional, but then he added, ‘She’s a good woman, Commissario.’

  ‘I’ll be there soon,’ Brunetti said and hung up.

  He dialled Griffoni’s telefonino and, not bothering to ask where she was, told her he was at the Questura but going back to the hospital. For a moment, he thought of asking her to meet him there. Woman to woman, it might be easier, somehow, to persuade Professoressa Crosera to leave the hospital. As he gave more thought to what he had seen of her, however, he decided she would not like the intrusion of another person. Thus he limited himself to telling Griffoni that he’d been given the name of the man who worked in front of the Albertini and had passed it to Signorina Elettra. He added that he’d be back at the Questura as soon as he could, broke the connection, and left to return to the hospital.

  *

  Brunetti went directly to Neurologia, where he found a different nurse, who told him that visiting hours did not begin until three. When he said he was a police official, coming to talk to Signor Gasparini’s wife, her demeanour changed, although not by much. Almost grudgingly, she said he could enter the ward.

  He went down the corridor and knocked lightly on the door to Gasparini’s room. There was no response, so he opened it and put his head inside. Gasparini was exactly as he had left him. From the door, Brunetti saw his wife’s back and head, the top half of her body lying on the bed perpendicular to her husband, the rest seated in the chair where Brunetti had last seen her.

  Her right hand held her husband’s left, and she was asleep, the top of her head just touching his left hip. Brunetti stepped back into the corridor, closed the door, and knocked far more loudly, waited, knocked again.

  Within moments, the door was pulled open and she was there, looking startled and angry and not bothering to hide either. She pushed past him and out into the corridor, pulling the door closed. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she demanded, voice ragged with exhaustion. ‘Do you want to wake him up?’

  Brunetti took another step backwards but said nothing, wanting her question to reverberate in her mind. Finally, when her face told him she understood what she had just said, he answered, ‘That would be a good thing, Signora.’ He spoke in an entirely normal voice, making it clear that he meant what he said.

  This was enough to wipe all expression from her face. As though she’d taken a step backwards, only to find nothing under her foot, she banged against the door, making far more noise than Brunetti had by knocking.

  ‘I’ve come to take you home, Signora.’ Before she could protest, he said, ‘Dottor Stampini told me your children are with your sister. Let me take you home; have something to eat, and have your children come home, too. And then you can think about what to do.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ she blurted out, trying to make her voice steely but failing on the last word. Her face grew flaccid with despair and then tightened in fear.

  Brunetti, knowing there was no comfort he could give her, said, ‘You can cook something for your children to show them you’re all right and life is normal.’ Before she could protest about the word, Brunetti said, ‘That’s what they need, Signora. Their father is sick and in the hospital, but they need things to continue as close to how they were as you can make them.’ When he saw her prepare to speak, he kept talking. ‘They might be teenagers, but they’re still children.’

  He stopped after that and watched as she considered his advice. She raised one hand but let it fall again, then gave a dispirited shrug and said, ‘Perhaps.’ She turned and went into the room, leaving the door open for him.

  Gasparini was the same, save that the circles under his eyes were darker today, especially on the left side.

  Professoressa Crosera walked to the side of the bed, leaned over her husband, and pulled the covers up, although the room was hot enough to make Brunetti uncomfortable. She placed her hand lightly on her husband’s cheek, as though it was morning at home and she was going to let him sleep a bit more while she made them some coffee or went out to get the morning paper so he could read it in bed, the way he liked to.

  She picked up her coat and bag and walked over to Brunetti. ‘Quick, before I change my mind,’ she said and walked out the door and down the corridor.

  Outside, Brunetti discovered that the sun had decided to flirt with them: there were patches of light on the pavement of the campo, and he reached automatically to unbutton his coat.

  Brunetti turned right and started over the bridge. ‘Where do you live?’ he asked.

  ‘Near San Stae,’ she said, then, ‘I’d like to walk.’

  She was looking ahead, so she didn’t see him nod. It didn’t matter; there was only one way to go. At the Ponte dei Giocattoli, she said, ‘Remember the toy store?’

  Indeed Brunetti did: his children discovered it early on and never walked past it without insisting that they go in, ‘just to have a look’. Gone now, like the rest of the toy stores. Tourist junk, instead; useless toys for bigger children, all made in China, masquerading as Venetian. ‘My kids loved it,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Mine, too.’

  At the newly-transformed Ballarin, he didn’t bother to ask her but went in and up to the bar. ‘What would you like?’ he asked.

  ‘A macchiatone and a brioche, please,’ she answered. Then, as if coming out of a dream, she added, ‘And a glass of water.’

  He ordered, and their coffee and the brioche were soon on the bar, along with a glass of water, which she drank first, and thirstily. She sipped at her coffee but ate the brioche quickly, hungrily. Brunetti paid and they left.

  During the brief time they had been in the bar, the calle had filled up until it was as crowded as it once was only at Christmas. The crowds shoved them together until Brunetti jutted
out his elbow, clearing enough space to allow him to move away from her. Up the bridge, down, and now along the front of the Fondaco, where the lines of Chinese tourists had started their daily ritual visit to their new god, a twenty-first-century shopping mall.

  Brunetti drew his spirit tight and turned towards the Grand Canal, then left along the riva, not having to lead her. The Rialto Bridge stood to their right, and they went over it like people on an escalator, locked in by those moving in front of and behind them, unable to stop, unable to move faster than the slowest person near them, unable to pause lest they be trampled by the people behind.

  At the bottom, she grabbed at his arm and pulled him to the right. ‘Get me out of this, please,’ she said. Brunetti took ten fast steps straight ahead and then cut right and into the campo in front of the church of San Giacomo.

  He stopped, facing the bit of the Canal they could see through the break in the buildings. She started to walk towards the water, and he came along beside her. She walked all the way to the waterside and looked across at the rear façade of what had once been the Post Office. She stopped two metres from the Grand Canal.

  ‘I can’t help looking at it as a Venetian and not an architect,’ she said.

  ‘Do you like what they did?’ Brunetti asked. He’d been inside and seen the shops, had gone up to the terrace and viewed the city as he had seldom seen it before; a circle of beauty, all of it excessive, all of it perfect.

  ‘I don’t like the result,’ she said, ‘but some of the restoration is very well done.’

  ‘What don’t you like?’ Brunetti asked, using his question as a means to bring her back to normality but also interested in what she had to say.

  ‘Because it’s just an expensive variant of the places near San Marco that sell the cheap masks and glass made in China.’

  Brunetti remained silent. He agreed with her, but he was curious about her reasons. ‘What do you see that’s the same?’

  ‘There’s nothing for Venetians to buy in either place. Olive oil that costs fifteen Euros a half litre? Seven-hundred-Euro boots? A coffee that costs twice what most bars charge?’ Before Brunetti could comment, she went on. ‘And as far as the other places go, what Venetian wants a glass elephant or a plastic mask?’

  He heard her using the arguments he’d heard so many times, given so many times and remarked, ‘Paola often asks, ‘“Where can I buy a zip?”‘

  She turned her head to him quickly, something close to shock on her face. ‘Does Paola sew?’

  Brunetti smiled at the question. ‘Good heavens, no. She uses it as a metonym for what residents need and buy, rather than what tourists buy. Zips, underwear, potato peelers.’ He stopped and, like a car giving one last backfire, added, ‘Thread.’

  She took a step back from him and studied his face.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Brunetti asked, hoping he hadn’t somehow offended her.

  ‘A policeman who uses the word “metonym”,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No wonder Paola married you.’ She turned and started walking towards the market. Because it was not the weekend, they managed to pass through it with relative ease. Brunetti noticed many empty places where formerly had stood fruit and vegetable stalls; half the fishmongers were gone.

  Out of the market and along the water, then into Calle dei Botteri and two more bridges, and then she pulled her keys out of her bag and opened the street door. She closed it after Brunetti, started up the steps and stopped on the top floor, the fourth. Professoressa Crosera opened the door to the apartment, and he followed her inside. She led him through a small vestibule into a large living room with two comfortable sofas and a view back towards the market and, far off, the campanile of San Francesco della Vigna. She removed her coat and tossed it over the back of the sofa, then went around and sat at the far end. He saw four black-and-white photographs on the wall behind the larger sofa, each showing what appeared to be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small circular blobs arranged in parallel straight lines.

  Curious, he stepped closer and saw that they were, as he’d thought, part of the Salgado series of photos of gold mines, he forgot where, perhaps South America somewhere. He stepped back from them and looked at Professoressa Crosera. She had locked her hands between her knees and was leaning forward and staring at the floor. She pushed herself upright and against the back of the sofa and looked in his direction.

  Suddenly nervous and uncomfortable, Brunetti went and got her bag, which she had set down beside the door, and placed it beside her. ‘Perhaps it would help if you called your sister, Signora, and let her know you’ve come home,’ he said and walked over to the farthest window, studying the buildings and towers in the distance. Behind him, he heard her begin to talk. Even though she kept her voice low, he could still understand what she said.

  Brunetti noticed that the window to his right was really a door to a small terrace. He opened it and stepped outside, pulling the door closed. Her voice disappeared. To his right, he could see the Campanile di San Marco, squashed between two clouds that some trick of perspective made look like two large pillows offering to prop it up. He swept his eyes farther to the right and began playing one of his oldest games: ‘Which Church Is That?’ Because he was alone, he couldn’t verify his guesses, but the tilted tower was easy to recognize as Santo Stefano’s.

  Brunetti turned just as she put her phone back in her bag and looked in his direction. He went inside and approached her. Somehow, her sister had managed to calm her: that was evident from her face. ‘Signora, sooner or later, we’ll begin a formal investigation of what happened to your husband.’

  ‘What will that achieve?’ she asked.

  ‘For your husband, very little, I’m afraid,’ he said, unwilling to be an ally to her self-deception. Then, more firmly, ‘I’d like to be able to find the person who did this.’

  ‘I’m not sure that will help anything,’ she said. ‘Or anyone.’

  ‘It might stop the person from doing it again,’ Brunetti offered.

  ‘Would I sound cruel if I said that’s not of much importance to my husband? Nor to me.’ She smiled, one of the saddest things Brunetti had seen in his life.

  ‘Not cruel, Signora, not by any means. But I’m asking you to make the decision, not your husband.’

  ‘What decision?’ she asked, honestly surprised.

  ‘To let us ask you questions and ask questions of your friends,’ he said, not daring to mention her son. ‘Is there anything you, or they, think might be related to what was done to your husband?’

  ‘I told you about the trouble with my son,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘Was there anything else that was troubling your husband?’

  She thought about this for what seemed to Brunetti a long time and finally answered, ‘Growing old. Whether his company could survive the economic crisis. Global warming, his paunch, what our daughter and her boyfriend did together.’

  He smiled, and she asked, ‘Did I say something funny?’

  ‘It was like looking in a mirror and seeing what I worry about all the time,’ he answered. ‘And I’d add having a boss who dislikes me at times,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Anything else?’ she asked dispassionately, rejecting his offer of a more relaxed atmosphere.

  ‘About what I’d like to do as part of the investigation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like to take a look through his belongings; his study, if he has one,’ he said, continuing to avoid reference to her son.

  She nodded at this, but Brunetti didn’t know if it meant her husband had a study or she would agree to let him look through it. Or perhaps she was merely acknowledging that she understood his request. Hoping that it was the second, he said, ‘I’d like to do it now.’ Sensing her reluctance, he thought it might be time to play the trump card of her son’s safety: few mothers could resist the power of that appeal.

  She looked at her watch, but before she could speak, they heard the front door open and then a
heavy thud as it was pushed back against the wall. Surprise catapulted her from her chair, and Brunetti wheeled around to face whatever was coming.

  Two teenagers came quickly into the room, a boy and girl of almost the same height, though the boy’s face showed that he was younger than his sister. He wore jeans that hung loosely on his hips, a brown leather jacket, and a pair of almost-new Stan Smiths. The bottom part of his head had been shaved to the height of his eyebrows, the rest left long to create a strange two-tiered effect. He had his mother’s dark eyes and, although his body was very thin, his face was still rounded by the puppy fat of childhood; his jaw had yet to take on the angularity of adolescence.

  He stopped short when he saw Brunetti; his eyes shot to his mother, back to Brunetti, back to his mother, showing that this was an uncommon configuration. ‘Who’s he?’ he demanded. His face was tight and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a primal declaration of menace.

  The girl turned to him in surprise, disapproval written on a face that was a younger version of her mother’s. ‘Sandro,’ she said, voice tight and filled with reproach.

  The boy looked at her, obviously unable to decide between outrage or contrition. ‘All I did was ask who he was,’ he said to his sister, his voice wilting in the echo of her reprimand.

  Brunetti smiled at them and said, ‘I’m Guido Brunetti. Your mother asked me to accompany her back from the hospital.’ He turned to the Professoressa and said in casual farewell, ‘If there’s anything else I can do, call Paola, please.’

  Then, speaking to both children, he added, ‘That’s my wife. She and your mother are colleagues at the university.’ He took a few steps towards the door and, when abreast of them, paused and said, ‘Your mother’s been at the hospital with your father all this time and hasn’t had anything to eat. I think it would be good if you’d take care of her. Perhaps you could help her make lunch?’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ the boy asked in a strained voice.

  Instead of answering, Brunetti turned back to the boy’s mother, who told them, ‘The doctors said you can both visit Papà tomorrow. Until then, I’m the only person they’ll let see him.’