Suffer the Little Children (17 page)

Brunetti was busy calculating the sheer volume of stone. There would have been boatloads, truckfuls, whole acres of the things. Too many of them to hide, enormously expensive to transport, how could anyone organize such a thing? And for what purpose?

Almost as if he had posed the questions out loud, she said, ‘To sell them, Commissario. To dig them up and take them away at the city's expense – hand-cut, centuries-old volcanic rock paving stones – and sell them. That's why.' He thought she had finished but she added, ‘Even the French and the Austrians, when they invaded – and God knows they stripped us clean – at least they left us the paving stones. Just thinking about it is enough to make me weep.'

As it would, Brunetti realized, any Venetian. He found his imagination working, wondering who might have organized this, who would have had to be complicit in order for it to have been done, and he liked none of the possibilities that occurred to him. From nowhere, the
memory arose of an expression his mother had often used, that Neapolitans ‘would steal the shoes from your feet while you were walking'. Well, how much more clever we Venetians, for some of us manage to steal the paving stones from under our own feet.

‘As to Dottor Calamandri,' she said, reeling in Brunetti's wandering attention, ‘he seemed like a very busy doctor who wanted to be honest with his patients. He at least wanted them not to have any illusions about the possibilities that were open to them. And to discourage false illusions.' She gave that time to register and then asked, ‘And you?'

‘Pretty much the same. He could very easily have recommended that we have the whole series of tests done again. At his clinic. In his lab.'

‘But he didn't,' she agreed. ‘Which is a sign of an honest man.'

‘Or one who wants to appear to be honest,' Brunetti suggested.

‘Those would have been my next words,' she said with a smile. The train began to slow as it approached the Mestre station. On their left, people hurried into and out of the station, into and out of McDonald's. They watched the people on the platform and in the other train to their right, and then the doors slammed shut and they were moving again.

They talked idly, discussing Dottoressa Fontana's chilly manner and agreeing that the only thing now was to wait to see if Brunini
would receive a phone call from someone saying they worked with the clinic. Failing that, perhaps either Pedrolli or his wife would be more forthcoming, or Signorina Elettra would find a way to worm her way into the records of the ongoing Carabinieri investigation.

A few minutes later, the smokestacks of Marghera came into view on their right, and Brunetti wondered what sort of comment Signorina Elettra would have to make about them today. But it seemed that her ration of indignation had been used up by the
masegni
, for she remained silent, and soon the train drew into Santa Lucia.

As they walked towards the exit, Brunetti looked up at the clock and saw that it was thirteen minutes after six. He could easily catch the Number One that left at six-sixteen: like a baby penguin that has imprinted the image of his mother in his memory, Brunetti had known for more than a generation that the Number One left from in front of the station at ten-minute intervals, starting at six minutes after the hour.

‘I think I'll walk,' she said as they started down the steps, threading their way through the mass of people rushing for their trains. Neither of them discussed the possibility, or the duty, of going back to the Questura.

At the bottom, they paused, she poised to move off to the left and he towards the
imbarcadero
on the right. ‘Thank you,' Brunetti said, smiling.

‘You're more than welcome, Commissario. It's far better than spending the afternoon working on staff projections for next month.' She raised a hand in farewell, and disappeared into the streams of people walking from the station. He watched her for a moment, but then he heard the vaporetto reversing its engines as it pulled up to the
imbarcadero
, and he hurried to his boat and home.

‘You're early tonight,' Paola called from the living room as he let himself into the apartment. She made it sound as if his unexpected arrival was the most pleasant thing that had happened to her in some time.

‘I had to leave the city to go and talk to someone, and when I got back it was too late to bother going back to work,' he called while he hung up his jacket. He chose to leave it all very vague, this trip out of the city; if she asked he would tell her, but there was no reason to burden her with the details of his work. He loosened his tie: why in God's name do we still wear them? Worse, why did he still feel undressed without one?

He went into the living room and found her, as he expected to, supine on the sofa, a book dropped open on her chest. He walked over to her and bent to squeeze one of her feet.

‘Twenty years ago, you would have bent down and kissed me,' she said.

‘Twenty years ago, my back would not have hurt when I did,' he answered, then bent down
and kissed her. When he stood, he pressed a melodramatic hand to his lower back and staggered, a broken man, towards the kitchen. ‘Only wine can save me,' he gasped.

In the kitchen, the mingled aromas of baking pastry and something both sweet and sharp greeted him. With no effort and no protest, he bent to look through the glass door of the oven and saw the deep glass baking tray Paola always used for
crespelle
: this time with zucchini and what looked like
peperoni gialli
: that explained both aromas.

He opened the refrigerator and had a look. No, with the cooler weather Brunetti suddenly wanted a red. From the cabinet he took a bottle of something called Masetto Nero and studied the label, uncertain where it had come from.

He walked back to the door of the living room. ‘What's Masetto Nero and where did it come from?'

‘If it's from a vineyard called Endrizzi, it's something my father sent over,' she said, her eyes not leaving the page.

This explanation left Brunetti more than a little confused, for he could not determine the dimensions of ‘sent over' when Count Orazio Falier was the person doing the sending. Sent his boat over with a dozen cases? Sent one of his employees over with a single bottle for them to taste? Had bought the vineyard and sent over a few bottles to ask what they thought of it?

He went back to the kitchen counter and
opened the wine. He sniffed at the cork after he pulled it out, though he never quite knew what he was meant to smell there. It smelled like a cork from a wine bottle: most of them did. He poured two glasses and carried them back to the living room.

He set her glass down beside her, then sat in the space she created by pulling her feet back. He sipped. And hoped the Count had bought the vineyard. ‘What are you reading?' he asked, seeing that she had returned to the book, though the glass was in her other hand and she seemed pleased with what she tasted.

‘Luke.'

In all these years, she had never dared to refer even to her beloved Henry James with anything but his full name, nor had Jane Austen been exposed to the affront of unsolicited familiarity. ‘Luke who?'

‘Luke the Evangelist.'

‘As in the New Testament?' he asked, though he could think of nothing else that Luke might have written.

‘Even so.'

‘What about?'

‘All that stuff about doing to others what you would have them do unto you.'

‘Does that mean you'll get up to get the next bottle?' he asked.

She allowed the book to fall to her chest, he thought a little bit melodramatically. She sipped at her wine and raised her eyebrows in appreciation. ‘It's fabulous, but I think one bottle might
tide us through until dinner, Guido.' She sipped again.

‘Yes, it's very good, isn't it?' he asked.

She nodded and took another sip.

After some time, he asked, curious to learn why someone like Paola was reading Luke. ‘And what particular reflections did that text encourage in you?'

‘I love it when you try to sweet-talk me with sarcasm,' she said and replaced her glass on the table. She closed the book and placed it beside her glass. ‘I was talking to Marina Canziani today. I ran into her at the Marciana.'

‘And?'

‘And she started talking about her aunt, the one who raised her.'

‘And?'

‘And the woman's suddenly – I think she's about ninety – got old, old and feeble. It happened to her the way it happens to very old people: one day they're fine, and then two weeks later they've collapsed into the ruin of old age.'

Marina's aunt – he thought her name was Italia: at any rate, something mastodontic like that – had been at the back of Marina's life for as long as Brunetti and Paola had known her, and that had been for decades. The aunt had taken her in when her parents were killed in a road accident, had raised her with rigorous, inflexible rectitude, seen that she went to university and did well, but had never given her even the most minimal demonstration of affection or
approval in all the years Marina was in her charge. She had been an astute administrator of Marina's inheritance and had turned her into a very wealthy woman, and she had been a stern opponent of the marriage that had turned Marina into a very happy woman.

No further information was forthcoming. Brunetti thought about Marina's aunt, sipped at his wine, and finally said, ‘I'm not sure I see the connection to Saint Luke.'

Paola smiled, showing, he thought, an excess of teeth. ‘She begged Marina to take her into her home and let her live there, with them. She offered to pay rent and said she'd pay for someone to come in to be with her every day and to stay there at night to take care of her.'

‘And Marina?' Brunetti asked.

‘Told her she was willing either to arrange for
una badante
to come and live with her in her own home and take care of her or for her to go to a private nursing home on the Lido.'

Brunetti still failed to grasp the connection to scripture. ‘And?' he repeated.

‘And it occurred to me that perhaps what Christ was doing was actually giving some very sensible investment advice. That is, maybe we shouldn't read it as some sort of moral imperative always to do good to people, but more as an observation about what happens when we don't. If people are going to pay us back, as it were, in kind, then charity is a wise investment.'

‘And Marina's aunt made a bad investment?'

‘Exactly.'

He finished his wine and leaned forward to set the glass on the table. ‘Interesting interpretation,' he said. ‘This the sort of thing you scholarly people talk about when you're at work?'

She took her glass, finished the wine, and said, ‘When we're not demonstrating our superiority to our students.'

‘One would assume that hardly needs demonstration,' Brunetti said, then, ‘What's after the
crespelle
?'

‘
Coniglio in umido
,' she said, then posed her own question. ‘Why is it that you always assume I have nothing better to do with my time but to cook dinner? I'm a university professor, you know. I have a job. I have a professional life.'

He picked up her sentence at the bounce and continued it ‘. . . and I ought not to be relegated to the position of kitchen slave by a husband who, in typical male fashion, assumes that it's my job to cook, while it's his to carry the slaughtered beast home on his back,' he said, then went into the kitchen and came back with the bottle.

He poured some into her glass then filled his own and sat down again beside her feet. He saluted her with his glass and took another sip. ‘Really wonderful. How much did he “send over”?'

‘Three cases, and you're ignoring my question.'

‘No, I'm not ignoring it: I'm trying to figure out
how seriously I'm meant to take it. Given the fact that you teach about four hours a week and spend far less time than that talking to students, my conscience is clear on the imbalance of time we spend in the kitchen.' She started to speak, but he ignored her and kept talking. ‘And if you're going to say you have to spend so much time reading, I'd say that you'd probably go mad if you couldn't spend all your free time reading.' After a long swallow of wine, he took one of her feet and shook it gently.

She smiled and said, ‘So much for my attempt at legitimate protest.'

He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the sofa.

‘Well, protest,' she admitted, after some time had passed.

After even more had passed, he said, eyes still closed, ‘I went out to that clinic in Verona today.'

‘The fertility clinic?'

‘Yes.'

After she had said nothing for a long time, he opened his eyes and glanced in her direction. ‘What is it?' he asked, sensing that she had something she wanted to say.

‘It seems I can't read a magazine or a newspaper without coming on an article about overpopulation,' Paola said. ‘Six billion, seven, eight, dire warnings about the population bomb and the lack of sufficient natural resources to support us all. And at the same time, people are going to fertility clinics . . .'

‘In order to add to the population?' he asked.

‘No,' she answered instantly. ‘Hardly. In order to satisfy a real human urge.'

‘Not a human need?' he asked.

‘Guido,' she began in a voice she forced to sound tired, ‘we've been here before, trying to define “need”. You know what I think it means: if you don't get it – like food or water – you die.'

‘And I keep thinking it's more: that it's those things that make us different from the other animals.'

He saw her nod, but then she said, ‘I think I don't want to pursue this now. Besides, I know that, even if you badger me with logic and good sense, and even if you argue from the personal about our own children, you still won't get me to agree that it's a need, having children. So let me save us both time and energy by not talking about it, all right?'