Transient Desires

by Donna Leon

  Indignant youth, discovering the viper hiding under the flag, perhaps wrapped in it. Brunetti remembered the shock of it, the impulse towards shame, the false comfort of the irrelevant fact that just about every nation had done the same, and probably would do so again.

  His son’s face was blank, his cheeks red, and Brunetti could think of nothing to say to him.

  They sat like that for some time until Raffi leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He turned his head and looked at his father. ‘Where did you learn all this, Papà? About history and people, and the way they are?’

  Brunetti had never thought about this and so had no answer to give his son. ‘I don’t know, Raffi. Part of it is that I listen to what people say and try not to make a decision until I’ve heard everything.’ That was badly stated, he knew. ‘And I read a lot.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Raffi asked as if fearing some sort of trick or evasion on his father’s part.

  Brunetti slapped his palms on to his knees and pushed himself to his feet. ‘I’m also more than three decades older than you are, so I’ve had more experience.’

  Raffi nodded. ‘That helps.’

  Smiling, Brunetti leaned across and roughed up his son’s hair, saying, ‘I wish I could get your mother to think that.’

  15

  The next morning, Brunetti went first to Signorina Elettra’s office to see if she had arrived. Indeed she had, today wearing a dark blue velvet suit with red piping around the lapels and down the outside of each trouser leg. It glowed with the reflected light of new velvet and gave her the look of an exceedingly modest commander of vast armies with a part-time job as the doorman at an exclusive London club. ‘I like your suit,’ he said after he’d entered the office and seen her standing near the copier.

  ‘Oh, how very kind, Commissario,’ she answered graciously. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t say this, but it is good to be back.’

  ‘Rome too busy?’

  ‘Too crowded,’ she said and gave a dramatic shudder, quite as if she were accustomed to living on a moor in Yorkshire and did not see another person for weeks at a time.

  This proved too much for Brunetti and he asked, ‘In comparison with?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Commissario. I didn’t mean the city itself, but the Questura. There are hundreds of people there.’

  ‘There must be more crime in Rome,’ Brunetti ventured.

  ‘Well,’ she said and gave a long, obviously thoughtful, pause, ‘the government and the Vatican are there.’

  Brunetti considered how best to respond to this. ‘I had more in mind the larger population,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ she agreed. ‘That certainly must be taken into account, as well.’ Then, detaching her attention from numbers, she said, ‘They have deliciously secret files there. No matter where you put your hand . . .’ she began, paused, considered, and corrected herself . . .’ speaking metaphorically, that is . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Brunetti interjected, and, deciding not to express interest in anything she considered ‘deliciously secret’, asked if there was any news about Marcello Vio’s condition; she shook her head.

  ‘And the two Americans?’

  ‘The one with the broken arm was released yesterday and is in a hotel. The father of the other one arrived from the United States yesterday afternoon.’ Seeing Brunetti’s response, she explained, ‘He was at a meeting in Washington and had to come back directly. He’s in a hotel in Mestre.’

  ‘And his daughter?

  ‘The hospital said there was no information available about her.’

  ‘Did you say it was a police matter?’

  ‘Yes, but it didn’t make any difference.’

  Brunetti thanked her and left the office but hesitated before going up the stairs to his own. It might be opportune to talk to Marcello Vio again while he was still in the hospital: people are not necessarily weaker while they are there, but they are often dispirited and thus more likely to respond to the chance of conversation.

  Intentionally, Brunetti took a longer way to the hospital and turned into Barbaria delle Tole, intent on passing by the window of the shop that had for years sold Japanese furniture and prints. He’d bought a squat ceramic vase there, years ago, that still stood in the kitchen, holding a bouquet of wooden cooking implements. His haste must have made him walk past it, he thought, and turned back, eager to delight, as he always did, in the pieces exposed in the window, especially a long calligraphy he’d been looking at for years, never sure where he could put it but always glad to see it again and renew the temptation to have it.

  It was gone. That is, the windows that had once held the calligraphy were papered over on the inside. A sign in the window read, ‘Cessata attività.’ He hardly needed the sign: the paper was enough to tell him the shop had gone out of business. There was no explanation. He went into the caffè next door and approached the bar. A white-haired man looked up.

  ‘What happened to the Japanese store?’ Brunetti asked, pointing his thumb to the left.

  The man shrugged and said, ‘Usual story. The owner of the building died, and his son doubled the rent when the lease expired.’ He picked up a glass and began to dry it with a not particularly clean towel.

  ‘Where’d they go?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I think they sell everything online now, but I’m not sure.’

  ‘You know what’s coming?’ Brunetti asked. Because they were speaking Veneziano, he felt he had the right to ask.

  ‘Murano glass,’ the man answered, emphasizing the first word.

  ‘Murano, China?’ Brunetti asked.

  The man snorted in response and picked up another glass.

  Brunetti thanked him, went back outside, and continued towards the hospital.

  Inside, he was directed to the ear, nose, and throat ward and didn’t bother to ask questions, familiar with the odd places patients ended up as a result of crowding.

  He followed the signs, passed through the columned garden on the ground floor, and, after asking his way a few times, found the ward. He stopped at the nurses’ desk, was recognized by one of them, and explained that he wanted to see Marcello Vio. He was directed to the third door on the right and found Vio in a two-bed room, near the window, his attention given to his phone, ear pods in place. He was sitting up, braced against a number of pillows. The other patient, an old man who had not shaved for days, slept in the nearer bed, one eye protected by a plastic cup bandaged over it.

  Brunetti stood at the door and watched Vio. He looked thinner than he had when Brunetti last saw him, thinner and paler, his face now clean-shaven, drawn with stress or tiredness. His expression suddenly changed in response to whatever was happening on the screen. Tension, fear, concentration led him to push one of the pods deeper into his ear; soon came sagging relief. He looked up, turned to the window and then to the door. The sight of Brunetti washed all expression from his face, but then a trickle of some unpleasant emotion caused his eyes to narrow and his hand to lower the phone on to the bed cover.

  He raised both hands and removed the pods but said nothing.

  Brunetti approached the bed and extended his hand; Vio shook it and quickly returned his hand to his phone, as if to save it from Brunetti’s interest.

  ‘Good morning, Signor Vio. I thought I’d come along to see how you are. I thought they’d let you go sooner.’

  Vio shook his head. ‘No, they decided not to take the risk and to keep me here.’

  ‘Risk?’ Brunetti inquired mildly.

  ‘I broke a rib and cracked two others, and they’re afraid that the broken one could still hurt my lung.’ As he spoke, his hand sought out the ribs under discussion and covered them protectively.

  Brunetti nodded enough times to give evidence of concern.

  Vio looked down at his hands.

  Uninvited, Brunetti moved
around the bed and pulled the chair standing against the wall up close to Vio and sat down, only an arm’s length from him. He watched Vio move minimally away from him, then stop with an involuntary groan when he moved too quickly.

  ‘When we were interrupted, Signor Vio, you were just telling me that you took one of your uncle’s boats and went across the canal to Campo Santa Margherita.’ Brunetti’s lie emerged seamlessly.

  He waited until Vio nodded, and then went on. ‘I live not far from the Campo,’ Brunetti said untruthfully, ‘so I know what it’s like late at night, how crowded it is with students and young people meeting and talking together over a drink.’

  He gave a small laugh to introduce another lie. ‘My son often goes there with his friends.’ Vio remained silent.

  ‘He meets girls there, of course.’ Again Brunetti gave a small laugh, then asked, ‘Is that why you went there that night, Signor Vio?’ Then, before Vio could answer, Brunetti added, ‘I’d like you to think very carefully before you answer that question, Signor Vio.’

  Vio’s eyes grew wider, perhaps with surprise. They were sitting so close that Brunetti could see the sweat in front of Vio’s ears. ‘Why do you say that, Signore?’ Vio asked, speaking very softly. He pushed air from his chest, then took a deep breath, only to push it out again. He placed his palms beside him on the mattress and pushed himself higher against the pillow, moving with the caution of an old man.

  ‘Is this like being in the Questura?’ Vio asked, sounding suddenly very young. He raised his hand and pointed at Brunetti and then at himself. ‘You and me, I mean,’ turning this last phrase into a question.

  ‘In a way it is, yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Only there’s no recording being made.’ To show his good faith, Brunetti took his phone out and turned it off, then showed the unresponsive screen to Vio.

  ‘So it’s more like a conversation?’ Vio asked.

  ‘Something like that,’ Brunetti confirmed. ‘There’s no recording and no witness, so it can never be used as evidence.’

  ‘About what?’ Vio asked.

  ‘About what happened last weekend, out in the laguna.’

  ‘With the girls?’ Vio asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Vio said with whatever force he could muster.

  ‘What happened?’

  Brunetti saw him bite his lower lip and close his eyes. He opened them after a moment and said, ‘I hit a bricola. I was in the right canal: I know the laguna like I know . . .’ he began but proved incapable of finding a comparison. In Brunetti’s silence, he amended it to, ‘I know it very well.’

  ‘But still you hit the bricola,’ Brunetti said and waved his hand towards Vio’s chest, ‘very hard.’ He waited for Vio to respond, but he chose not to.

  ‘You were knocked against something,’ Brunetti went on, ‘hard enough to break your rib; one of the girls broke her arm in two places, and the other one’s still in intensive care.’ He waited three long beats and added, ‘She’s very badly injured.’

  Vio said something, but with his head bent down and speaking to his hands; it was impossible to understand what it was. ‘Excuse me?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I didn’t want to do that,’ Vio said.

  ‘No one wants those things, Marcello. That’s why they’re accidents. It was dark, you were going too fast, and you ran into something you had every reason to know might be in the water.’ Then, making his voice sound cool and dispassionate, he went on. ‘As the person in charge, you were responsible for the se­­curity of everyone on the boat.’

  Vio remained silent, shaking his head a few times, as if this would somehow counter Brunetti’s remarks and erase the collision with the thick wooden pole floating loose in the water.

  ‘I took them to the hospital,’ Vio said petulantly.

  Suddenly fed up with Vio’s justifications, Brunetti said, ‘She hit her face, the other one broke her arm, but you took a long time to get them to the Pronto Soccorso.’

  ‘I . . . I . . . didn’t want . . . to . . .’ Vio began.

  ‘You didn’t want to be stopped by the police and tested for alcohol, Marcello. Let’s be honest about this, all right? So you took a long time, the girl bleeding all over the boat.’ Brunetti allowed himself to exaggerate to worsen Vio’s position.

  Vio looked up, suddenly angry. ‘Did Berto tell you that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who told me, Marcello. What matters is that you did it.’

  Brunetti stopped, and was surprised to feel himself shaking with emotion. Strangely, he found it impossible to define what emotion it was: some mix of rage and pity and profound sadness that youth could be so rash and so vulnerable and so easily ­damaged. He waited for the tremors to stop, keeping his eyes on the floor and then the wall: anything but the face of the man in the bed.

  Vio made a sudden move, and Brunetti looked up to see him drag the elbow of his pyjama sleeve across his face. Brunetti forced himself to relax the muscles of his stomach and unlocked his jaw.

  Forgetting he was a father, remembering only that he was a policeman, Brunetti returned his attention to Vio and said, ‘You’ve broken a number of laws, Signor Vio; the most serious one is that you failed to offer help to an injured person.’ When Vio remained silent, Brunetti added, but in a calmer voice, ‘You’re a boatman: you know that’s your duty.’

  Vio’s voice was very soft when he said, ‘But we did. Berto rang the alarm. He hit it a couple of times.’ Vio looked at Brunetti, his eyes eager that he should be believed. When Brunetti did not respond, he said, ‘Berto did it. I saw him. He’ll tell you.’ His voice had risen as he spoke. ‘Then we got back in the boat. We didn’t want them to see us when they came to get them.’ He reached his hand towards Brunetti, winced at the sudden pain, and pulled it back.

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. He had no doubt that Vio believed Duso had activated the alarm and that help was coming. But it wasn’t coming, and it didn’t arrive until fate or chance sent a smoker out into the night to have a cigarette.

  16

  Both men remained silent for some time. Vio kept his head bent and shifted his phone from side to side on his lap. Brunetti tried to sort through the tangle of his own thoughts and feelings. He had no idea of what judges – should it ever come to a trial – would decide. How measure, how prove, a person’s intent? Only actions mattered, and surely they had taken them to the hospital with the clear purpose of getting them medical help.

  ‘Had you been drinking?’ Brunetti asked.

  Vio’s surprise could not be masked. ‘No, Signore. I don’t drink if I’m going to be in the boat.’

  ‘Unlike most of your colleagues,’ Brunetti said neutrally.

  Vio actually smiled, as though he’d not thought of this.

  ‘Drugs?’ Brunetti asked in the same dispassionate tone.

  ‘I don’t like them.’

  As if talking to a friend about some trivial matter, Brunetti asked, ‘Did you ever try them?’

  ‘Once. When I was about fourteen. I don’t know what it was, but it made me sick, really sick. So I never did it again.’

  ‘Were you in charge of the boat when the accident happened?’

  ‘Of course,’ Vio answered, unable to hide his surprise at such a question. He must have read Brunetti’s expression, for he said, ‘Aside from two other men who work for my uncle, I’m the only one who can pilot that boat.’ Vio could have been reciting the Pythagorean Theorem, although Brunetti doubted he was familiar with it.

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti responded. And then, curious, he asked, ‘Doesn’t Duso know how?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I taught him, so he’s good.’

  ‘But not good enough for your uncle’s boat?’

  Vio was a long time in answering the question. ‘It’s against the rules. He doesn’t have a licence, so he can’t drive anything over 40 hors
epower.’ After a moment’s reflections, Vio added, ‘Besides, he could never handle that boat.’

  If Brunetti were to say the same thing to Vianello, he realized, or indeed to any of the men who were familiar with boats, proposing that someone would not be allowed to drive a boat bigger than permitted by his licence, they would fall about laughing. A licence was a suggestion, not a limitation; it was a kind of non-restrictive formality, and some people piloted any boat they chose to, regardless of the power of its engine. Not the really big transport boats, Brunetti admitted to himself, but certainly the smaller ones.

  ‘At the Questura,’ Brunetti began, ‘you said your licence was good for all of your uncle’s boats.

  Vio’s face still registered pride in his own capacities when he continued, ‘Yes. My uncle made me get them all: he said he didn’t want any trouble with the water police.’ He paused, as if uncertain whether to say what he was thinking, and then added, ‘I got them all with no trouble. First try.’ Vio’s smiled broadened as he said this, it made him look younger.

  ‘Good for you,’ Brunetti congratulated him. ‘How long have you worked for your uncle?’

  ‘Oh, I started when I was a kid. Just loading and unloading the boats.’

  ‘How old were you?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Fifteen. He wouldn’t take me until then.’

  ‘Because of school?’

  Vio laughed at this, then gasped in a low breath as though the act had hurt him. ‘Oh, no. To work as an apprentice, I had to be at least fifteen. He didn’t care about the school.’ Vio’s mouth fell open after he said that. ‘I shouldn’t tell you something like that, should I?’

  This time it was Brunetti who laughed. ‘I was helping my father unload boats when I was fifteen, so don’t think about it.’

  ‘He paid me,’ Vio said earnestly, as though this private honesty would make up for taking his nephew out of school.