Wilful behaviour cgb-11

by Donna Leon

  ‘Who?’ the Notary asked, head bowed.

  'Claudia Leonardo, sir. She died - she was murdered -here in the city.'

  'And how did my name come to be among her effects?' he asked, looking again at Brunetti but not bothering to inquire how or why Claudia had been killed.

  'It doesn't matter, sir. If you've never heard of her, then there's no need to continue with this.'

  'Do you want me to sign something to that effect?' Filipetto asked.

  'Sir’ Brunetti answered hotly, as if unable to disguise his surprise, 'your word is more than enough.'

  Filipetto looked up then, his teeth bared in a smile of open satisfaction 'Your mother?' he asked. 'Is she still with us?'

  Brunetti had no idea what Filipetto meant by this: whether his mother was alive, which she was; whether she was still sane, which she was not; or whether she still held true to the political ideas that had cost her husband his youth and his peace. As she had never held those ideas in anything but contempt, Brunetti felt secure in answering the first question, "Yes, sir, she is.'

  'Good, good. Though there are many people now who are beginning to realize the value of what we tried to do, it's comforting to know that there are still people who are faithful to the old values.'

  'I'm sure there will always be,' Brunetti said, without a trace of the disgust he felt at the idea. He stood, leaving the chair where it was, and leaned across the table to shake the old man's hand, cold and fragile in his own. Ifs been an honour, sir,' he said. Vianello nodded deeply, unable to convey his complete agreement in any other way.

  The old man raised a hand and waved towards the woman, who was still standing at the doorway. 'Eleonora, make yourself useful. See the Commissario out.' He gave Brunetti a valedictory smile and again bent his head over his papers.

  Eleonora, her connection to the old man still unexplained, turned and led them to the front door of the apartment. Brunetti made no attempt to penetrate the veil of silent resentment she had wrapped so tightly about herself during this interview and at the door did no more than mutter his thanks before preceding Vianello down the stairs and out into the campo.

  16

  'Enough to choke a pig’ was Vianello's only comment as they walked out into the cool evening air.

  'Well he did make the trains run on time’ Brunetti offered.

  ‘Yes, of course. And, in the end, what’s a couple million dead and a country in ruins if the trains run on time?'

  'Exactly.'

  'God, you think they're all dead and then you turn over a rock and you find one's still under there.' Brunetti grunted in assent.

  ‘You can understand young people believing all that shit. After all, the schools don't teach them anything about what really happened. But you'd think people who lived it, who were adults all during it and who saw what happened, you'd think they'd realize.'

  'I'm afraid it costs people too much to abandon what they believe’ Brunetti offered by way of explanation. 'If you give your loyalty and, I suppose, your love to ideas like that then it's all but impossible to admit what madness they are.'

  'I suppose so’ Vianello conceded, though it sounded as if he weren't fully persuaded. They walked side by side, reached the riva and turned up toward the Piazza.

  It's strange, sir,' Vianello began, ‘But for the last few years - and I think it's happening more and more often -I meet someone and they say things, and I come away from talking to them thinking that they're crazy. I mean really crazy.'

  Brunetti, who had had much the same experience, asked only, 'What sort of things?'

  Vianello paused over this for a long time, suggesting that he had perhaps never before revealed this to anyone. Well, I talk to people who say they're worried about the hole in the ozone layer and what will happen to their kids and future generations, and then they tell me that they've just bought one of those monster cars, you know, the ones like the Americans drive.' He walked on, in step with Brunetti, considered a moment, then continued. This isn't even to mention religion, with Padre Pio being cured by a statue they flew over his monastery in a plane.'

  What?' Brunetti asked, having thought this was something Fellini invented for a film.

  What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter which story they tell about him. He was a nut, and they want to make him a saint. Yes,' Vianello said, his ideas clarified, 'it's things like that, that people can believe all of that, that makes me wonder if the whole world isn't mad.'

  'My wife maintains that she finds it easier to accept human behaviour if she thinks of us as savages with telefonini,' Brunetti said.

  'Is she serious?' Vianello asked, his tone one of curiosity, not scepticism.

  Thaf s always a very difficult thing to judge, with my wife,' Brunetti admitted, then, turning the conversation back to their recent visit, he asked, What did you think?'

  'He recognized the name, that's for sure’ Vianello said.

  Brunetti was glad to see his own intuition confirmed. 'Any ideas about the woman?'

  'I was paying more attention to the old man.'

  'How old do you think she is?' Brunetti asked him.

  ‘Fifty? Sixty? Why do you ask?'

  'It might help in figuring out how she's related to him.'

  'Related, as in relative?'

  'Yes. He didn't treat her like a servant.'

  'He told her to pull out your chair,' Vianello reminded him.

  'I know; that's what I thought at first. But it's not the way people treat servants: they're politer with them than with their families.' Brunetti knew this because, for decades, he had observed the way Paola's family treated their servants, but he didn't want to explain this to Vianello.

  'His name wasn't listed in her address book, was it?' Vianello asked.

  'No, only the phone number.'

  'Has Signorina Elettra checked the phone records to see how often the girl call him?' 'She's doing that now.'

  'Be interesting to know why she called him, wouldn't it?'

  'Especially as he said he didn't know her’ Brunetti agreed.

  They found themselves in the Piazza, and it was only then that Brunetti realized that he had been leading Vianello away from his house. He stopped and said, I'm going to go up and take the Number One. Would you like a drink?'

  'Not around here’ Vianello said, his eyes taking in the Piazza and its hosts of pigeons and tourists, one as annoying as the other. 'Next thing, you'll be suggesting we go to Harry's Bar.'

  ‘I don't think they let anyone in who isn't a tourist’ Brunetti said.

  Vianello guffawed, as Venetians often do at the thought of going to Harry's Bar, and said he'd walk home.

  Brunetti, with farther to go, walked up to the vaporetto stop and took the Number One towards San Silvestro. He used the trip to gaze inattentively at the facades of the palazzi they passed, thinking back over his visit to Filipetto. The room had been so dim that he had not observed much, but nothing he had seen there suggested wealth. Notaries were believed to be among the richest people in the country, and the Filipettos had been notaries for generations, each one succeeding to the studio and practice of the one before him, but no sign of wealth had been evident in the room or what Brunetti could see of its furnishings.

  The old man's jacket had been worn bald at the ends of the cuffs; the woman's clothing was undistinguished by any quality other than drabness. Because he had been taken directly to see Filipetto, he had not gained any idea of the total size of the apartment, but he had had a glimpse down the central corridor, and it suggested the existence of many rooms. Besides, a poor notaio was as inconceivable as a celibate priest.

  At home, though Paola did not ask if there had been any progress, he could sense her curiosity, so he told her about Filipetto while she was dropping the pasta into boiling water. To the left of the pot simmered a pan of tomatoes with, as far as he could identify, black olives and capers. Before she could comment, he asked, 'Where'd you get such big capers?'

  'Sara's
parents were on Salina for a week, and her mother brought me back half a kilo.'

  'Half a kilo of capers?' he asked, astonished, 'It'll take us years to eat them.'

  They're salted, so they'll keep,' Paola responded and then said, 'You might like to ask my father about him.'

  'Filipetto?'

  ‘Yes.'

  'What does he know?' 'Ask him.'

  'How long will the pasta . . .' Brunetti began, but she cut him off saying, 'Wait to call him until after dinner. It might take some time’

  Because of Brunetti's eagerness to make the call, the capers, to make no mention of the pasta, went less appreciated than they might ordinarily have been. The instant he finished his barely tasted dessert, Brunetti returned to the living room and made the call.

  At the mention of Filipetto, the Count surprised Brunetti by saying, 'Perhaps we could talk about this in person, Guido.'

  Without hesitation, Brunetti asked, 'When?'

  'I'm leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning and I won't be back until the end of the week.'

  Before the Count could suggest a later date, Brunetti asked, 'Have you time now?'

  'It's after nine,' the Count said, but only as an observation, not as a complaint.

  'I could be there in fifteen minutes,' Brunetti insisted.

  'All right. If you like,' the Count said and put down the phone.

  It took Brunetti less than that, even including the time he spent explaining to Paola where he was going and then listening to her greetings and best wishes to her parents, given as though she didn't speak to them at least once a day.

  The Count was in his study, wearing a dark grey suit and a sober tie. Brunetti sometimes wondered if the midwife who had delivered the heir to the Falier title had been taken aback by the emergence of a tiny baby already wearing a dark suit and tie, a thought he had never dared voice to Paola.

  Brunetti accepted the grappa the Count offered him, nodded in appreciation of its quality, settled himself on one of the sofas, and asked directly, 'Filipetto?'

  'What do you want to know about him?'

  'His phone number was listed in the address book of the young woman who was murdered last week. I'm sure you've read about it.'

  The Count nodded. 'But surely you don't suspect Notaio Filipetto of having murdered her’ he said with a small smile.

  'Hardly. I doubt that he's able to leave his apartment. I spoke to him earlier this evening and told him about the number, but he denied knowing her.' When the Count made no response, Brunetti added, 'My instinct is that he did know her.'

  'That's very like the Filipettos’ the Count said. They lie by impulse and inclination, all of them, the whole family, and always have.'

  'That’s a sweeping condemnation, to say the least’ Brunetti commented. 'But none the less true.'

  'How long have you known them?' Brunetti asked, interested in fact as well as opinion.

  'All my life, probably, at least by reputation. I don't think I had anything to do with them directly until I was back here after the war, when they served as notary, occasionally, when my family bought property.'

  Working for you?'

  'No.' The Count was emphatic. 'For the sellers.' 'Did they ever work for you?'

  'Once’ the Count said tersely. 'At the very beginning.' What happened?'

  The Count waited a long time before answering, sipped at his grappa, savoured it, and went on. 'You'll understand if I don't explain in detail’ he said, a genuflection to their mutual belief that only the most minimal explanation of any financial dealing should ever be given to anyone. Brunetti thought of Lele's refusal to discuss anything of importance on the phone and wondered if suspicion were now a genetic trait peculiar to Italians. 'Our purchase of a particular property was based on Filipetto's examination of the records of ownership, and he assured us that it belonged to one of the heirs. My father went ahead and paid a certain amount to the heir’ The Count paused here, allowing Brunetti time to conclude that the payment had been in cash, not recorded, most probably illegal, and hence the reason for his refusal to discuss the matter on the phone. 'And then, when the case had to be decided in court, it turned out that, not only did this person have no legal right to the property, but Filipetto was fully aware of that fact and had probably always been. I never learned whose idea the payment was, his or the heir's, but I'm certain it was divided equally between them.' Brunetti was surprised at how calm the Count's voice and expression remained. Perhaps after a lifetime spent swimming in the shoals of business, a shark was just another sort of fish. 'Since that time,' the Count went on, ‘I have had no dealings with him’

  Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after ten. What time do you have to leave tomorrow?' he asked.

  'It doesn't matter. I don't need much sleep any more. That need, like so many desires, seems to decrease with age’

  The Count's reference to age sent Brunetti's thoughts to Signora Jacobs. There's an old Austrian woman mixed up in this somehow,' he said. 'Hedwig Jacobs. Do you know her?'

  The name's familiar,' the Count said, 'but I can't remember how it is I might have known her. How is she involved?'

  'She was Guzzardi's lover.'

  'Poor woman, even if she is an Austrian’

  'Austrian or not, she remained loyal to him,' Brunetti said, surprised at his speed in leaping to the old woman's defence. When the Count didn't respond, Brunetti added, 'It was fifty years ago.'

  The Count considered that for some time and then sighed and said, 'Yes.' He got up, went to the drinks cabinet and came back with the bottle of grappa. He poured them both another glass, set the bottle on the table between them and returned to his seat. 'Fifty years,' the Count repeated, and Brunetti was struck by the sadness with which he spoke.

  Perhaps it was the hour, the strange intimacy of their sitting together in the silent palazzo, perhaps it was nothing more than the grappa, but Brunetti felt himself filled almost to overflowing with affection for this man he had known for decades, yet never really known.

  'Are you proud of what you did during the war?' Brunetti asked impulsively, as surprised at the question as was the Count.

  If he thought his father-in-law would have to consider before he answered, Brunetti was mistaken, for the answer came instantly. 'No, I'm not proud - I was at the beginning, I suppose. But I was young, little more than a boy. When the war finished I wasn't even eighteen yet, but I'd been living and acting like a man, or like I thought a man was supposed to act, for more than two years. But I had the moral age,' the Count began, paused for a moment and gave Brunetti a smile that seemed strangely sweet, 'of a boy, or the ethical age of a boy, if you will.'

  He looked down and studied the carpet at his feet and flicked one errant strand of the fringe back into place; Brunetti was reminded of Claudia Leonardo and the circumstances of her death. The Count's voice summoned him back. 'No one should ever be proud of killing a man, especially men like the ones we killed toward the end.' He looked up at Brunetti, willing him to understand. ‘I suppose everyone has an image of the typical German soldier: a blond giant with the death's head insignia of the SS on his shoulder, wiping the blood from his bayonet after putting it through the throat of, oh, I don't know, a nun or someone's mother. The men I was with said they saw some of those at the beginning, but at the end, they were just terrified boys dressed in mismatched jackets and trousers and calling them a uniform, and carrying guns and hoping they were a real army because they did.

  'But they were just boys, frightened out of their wits at the thought of death, just like we were.' He sipped at his grappa, then cradled the glass between his hands. 'I remember one of the last ones we killed.' His voice was calm, dispassionate, as if far removed from the events he was describing. 'He might have been sixteen at the most. We had a trial, or what we called a trial. But it was just like what they say in American movies: "Give him a fair trial and then hang him." Only we shot him. Oh, we thought we were important, such heroes, playing at being la
wyers and judges. He was a kid, absolutely helpless, and there was no reason we couldn't have kept him as a prisoner. They surrendered a week later. But by then he was dead.'

  The Count turned away and glanced toward the window. Lights were visible on the other side of the Canal, and he looked at them while he continued. ‘I wasn't part of the squad that shot him, but I had to lead him up to the wall and give him the handkerchief to tie around his eyes. I'm sure someone had read about that in some book or seen it in a movie. It always seemed to me, even then, that it would be better to let them see the men who were going to kill them. They deserved that much. Or that little. But maybe that's why we did it, so that they couldn't see us.'

  He paused for a long time, perhaps considering the explanation he'd just given, then went on. 'He was terrified. Just as I reached up to cover his eyes, he wet his pants. I felt no pity for him then; I suppose I even felt good about it, that we had so reduced this German to such shameful terror. It would have been kinder to ignore it, but there was no kindness in me then, nor in any of us. I looked down at the stain on his pants and he saw me looking. Then he started to cry, and I understood enough German to understand what he said. "I want my mother. I want my mother," and then he couldn't stop sobbing. His chin was down on his chest, and I couldn't tie the handkerchief around his eyes, so I moved away from him, and they shot him. I suppose I could have used the handkerchief to wipe away his tears but, as I said, I was a young man then, and there was no pity in me.'

  The Count turned away from the lights and back towards Brunetti. ‘I looked down at him after they shot him, and I saw his face covered with snot, and his chest with blood, and the war ended for me then, in that instant. I didn't think about it, not in big terms, I suppose not in anything I could call ethical terms, but I knew that what we had done was wrong and that we'd murdered him, just as much as if we'd found him sleeping in his bed, in his mother's house, and cut his throat. There was no glory in what we were doing, and no purpose whatsoever was served by it. The next day, we shot three more. With the first one I was party to it and I still thought it was right, but after that, even when I realized what we were doing, I still didn't have the courage to try to stop the others from doing it because I was afraid of what would happen to me if I did. So, to answer your question again, no, I'm not proud of what I did in the war.'