Donna Leon - Beastly Things

Vianello stared through the window of the bar, his eyes on the passers-by, his attention on the possibilities of the murder. After some time, he returned his attention to Brunetti and said, ‘Yes, a house sounds better. Any idea where?’

‘I haven’t seen Foa yet,’ Brunetti said, reminding himself to do this as soon as possible. ‘They found the man’s body at about six at the back of the Giustinian, in Rio del Malpaga. Foa should be able to calculate…’ Brunetti stopped himself from saying ‘the drift’, so appalling did he find the expression, and substituted ‘where he might have started from.’

This time Vianello closed his eyes, and Brunetti watched him do exactly what he had: summon up the decades-old map the Inspector had in his memory and walk his way through the neighbourhood, checking the canals and, to the degree that he could, the direction of the water in the canals. He opened his eyes and looked at Brunetti. ‘We don’t know which way the tide was flowing.’

‘That’s why I have to talk to Foa.’

‘Good. He’ll know,’ Vianello said and pushed his way out of the booth. He went over to the bar and paid, waited for Brunetti to join him, then together they went back to the Questura, both of them keeping their eyes on the water in the canal that ran to their right, looking for motion and wondering which way the tide was flowing when the dead man went into the water.

AS HE ENTERED the Questura, Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after one; if he left now, he might still reach home in time to eat something. Again, the events of the day flowed through his mind, this time coloured by too much caffeine and sugar: why had he eaten two pastries when he knew he was supposed to go home? Was he some untutored youth, unable to resist the lure of sweet things?

Turning to Vianello, he said, ‘I’ll be back after lunch. I’ll talk to Foa then.’

‘He’s not on shift until four, anyway. Plenty of time.’

Brunetti, the two brioches rumbling at him from inside, decided to walk all the way home but then immediately changed his mind and walked up the Riva degli Schiavoni to get the vaporetto.

Within five minutes, he had begun to regret his decision. Instead of being able to walk untroubled and uncrowded through Campo Santa Maria Formosa and Campo Santa Marina before confronting the inevitable logjam of Rialto, he had chosen to launch himself directly into the flood of tourists, even here. As he turned right on the riva , he saw the onrushing wave of them, though they moved far more slowly than any wave he had ever encountered.

Like any man of sense, he fled to the vaporetto stop, got on the One, and found a seat inside, to the left. It was a far safer place from which to allow the assault of the beauty of the city. The sun jumped off the still surface of the bacino , forcing him to squint his eyes as they passed the newly restored Dogana and the church of the Salute. He’d been inside the first recently, thrilled to see how well it had been restored, appalled by what was on display inside.

When had they sneaked in and switched the rules? he wondered. When did the garish become artistic, and who had the authority to make that declaration? Why was banality of interest to the viewer, and where, oh where, had simple beauty gone? ‘You’re an old fart, Guido,’ he whispered to himself, causing the man in front of him to turn around and stare. Brunetti ignored him and returned his attention to the buildings on the left.

They passed a palazzo where a friend of his had offered to sell him an apartment six years before, assuring him that he would make a fortune on the deal: ‘Just keep it for three years and resell it to a foreigner. You’ll make a million.’

Brunetti, whose ethical system was monosyllabic in its simplicity, had refused the offer because something about profiting from land speculation made him uncomfortable, as did the idea of being indebted to anyone for having earned an easy million Euros. Or, for that fact, ten Euros.

They passed the university, and Brunetti looked at it with double fondness: his wife worked there, and his son was now a student. Raffi had, to Brunetti’s delight, chosen to study history, not the history of the ancients that so fascinated Brunetti, but the history of modern Italy which, though it also fascinated Brunetti, did so in a manner that led him close to despair.

Their arrival at the San Silvestro stop pulled his mind away from its continuing contemplation of the parallels to be found between the Italy of two thousand years ago and that of today. It was a matter of minutes until he was opening the front door of the building and turning into the first flight of steps. At each landing, Brunetti felt the weight of the brioche fall away from him, and by the time he got to his apartment he was sure he had burned it all off and was prepared to do justice to whatever remained of lunch.

When he entered the kitchen, he saw his children at their places, their untouched lunch in front of them. Paola was just placing a dish of what looked like tagliatelle with scallops in front of his place. Walking back to the stove, she said, ‘I was late today: had to talk to a student. So we decided to wait for you.’ Then, as if to prevent him from forming any idea of her occult powers, she added, ‘I heard you come in.’

He bent to kiss both children on the head, and as he took his place, Raffi asked, ‘Do you know anything about the war in Alto Adige?’ Seeing Brunetti’s surprise at the question, he added, ‘The First World War.’

‘You make it sound as long ago as the war against Carthage,’ Brunetti said with a smile, opening his napkin and spreading it on his lap. ‘Your great-grandfather fought in the war, remember.’

Raffi sat silently with his elbows on the table and chin propped on his folded fingers, a gesture in which his mother was reflected. Brunetti glanced in Chiara’s direction and saw that she was sitting with her hands folded in her lap: how long had it taken to train them?

Paola came back to the table, set down her own dish, and took her place. ‘ Buon appetito ,’ she said, picking up her fork.

Ordinarily, that injunction served as the starter’s whistle for Raffi, who sprinted through his first course with a velocity that could still astonish both his parents. But today he ignored his food and said, ‘You never told me.’

Brunetti had often repeated his grandfather’s war stories, to the general uninterest of his own children. ‘Well, he was,’ he limited himself to saying and began to twirl up some noodles with his fork.

‘Did he fight up there?’ Raffi asked. ‘In Alto Adige?’

‘Yes. He was there for four years. He fought in most of the campaigns except, I think, once when he was wounded and sent to Vittorio Veneto to recover.’

‘Not sent home?’ Chiara asked, drawn into the conversation.

Brunetti shook the idea away. ‘They didn’t send wounded men home to recover.’

‘Why?’ she asked, fork poised over her plate.

‘Because they knew they wouldn’t go back,’ Brunetti said.

‘Why?’ she repeated.

‘Because they knew they’d die.’ Before she could say that their great-grandfather, because they were there at the table talking about him, hadn’t died, Brunetti explained, ‘Most of them did; well, hundreds of thousands of them did, so they knew that the odds were pretty bad.’

‘How many died?’ Raffi asked.

Brunetti read little modern history, and when he read Italian history, he tended to read translations of books in other languages, so little confidence did he have that the Italian accounts would not be coloured by political or historical allegiance. ‘I’m not sure of the exact number. But it was more than half a million.’ He set his fork down and took a sip of wine, then another.