Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

‘Who can, angel?’ he asked, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of Tokai.

‘Captain Aubrey and his crew,’ she said, in a voice that suggested the answer should have been obvious.

‘And who is Captain Aubrey?’ he asked.

‘He’s the captain of the Surprise,’ she said, looking at him as if he’d just admitted not knowing his own address.

‘The Surprise?’ he asked, no closer to illumination.

‘In the books, Papà, the ones about the war with the French.’ Before he could admit his ignorance, she added, ‘They’re wicked, aren’t they, the French?’

Brunetti, who thought they were, said nothing, still having no idea of what they were talking about. He poured himself a small glass of wine and took a large sip, then another. Again, he glanced down at the maps and noticed that the blue parts contained many ships, but old-fashioned ones, surmounted by billowing clouds of white sails, and what he took to be tritons in the maps’ corners, rising up from the waters with conch shells raised to their lips.

He gave in. ‘What books, Chiara?’

‘The ones Mamma gave me, in English, about the English sea captain and his friend and the war against Napoleon.’

Ah, those books. He took another sip of his wine. ‘And do you like them as much as Mamma does?’

‘Oh,’ Chiara said, looking up at him with a serious expression, ‘I don’t think anyone could like them as much as she does.’

Four years ago, Brunetti had been abandoned by his wife of almost twenty years for a period of more than a month while she systematically read her way through, at his count, eighteen sea novels dealing with the unending years of war between the British and the French. The time had seemed no less long to him, for it was a time when he, too, ate hasty meals, half-cooked meat, dry bread, and was often driven to seek relief in excessive quantities of grog. Because she seemed to have no other interest, he had taken a look at one of the books, if only to have something to talk about at their thrown-together meals. But he had found it discursive, filled with strange facts and stranger animals, and had abandoned the attempt after only a few pages and before making the acquaintance of Captain Aubrey. Fortunately, Paola was a fast reader, and she had returned to the twentieth century after finishing the last one, apparently none the worse for the shipwreck, battle, and scurvy that had menaced her during those weeks.

Thus the maps. ‘I’ll have to talk to your mother about it,’ he said.

‘About what?’ Chiara asked, head again bent over the maps, her left hand busy with her calculator, a device Brunetti thought Captain Aubrey might have envied her.

‘The sailing lessons.’

‘Ah yes,’ Chiara said, slipping into English with eel-like ease, ‘I long to sail a ship.’

Brunetti left her to it, refilled his glass and poured out another, then went towards Paola’s study. The door was open, and she lay on the sofa, only her forehead visible over the top of her book.

‘Captain Aubrey, I presume,’ he said in English.

She put the book down on her stomach and smiled at him. Without a word, she reached up and took the glass he offered. She took a sip, pulled her legs up toward her to give him room to sit and, when he did, asked, ‘Bad day?’

He sighed, leaning back in the sofa and placing his right hand on her ankles. ‘Overdose. He was only twenty, an architectural student at the university.’

Neither spoke for a long time, and then Paola said, ‘How lucky we were to be born when we were.’

He glanced at her and she went on. ‘Before drugs. Well, before everyone used drugs.’ She sipped at her wine, then added, ‘I think I might have smoked marijuana twice in my whole life. And thank God it never did anything to me.’

‘Why, “Thank God”?’

‘Because if I had liked it or if it had done for me what it’s supposed to do for people, I might have liked it enough to use it again. Or to move on to something stronger.’

He thought of his similar good fortune.

‘What killed him?’ she asked.

‘Heroin.’

She shook her head.

‘I was with his parents until just now.’ Brunetti sipped again at his wine. ‘His father’s a farmer. They came down from the Trentino to identify him and then went back.’

‘Do they have other children?’

‘There’s one younger sister; I don’t know if there are others.’

‘I hope so,’ Paola said. She stretched out her legs and stuck her feet under his thigh. ‘Do you want to eat?’

‘Yes, but I want to take a shower first.’

‘All right,’ she said, pulling her feet out and setting them on the floor. ‘I’ve made the sauce with peppers and sausage.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll send Chiara to get you when it’s ready.’ She got to her feet and set her own glass, still more than half full, on the table in front of the sofa. Leaving him there in her study, she went back to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner.

By the time they all sat down, Raffi having returned home just as Paola was serving the pasta, Brunetti’s spirits had lifted a bit. The sight of his two children swirling the freshly made pappardelle around their forks filled him with an animal sense of security and well-being, and he began to eat his own with gusto. Paola had gone to the trouble of scorching and removing the skins of the red peppers, so they were soft and sweet, just as he liked them. The sausages contained large flecks of red and white peppercorns which lay inside the tender filling like depth charges of taste, ready to burst open at the first bite, and Gianni the butcher had used a lot of garlic when making them.

Everyone had second helpings, embarrassingly similar in size to the first. Afterwards, no one had room for anything except green salad, but when that was gone, each of them discovered a tiny space capable of holding just the smallest serving of fresh strawberries flavoured with a drop of balsamic vinegar.

During all of this, Chiara continued in her role as Ancient Mariner, endlessly cataloguing the flora and fauna of far-off lands, presenting them with the shocking information that most eighteenth-century sailors could not swim, and, until Paola reminded her they were eating, describing the symptoms of scurvy.

The children disappeared, Raffi to the Greek aorist and Chiara, if Brunetti understood her aright, to shipwreck in the South Atlantic.

‘Is she going to read all of those books?’ he asked, sipping at his grappa and keeping Paola company as she did the dishes.

‘I certainly hope so,’ Paola answered, attention on the serving platter.

‘Is she reading them because you liked them so much or because she likes them herself?’

Her back to him as she scoured at the bottom of a pot, Paola asked, ‘How old is she?’

‘Fifteen,’ Brunetti answered.

‘Can you name one living fifteen-year-old, indeed, one fifteen-year-old who has ever existed, who does what her mother wants her to do?’

‘Does that mean adolescence has struck?’ he asked. They’d gone through it with Raffi, about twenty years of it, if he remembered correctly, so he did not relish the idea of experiencing it again with Chiara.

‘It’s different with girls,’ Paola said, turning around and wiping her hands on a towel. She poured herself a whisper of grappa and leaned back against the sink.

‘Different how?’

‘They just oppose their mothers, not their fathers, too.’

He considered this. ‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s in the genes or in the culture, so there’s no way we can get around it, whether it’s good or bad. We can just hope it doesn’t last a long time.’