Death in a Strange Country (16 page)

‘I thought I’d wear the
dark blue one,’ he said, holding out the flowers and bending over the tub. ‘I
brought you these.’

The Look changed into The
Smile, which could still, even after twenty years with her, occasionally reduce
his knees to jelly. A hand, then an arm, lifted out of the water. She touched
the back of his wrist, leaving it wet and warm, then pulled her arm back under
the surface of bubbles. ‘I’ll be out in five minutes.’ Her eyes caught his and
held. ‘If you’d been earlier, then you could have had a bath, too.’

He laughed and broke the
mood. ‘But then we would have been late for dinner.’ True enough. True enough.
But he cursed the time he had lost by stopping for a drink. He left the
bathroom and went down the long hall to the kitchen and placed the flowers in
the sink, plugged it, and added enough water to cover their stems.

In their bedroom, he saw
that she had placed a long red dress across the bed. He didn’t remember the
dress, but he seldom did remember them, and he thought it best not to mention
it. If it turned out to be a new dress and he remarked on it, he would sound
like he thought she was buying too many clothes, and if it was something she
had worn before, he would sound like he paid no attention to her and hadn’t
bothered to notice it before. He sighed at the eternal inequality of marriage,
opened the closet, and decided that the grey suit would be better. He removed
his trousers and jacket, took off his tie, and studied his shirt in the mirror,
wondering if he could wear it that evening. Deciding against it, he took it off
and draped it across the back of a chair, then began dressing himself anew,
vaguely bothered with having to do it but too much an Italian to consider the
possibility of not doing so.

A few minutes later,
Paola came into the bedroom, golden hair free, the towel now wrapped around her
body, and walked to the dresser where she kept her underwear and sweaters.
Casually, carelessly, she tossed the towel onto the bed and bent to open a
drawer. Slipping a new tie under his collar and beginning to knot it, he
studied her as she stepped into a pair of black panties, then pulled a bra
around herself and hooked it. To distract himself, he thought of physics, which
he had studied at the university. He doubted that he would ever understand the
dynamics and stress forces of female undergarments: so many things to hold,
support, keep in place. He finished knotting
his tie and pulled his
jacket from the closet. By the time he had it on, she was zipping the side of
her dress and stepping into a pair of black shoes. His friends often complained
of waiting eternities while their wives dressed or put on make-up; Paola always
beat him to the door.

She reached into her side
of the closet and drew out a floor-length coat that looked like it was made of
fish scales. For a moment, he caught her looking at the mink that hung at the
end of a row of clothing, but she ignored it and closed the door. Her father
had given her the mink for Christmas a few years ago, but she had not worn it
for the last two years. Brunetti didn’t know if this was because it was already
out of style - he assumed that furs
did go
out of style; certainly
everything else his wife or daughter wore did - or because of the growing
anti-fur sentiment expressed both in the Press and at his dinner-table.

Two months ago, a quiet
family dinner had exploded into a heated confrontation about the rights of
animals, his children insisting that it was wrong to wear furs, that animals
had the same rights as humans, and to deny this was to engage in ‘speciescentricity’,
a term Brunetti was sure they had made up just to use against him in the
argument. He had listened for ten minutes as the argument went back and forth
between them and Paola, they demanding equal rights for all the species on the
planet, she attempting to make a distinction between animals capable of reason
and those which were not. Finally, out of patience with Paola for attempting
rational opposition to an argument that seemed to him idiotic, he had reached
over the table and poked with his fork at the chicken bones that lay at the
side of his daughter’s plate. ‘We can’t wear them, but we can eat them, eh?’ he
asked, got up, and went inside to read the paper and drink a grappa.

In any case, the mink
remained in the closet and they set out for the Casinò.

They got off the
vaporetto at the San Marcuola stop and walked down the narrow streets and over
the hump-backed bridge that led to the iron gates of the Casinò, open now and
extending a welcoming embrace to all who chose to enter. On the outer walls,
the ones visible from the Grand Canal, were inscribed the words
‘Noh Nobis’,
Not For Us, which, during the ages of the Republic, had declared the Casinò
off-limits to Venetians. Only foreigners were to be fleeced; Venetians were to
invest their money wisely and not squander it on dice and gaming. How he
wished, this endless evening yawning out before him, that the rules of the
Republic still pertained and could free him of the next few hours. They entered
the marble-paved lobby, and immediately a tuxedoed assistant manager came from
the entrance desk and greeted him by name. ‘Dottor Brunetti. Signora,’ - this
with a bow that put a neat horizontal pleat in his red cummerbund. ‘We are
honoured to have you here. Your party is in the restaurant.’ With a wave as
graceful as the bow, he pointed to the right, to the single elevator that stood
there, open and waiting. ‘If you’d come this way, I’ll take you to them.’

Paola’s hand grabbed at
his, squeezing it hard, cutting him off from saying that they knew the way.
Instead, all three crowded into the tiny box of the elevator and smiled
pleasant smiles at one another as it inched itself towards the top floor of the
building.

The elevator racketed to
a halt, the assistant manager opened the twin doors and held them while
Brunetti and Paola got off, then led them into the brightly lit restaurant.
Brunetti looked around as he walked in, checking for the nearest exit and for
anyone who looked capable of violence, a survey which he gave, entirely
automatically, to any public room he entered. In a corner near a window that
gave over the Grand Canal, he saw his parents-in-law and their friends, the
Pastores, an elderly couple from Milan who were Paola’s Godparents and the
oldest friends of her parents and who were, because of that, placed utterly
beyond reproach or criticism.

As he and Paola drew near
the round table, both of the older men, dressed in dark suits which were
identical in quality, however different in colour, rose to their feet. Paola’s
father kissed her on the cheek, then shook Brunetti’s hand, while Doctor
Pastore bent to kiss Paola’s hand and then embraced Brunetti and kissed him on
both cheeks. Because he never felt fully at ease with the man, this display of
intimacy always made Brunetti uncomfortable.

One of the things that
spoiled these dinners, this yearly ritual that he had inherited upon marrying
Paola, was that he always arrived to find that dinner had been ordered by
Doctor Pastore. The Doctor was, of course, solicitous, insisting that he hoped
no one minded if he took the liberty of ordering, but it was the season for
this, the season for that, truffles were at their best, the first mushrooms
were just beginning to come in. And he was always right, and the meal was
always delicious, but Brunetti disliked not being able to order what he wanted
to eat, even if what he wanted turned out to be less good than what they ended
up eating. And, each year, he chided himself for being stupid and pigheaded,
yet he could not conquer the flash of irritation he felt when he arrived to
find that the meal was already planned and ordered, and he had not been
consulted in the ordering of it. Male ego against male ego? Surely, it was
nothing more than that. Questions of palate and cuisine had nothing whatsoever
to do with it.

There were the usual
compliments, then the matter of where to sit. Brunetti ended up with his back
to the window, Doctor Pastore to his left and Paola’s father directly opposite
him.

‘How nice to see you
again, Guido,’ Doctor Pastore said. ‘Orazio and I were just talking about you.’

‘Badly, I hope,’ Paola
said and laughed, but then she turned her attention to her mother, who was
fingering the material of her dress, a sign that it must be a new one, and to
Signora Pastore, who sat with one of Paola’s hands still in hers.

He gave the Doctor a
polite, inquisitive glance. ‘We were talking about this American. You’re in
charge of it, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Dottore, I am.’

‘Why would someone want
to kill an American? He was a soldier, wasn’t he? Robbery? Revenge? Jealousy?’
Because the Doctor was Italian, nothing else came to his mind.

‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said,
answering all five questions with one word. He paused as two waiters approached
the table with two large platters of seafood antipasto. They offered the
platters, serving each person in turn. Idly, more interested in murder than the
meal, the Doctor waited until everyone had been served and the food
complimented and then returned to the initial subject.

‘Have you any ideas?’

‘Nothing definite,’
Brunetti answered and ate a shrimp.

‘Drugs?’ asked Paola’s
father, displaying a worldliness superior to his friend’s.

Brunetti repeated his ‘Perhaps’,
and ate a few more shrimp, delighted to find them fresh and sweet.

At the sound of the word ‘drugs’,
Paola’s mother turned to them and asked them what they were talking about.

‘Guido’s latest murder,’
her husband said, making it sound, somehow, as though it were one he had
committed rather than one he had been sent to solve. ‘I’m sure it will turn out
to have been a street crime. What do they call them in America - a “mugging”?’
He sounded surprisingly like Patta.

Because Signora Pastore
had heard nothing about the murder, her husband had to repeat the whole story,
turning to Brunetti occasionally to ask about details or for confirmation of
fact. Brunetti didn’t mind this at all, for it made the meal pass more quickly
than it usually did. And so, with talk of murder and mayhem, they ate their way
through risotto, mixed grilled fish, four vegetables, salad,
tiramis
ù
,
and coffee.

While the men sipped at
their grappa, Doctor Pastore, as he did each year, asked the ladies if they
cared to join him in the Casinò below. When they agreed, he responded with a
delight new-minted each year and pulled from the inner pocket of his jacket
three small suede bags, which he placed in front of them.

As she did each year,
Paola protested, ‘Oh, Dottore, you shouldn’t,’ which, as usual, she said while
busily opening the bag to reveal the Casinò chips which the bags always
contained. Brunetti noticed the same combination he did each year and knew that
the total would be two hundred thousand lire for each woman, enough to divert
them while Doctor Pastore spent an hour or two playing blackjack and usually
winning back far more than he had provided for the ladies’ amusement.

The three men rose from
the table, held the chairs of the women, and the six of them started for the Casinò
gaming rooms on the floor below.

Because they couldn’t all
fit into the elevator, the women were put inside while the men decided to use
the main staircase to go down to the main gambling hall. Brunetti found Count
Orazio on his right and tried to think of something to say to his
father-in-law.

‘Did you know that
Richard Wagner died here?’ he asked, forgetting now how it was that he knew
this, since Wagner was hardly a composer he liked.

‘Yes,’ the Count
answered. ‘Hardly soon enough.’

And then, luckily, they
were in the main gaming room, and Count Orazio joined his wife to watch as she
played roulette, taking leave of Brunetti with a friendly smile and something
that flirted with being a bow.

Brunetti had first been
to a Casinò not in his native Venice, where no one but compulsive or
professional gamblers paid any attention to the tables, but in Las Vegas, where
he had stopped while driving across America many years ago. Because his first
experience of gambling had been there, he always associated the practice with
bright lights, loud music, and the high whoops of those who won or lost. He
remembered a stage show, helium-filled balloons bouncing against the ceilings,
people dressed in T-shirts, jeans, shorts. Consequently, though he came here to
the Casinò each year, he was always surprised to find the atmosphere somewhere
between that of an art museum and, worse, a church. Few people smiled, voices
were never raised above a whisper, and no one ever appeared to be having any
fun. In the midst of this solemnity, he missed the honest shouts of victory or
defeat, the wild shrieks of joy that came with changes of fortune.