The Golden Egg cgb-22

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti did as he was told and chose a bottle of simple Cabernet. White might have been better as a follow-up to the spritz, but if Paola wanted red, then red it would be.

  She put the frying pan on the stove, glanced at her watch, and took the glass he offered her. She sipped, nodded her thanks, and asked, ‘You think there’s time to watch the sun set?’

  It had already happened when they got to the living room, so they contented themselves with sitting on the sofa and watching the light disappear in the west. Before Brunetti could do the husbandly thing and ask Paola how her day had been, she said, ‘Her behaviour’s strange, isn’t it?’

  Superstition stopped him from asking Paola how she would behave if she were to lose her son; indeed, it banished the question even before it was fully formed in his mind. ‘How’s she supposed to behave?’ Brunetti asked. ‘I don’t know if he’s her only son, or only child.’ He considered this, then said, ‘Not that it matters, does it?’

  Eyes still on the light that continued to diminish beyond the rooftops, she shook her head and sipped at her wine.

  Brunetti began to wonder how much of their interest, now, was concern and how much was curiosity and why one was noble and the other base. Before he married and became a father, he was able to mouth platitudes about how horrible the death of a child must be for a parent, but now he could not say those things, nor could he allow himself to think of them. Like a medieval peasant, he refused to open his door to the carrier of plague.

  The light grew dimmer still. Paola looked into her glass and said, ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said. About suicide.’ She took a very small sip. ‘I wonder if it’s possible that he got to the point where his life was so bad, he couldn’t stand it any more?’

  Brunetti thought about this and said, ‘He’d have to know it was bad, wouldn’t he?’

  She turned her head to him sharply, mouth open. But before she could ask him what he meant, Brunetti saw her hear her own question and begin to consider it. Finally she said, ‘Of course. If that’s the only life he knew, then it was just that: life. Something worse would have to have happened, I suppose.’

  They remained silent, each trying to imagine what could be worse than the life they had observed, until Paola said, ‘Or maybe he simply found them and thought they were something else and ate them.’

  ‘Rizzardi suggested that. It would depend on how much he understood.’ Saying that, Brunetti realized that this was the unfathomable puzzle here: how enter into another’s mind save by words?

  ‘Only God knows that, I’m afraid,’ Paola said. Then, ‘But it might explain the mother’s behaviour.’

  ‘Guilt?’

  Paola took another sip, shrugged, and finished the wine. ‘I think I’ll start cooking.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Brunetti said.

  The meal was quiet: the children sensed the sobriety of their parents’ mood and responded in kind. Chiara spoke of an argument she’d had. A friend had wanted Chiara to call and ask her parents if she could come to dinner at Chiara’s house and stay on to study so that she could see her boyfriend; Chiara had refused, and now the girl wasn’t speaking to her any more.

  ‘Why’d you refuse?’ Raffi asked, not surprised, just curious.

  Chiara speared a shrimp from her risotto and studied it, as though asking it to supply her with the correct answer. ‘Her parents have always been very nice to me. It didn’t seem right to lie to them.’

  Brunetti waited for Paola to put on her Socrates costume and ask Chiara what she would have done if her friend’s parents had not been nice to her, but she remained silent, finishing her own risotto.

  ‘Isn’t there any mineral water?’ Raffi asked.

  ‘No, and there won’t be any more,’ Chiara answered, then added, ‘This house is a mineral-water-free zone.’

  ‘Declared so by you?’ Raffi asked calmly. After all, he’d known her all her life, and little could surprise him from or about his sister.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ Raffi asked.

  ‘Because there’s no guarantee of what’s in it.’

  ‘Water, presumably,’ Raffi said with his mother’s detached irony.

  ‘Yes, water. Certainly,’ Chiara said, striving for that same tone but falling short of it. ‘And lots of other things, none of which we know about.’

  ‘And this?’ Raffi asked, holding up the pitcher he now realized must contain tap water. ‘Aside from too much chlorine, that is?’

  ‘That’s tested, at least,’ Chiara said. ‘The water we were drinking last week, in case you bothered to read the label on the bottles,’ she told him, ‘is not.’ Here began a dynamic Brunetti had been observing for years. Chiara was gearing herself up for an argument: it was audible in her tone. Raffi was getting ready to beat her argument aside by use of superior age and information.

  Brunetti tuned back in. ‘. . . from Puglia, from a spring that is four kilometres from a chemical factory that was shut down by a court order three weeks ago.’ Raffi tried to speak, but she rammed through whatever it was he started to say and kept going. ‘Because they have been dumping chemicals into the earth for thirty years. Which means – though a lawyer would say it only suggests – that the chemicals are now in the groundwater and thus in the mineral water. And if you want to believe that the list of mineral quantities on the bottle labels even flirts with the truth, you are welcome to do so. I’ll drink tap water.’

  Brunetti realized that, had she been a true avatar of Paola, she would here have picked up the pitcher and filled her glass. But she was new to this and so she speared another shrimp and ate it, ignoring the dramatic possibilities offered by the pitcher. In a few years, Brunetti thought, she’d think of that and do it and, sooner or later, she’d be unbeatable.

  Raffi, not to be daunted, asked, ‘You sure it’s not because you’re tied of carrying the bottles up the steps?’

  ‘I don’t have anything to do with plastic bottles,’ Chiara said loftily. Before Raffi could argue, Paola declared a truce by getting to her feet and asking him to help her carry the plates from the table.

  The cake with fresh blackcurrants and whipped cream sealed the peace accord. Brunetti, a mere spectator to the discussion, said nothing of his delight that Chiara had put an end to his having to carry glass bottles of mineral water to the fourth floor, a realization that made all the sweeter his second piece of cake.

  7

  When he reached his office the next day, he found a note on his desk, asking him to call Dottor Rizzardi. After he and the pathologist had exchanged greetings, Rizzardi said, ‘This Cavanella doesn’t exist.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti said. ‘You did an autopsy on him yesterday.’

  Rizzardi weighed that for sarcasm and apparently heard none. ‘I’m sorry, Guido; I was probably speaking for effect. The secretary here called the Ufficio Anagrafe to report his death, but they have no record of him at that address.’

  ‘Then he’s resident somewhere else,’ Brunetti said, almost embarrassed at having to state the obvious.

  ‘Not in the city,’ Rizzardi said tersely. ‘The office checked when we asked: he’s not now and has never been resident in Venice.’

  ‘Then in the Veneto, I’d guess,’ Brunetti said, thinking back to the very few words he had heard the mother say and recalling the telltale Veneto cadence.

  ‘That’s not our job, Guido,’ Rizzardi said with unexpected force. ‘We don’t have to identify them, only find the cause of death.’

  ‘I went to his home,’ Brunetti explained, ‘but his mother refused to talk to me.’

  Rizzardi did not comment on that. He stated the rules: ‘Until we have an identification, we have to keep him here.’

  ‘I know,’ Brunetti answered. Then, thinking of how the man might be identified, he asked, ‘How old do you think he was?’

  ‘I’d guess he was in his early forties,’ Rizzardi said. Then, as an afterthought, letting the doctor in him speak, ‘He was in ex
cellent physical condition. His teeth showed signs of very little work. No sign of surgery, organs in perfect shape.’

  ‘Are you sure about the age?’ Brunetti asked, amazed that a face could so long have remained untouched by time and care, but he knew better than to question the pathologist’s judgement.

  ‘It’s surprising, I know,’ Rizzardi agreed. ‘I’ve seen it before. The less contact people have with the world, the less they age.’

  ‘He wasn’t a hermit, Ettore,’ Brunetti said, trying for lightness.

  ‘All I know about him is what you told me, Guido: he was deaf and simple-minded,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I’ve seen cases of it before, and I’m trying to give you an explanation based on experience. With retarded people – or whatever we’re supposed to call them now – and the blind, they don’t seem to age the way the rest of us do, or at least their bodies don’t show it the way ours do.’ When Brunetti failed to comment, the pathologist clarified, ‘From looking at his organs, and his teeth, that’s my estimate.’

  In some way Brunetti did not understand, Rizzardi’s explanation made sense. Less contact with the world: less suffering. But less joy. ‘Thanks, Ettore. It might help. I’ll try to confirm at least his name. I’ll call you when I do.’

  ‘It’s what was on the paper that came with him,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I don’t know anything more than that.’

  ‘I’ll call.’

  ‘Good,’ Rizzardi said, and was gone.

  Brunetti pulled the cover sheet of a report on an attempted escape from the local prison towards him. Because the escape had failed, he saw no reason to keep or pass on the report. He flipped it over, wrote Cavanella’s name and address at the top, and began to make a list. He’d need to locate a birth certificate, or a baptismal certificate. There was the dead man’s carta d’identità, which would most likely be in his house, and a card for the medical services he was sure to have been receiving. Brunetti doubted that Davide Cavanella would have a criminal record, but he could check that, as well. School records.

  He sat and puzzled over the places where a person might be hidden. He had played the game as a boy, he and his friends lurking and disappearing in the calli and entrance ways of his neighbourhood and, as they grew older, farther and farther from home. The memory came to him now of how he had hidden, one spring day, beneath the canvas cover of a boat moored not far from his home and managed to fall asleep under it.

  It was a desperate, high-pitched voice calling his name that woke him and catapulted him out from under the cloth. His mother stood on the Fondamenta della Tana, wearing her house slippers and her apron, her hair hanging partly loose on one side. At the sudden sight of her amidst his friends, Brunetti saw the grey in her hair for the first time and noticed how very poorly she was dressed, with a patched apron and a sweater darned at both elbows. For the first time in his life, seeing her there, in front of his friends, Brunetti felt ashamed of her, and then of himself for feeling this.

  When she saw him, his mother came to the edge of the riva and reached down a hand to help him scramble back up. Her grip was firm, and he was surprised that she could so easily haul him up beside her.

  He stood in front of her, head bowed, almost as tall as she, and muttered, ‘I fell asleep, Mamma. I’m sorry.’

  He had seen the looks on the faces of his friends. To be guests of her hospitality was one thing, but to see her out here, dressed for the kitchen and screaming her son’s name . . . that was quite different. What would they think of him? And of her?

  He saw her right hand move, and he stood rigid, fearing the blow he knew he deserved. Instead, she ruffled his hair and said, ‘Then it’s a good thing I came and found you, isn’t it, tesoro, or else you might have been baked like a chicken in the oven down there and no one knowing what was happening to you.’ She waited for him to respond, perhaps to laugh, but he was paralysed by love and unable to speak.

  ‘And no one to baste you with olive oil, either,’ she said with a laugh. Taking his hand in hers, she turned and led him back towards home, inviting all of his friends to come back with them and have a piece of the cake she had just pulled out of the oven.

  Had Davide Cavanella’s mother baked for him and his friends? Had she invited them back to the house in San Polo? Brunetti’s train of thought stopped on the riva of his imagination and asked him why he thought Davide Cavanella had friends. Apparently speechless, how could he communicate enough to make a friend other than by using sign, had he known to use it?

  Brunetti drew lines from the pieces of information he thought he needed and connected them to the people or places that might provide them. Applications for all of his documents would be – or should be, he reminded himself – kept at the Ufficio Anagrafe. Their own files would have records of any arrests, though Brunetti still found this difficult to believe. Signorina Elettra could certainly find any other indications left to bureaucracy by Cavanella’s passing through this world.

  But where could he find out if Davide had had any friends, and if his mother – if the woman who opened the door was his mother – had baked cakes for him or for him and his friends? He got to his feet and went downstairs to start Signorina Elettra in pursuit of the answers to the first questions.

  Brunetti began by asking her if the presentation the previous day had been interesting.

  Did she sniff? ‘Amateurs,’ she said, then looked up and asked, ‘What is it, Commissario?’

  When he had explained that Cavanella was not registered as resident in the city, though he had lived there for decades, he handed her the list of the information he wanted.

  She studied it for long moments, then set it to the side of her computer, saying, ‘You know you could do this officially.’ He did not understand the reluctance he sensed in her. Usually a chance to make a visit – an unauthorized visit, it must be admitted – to the database of any city office was to invite Signorina Elettra to a few hours at the fairground. ‘Or perhaps Pucetti, or even Vianello, could find all of this for you,’ she said, moving the list slightly to the left.

  ‘If you’d rather not,’ Brunetti began, giving voice to the unthinkable.

  She placed the very tip of one red-nailed finger at

  the centre of the list, smiled up at him, and said, ‘All right, Commissario: I’ll confess.’

  He smiled his readiness.

  ‘A friend,’ she said, using the masculine form of the noun and thus rousing his interest, ‘is arriving at the airport at two, and I thought I might go out to meet him.’

  ‘Does he know where you work?’ Brunetti surprised them both by asking.

  She answered almost without thinking. ‘Yes, I thought it best to tell him from the beginning.’

  Interestinger and interestinger, Brunetti thought. The beginning of what? ‘Then perhaps Foa could take you out on the launch.’ Before she could question this, he explained, ‘He can drop you off and wait for you both. I think it’s good that we show the luggage handlers we’re still interested in them.’ The police had failed to stop the theft of property from suitcases for years now, and it was very unlikely that the sight of a police launch moored to the dock would have any effect on their continued depredations, but it was the best excuse he could come up with at such short notice.

  ‘But they’re over in the main terminal.’

  ‘The word will pass to them, you can be sure.’

  She smiled. ‘I’d certainly hope so.’

  ‘Have Foa take you home,’ he added casually, perhaps too casually, for she looked at him and smiled.

  ‘I’ll have him take me to the Misericordia,’ she began, paused to allow Brunetti to try to remember how close to it she lived, and then added, ‘We can walk from there.’

  Brunetti had long wondered what Signorina Elettra would think of his interest in her private life. It would be too much to say that her behaviour was at times provocative, just as it would be difficult to find a more suitable word to describe it. He had been too obvious in his offer of Foa’s h
elp, but there was no way now for him to retract the offer.

  He picked up the paper. ‘I’ll ask Pucetti to do it through official channels.’ Then, with a smile, he added, ‘The practice will be good for him.’

  ‘Probably slow him down,’ she said and got to her feet.

  She stopped at the door and said over her shoulder, ‘It won’t be necessary for Foa to take me, Commissario: I’ve got some things to do first, so I’m leaving now.’ She did not explain what those things were, nor why she was leaving to do them four hours before she had to be at the airport. Brunetti raised a hand in acknowledgement and farewell, vowing to himself that he would tell no one what she had said.

  He went to the officers’ squad room and explained the anomaly of Cavanella’s missing residence, then gave Pucetti the note of his name and address and the places where documents might be found. The young officer was puzzled to learn that Davide Cavanella was not registered as a resident of the city. ‘If you’ve seen him here for years, Commissario, then he’s got to be in the system somewhere,’ the younger man said. ‘If he was deaf, then he probably went to that school in Santa Croce. And there’s got to be some association for people who use sign.’ He added that to Brunetti’s list, expanding

  the possibilities. ‘If they live near San Stin, maybe the parroco knew them. And if he worked at this dry cleaning place, then they’d have records.’ He added these to the list.

  ‘I suspect they let him stay there out of charity,’ Brunetti offered. He knew these women were his first good hope of discovering anything about the dead man. He tried to remember when he had first seen Davide – no, call him by his surname, as though he were a real adult and not a person frozen in childhood – Cavanella there. Ten years ago? Longer than that?

  He asked Pucetti for a phone book, which the young officer produced from a drawer in his desk. Only one dry cleaner’s was listed in San Polo. Brunetti wrote the number in his notebook, reluctant to call them until he got back to his own office.