Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

‘I’ve brought you here to ask questions about three deaths: the death of a young man called Franco Rossi, the death of another young man called Gino Zecchino, and the death of a young woman whose name we don’t yet know. Two of them died in or near a building near Angelo Raffaele, and one died after a fall from the same building.’ He stopped here, then continued, ‘Before we go any further, I must ask you your name and ask you to give me some identification.’ When the man did not respond, Brunetti said, ‘Would you tell me your name, Signore?’

He looked up and asked with infinite sadness, ‘Do I have to?’

Brunetti said with resignation, ‘I’m afraid so.’

The man lowered his head and looked down at the table. ‘She’s going to be so angry,’ he whispered. He looked up at Brunetti and in the same soft voice said, ‘Giovanni Dolfin.’

Brunetti searched for some sort of familial resemblance between this awkward giant and the thin, hunched woman he had seen in dal Carlo’s office. Seeing none, he did not dare to ask how they were related, knowing it was better to let the man talk on, while he himself played the role of one who already knew everything that could be said and was there to do no more than ask questions about minor points and details of chronology.

Silence spread. Brunetti let it do so until the room was filled with it, the only sound Dolfin’s laboured breathing.

He finally turned toward Brunetti and gave him a pained look. ‘I’m a count, you see. We’re the last ones; there’s no one after us because Loredana, well, she never married, and…’ Again, he looked down at the surface of the table, but it still refused to tell him how to explain all of this. He sighed and started again, ‘I won’t marry. I’m not interested in all of, all of that’, he said with a vague motion of his hand, as though pushing ‘all of that’ away.

‘So we’re the last, and that makes it important that nothing happens to the family name or to our honour.’ Keeping his eyes on Brunetti’s, he asked, ‘Do you understand?’

‘Of course,’ Brunetti said. He had no idea of what ‘honour’ meant, especially to a member of a family that had carried a name for more than eight hundred years. ‘We have to live with honour,’ was all he could think of to say.

Dolfin nodded repeatedly. ‘That’s what Loredana tells me. She’s always told me that. She says it doesn’t matter that we’re not rich, not at all. We still have the name.’ He spoke with the emphasis people often give to the repetition of phrases or ideas they don’t really understand, conviction taking the place of reason. Some sort of mechanism seemed to have been triggered in Dolfin’s mind, for he lowered his head again and started to recite the history of his famous ancestor, Doge Giovanni Dolfin. Brunetti listened, strangely comforted by the sound, carried back by it to a period of time in his childhood when the women of the neighbourhood had come to their house to recite the rosary together and he found himself caught up in the murmured repetition of the same prayers. He let himself be carried back to those other whisperings, and he stayed there until he heard Dolfin say, ‘… of the Plague in 1361’.

Dolfin looked up then, and Brunetti nodded his approval. ‘It’s important, a name like that,’ he agreed, thinking that this would be the way to lead him on. ‘A person would have to be very careful to protect it.’

‘That’s what Loredana told me, just the very same thing.’ Dolfin gave Brunetti a look filled with dawning respect: here was another man who could understand the obligations under which the two of them lived. ‘She told me, especially this time, that we had to do anything we could to maintain and protect it.’ His tongue stumbled over the last words.

‘Of course,’ Brunetti prompted,’ “especially this time.” ‘

Dolfin went on: ‘She said that man at the office had always been jealous of her because of her position.’ When he saw Brunetti’s confusion, he explained, ‘In society.’

Brunetti nodded.

‘She never understood why he hated her so much. But then he did something with papers. She tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t understand. But he made up false papers that said Loredana was doing bad things in the office, taking money to do things.’ He put his palms flat on the desk and pushed himself half out of the chair. Voice raised to an alarming volume, he said, ‘Dolfins do not do things for money. Money means nothing to the Dolfins.’

Brunetti raised a calming hand, and Dolfin lowered himself back into his chair. ‘We do not do things for money,’ he said forcefully. ‘The whole city knows that. Not for money.’

He continued: ‘She said everyone would believe the papers and there would be a scandal. The name would be ruined. She told me…’ he began and then corrected himself, ‘No, I knew that myself; no one had to tell me that. No one can lie about the Dolfins and not be punished.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘Does that mean you’d take him to the police?’

Dolfin flicked a hand to one side, with it flicking aside the idea of the police. ‘No, it was our honour, and so we had the right to take our own justice.’

‘I see.’

‘I knew who he was. I’d been there sometimes, to help Loredana when she did the shopping in the morning and had things to carry home. I’d go and help her.’ He said this last with unconscious pride, the man of the family announcing his prowess.

‘She knew where he was going that day, and she told me that I should follow him there and try to talk to him. But when I did, he pretended not to understand what I was saying and said it had nothing to do with Loredana. He said it was that other man. She warned me that he’d lie and try to make me believe it was someone else in the office, but I was ready for him. I knew he was really out to get Loredana because he was jealous of her.’ He put on his face the expression he’d seen people use when they said things he was later told had been clever, and Brunetti again had the impression he’d been taught to recite this lesson, as well.

‘And?’

‘He called me a liar and then he tried to push past me. He told me to get out of the way. We were in that building.’ His eyes grew wide with what Brunetti thought was the memory of what had happened but which turned out to be the scandal of what he was about to say. ‘And he used tu when he talked to me. He knew I was a count, and he still called me tu.’ Dolfin glanced over at Brunetti, as if to ask if he had ever heard of such a thing.

Brunetti, who never had, shook his head as if in silent astonishment.

When Dolfin seemed disposed to say nothing more, Brunetti asked, his real curiosity audible in the question, ‘What did you do?’

‘I told him he was lying to me and wanted to hurt Loredana because he was jealous of her. He pushed me again. No one’s ever done that to me.’ From the way he spoke, Brunetti was convinced Dolfin thought the physical respect people must have shown him was a response to his title rather than to his size. ‘When he pushed me, I stepped back and my foot hit a pipe that was there, on the floor. It twisted and I fell down. When I got up, the pipe was in my hand. I wanted to hit him, but a Dolfin would never hit a man from behind, so I called him, and he turned around. He raised his hand then, to hit me.’ Dolfin stopped talking here, but his hands clenched and unclenched in his lap as though they’d suddenly taken on an existence independent of his own.

When he looked again at Brunetti, time had clearly passed in his memory, for he said, ‘He tried to get up after that. We’d been by the window and the shutter was open. He’d opened it when he came in. He crawled over to it and pulled himself up. I wasn’t angry any more,’ he said, his voice dispassionate and calm. ‘Our honour was saved. So I went over to see if I could help him. But he was afraid of me, and when I came toward him, he stepped backwards and he hit his legs on the sill and he fell backwards. I reached out and tried to grab him, really I did,’ he said, repeating the gesture as he described it, his long, flat fingers closing repeatedly, hopelessly, on the empty air, ‘but he was falling and falling and I couldn’t hold him.’ He pulled his hand back and covered his eyes with the other. ‘I heard him hit the ground. It was a very loud noise. But then someone was at the door to the room and I became very afraid. I didn’t know who it was. I ran down the steps.’ He stopped.