Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

Signorina Elettra made a note of the name and address and asked, ‘Is this the aunt who’s married to the electrician?’

‘Ex-electrician,’ Brunetti corrected, then, ‘Yes.’

She gave him a sober glance and shook her head. ‘I think it’s like being a priest or a doctor,’ she said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Being an electrician, sir. I think once you do it, you have a sort of moral obligation to keep on doing it.’ She gave him time to consider this, and when he made no comment, she said, ‘Nothing’s worse than darkness.’

From long experience as a resident of a city where many houses still had wires that had been installed fifty or sixty years ago, Brunetti grasped what she meant and had no choice but to say, ‘Yes. Nothing worse.’

His ready agreement seemed to cheer her, and she asked, ‘Is it urgent, sir?’

Given the fact that it probably wasn’t legal, either, Brunetti said, ‘No, not really.’

‘Then I’ll have a look tomorrow, sir.’

Before he left, he said, indicating her computer, ‘While you’re in there, could you see what you can find out about an usher at the Courthouse, Araldo Fontana?’ Brunetti did not give her the name of Judge Coltellini, not from compunction at sharing police information with a civilian employee — he had long since set aside the things of a child — but because he did not want to burden her with a third name, and Brusca’s apparent defence of the man had made Brunetti more curious about him.

But he could not stop himself from asking, ‘Where did you get that information about the computers, Signorina?’

‘Oh, it’s all in the public record, sir. You just have to know where to look.’

‘And so you sort of go trolling through the files by yourself to see what you can see?’

‘Yes,’ she said with a smile, ‘I suppose you could phrase it that way. “Trolling.” I quite like that.’

‘And you never know what you’re going to fish up, I suppose.’

‘Never,’ she said. Then, pointing to the paper where she had written the names he wanted her to check, she said, ‘Besides, it keeps me in training for interesting things like this.’

‘Isn’t the rest of your work interesting, Signorina?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m afraid much of it isn’t, Dottore.’ She propped her chin in her cupped palm and tightened her lips in a resigned grimace. ‘It’s hard when so many of the people I work for are so very dull.’

‘It’s a common enough plight, Signorina,’ Brunetti said and left the office.

By the time he reached his office the next day, Brunetti was resigned to the fact that he was not soon going to have his own computer, though he found it more difficult to resign himself to the temperature of his office when he arrived. The family had, the night before, discussed where they were to go for their yearly vacation, Brunetti apologizing that the uncertainty of work had kept him this long without knowing when he would be free. He had quickly squashed all discussion of going to the seaside: not in August with millions of people in the water and on the roads and in the restaurants. ‘I will not go to Puglia, where it is forty degrees in the shade, and where the olive oil is all fake,’ he remembered saying at one point.

In retrospect, he accepted the possibility that he might have been too firm. In his defence of his own desires, he had been emboldened by the fact that Paola never much cared where they went: her only concern was what books she should take and whether wherever they went had a quiet place for her to lie in the shade and read.

Other men had wives who begged them to go out dancing, travel the world, stay up late and do irresponsible things. Brunetti had managed to marry a woman who looked forward to going to bed at ten o’clock with Henry James. Or, when driven by wild passions she was ashamed to reveal to her husband, with Henry James and his brother.

Like the president of a banana republic, Brunetti had offered democratic choice and then rammed his own proposal past all difference of opinion or opposition. A cousin of his had inherited a farmhouse in Alto Adige, above Glorenza, and had offered it to Brunetti while he and his family went to Puglia. ‘In the heat, eating fake olive oil,’ Brunetti muttered, though no less grateful to his cousin for the offer. And so the Brunettis were to go to the mountains for two weeks; thinking of it, Brunetti’s spirit flooded with relief at the mere thought of sleeping under a quilt and having to wear a sweater in the evening.

Vianello and his family had rented a house on the beach in Croatia, where he planned to do nothing but swim and fish until the end of the month. While they were both away, their unofficial investigation into Stefano Gorini would go on vacation, as well.

Brunetti spent the first part of the morning using the computer in the officer’s squad room to check the trains to Bolzano and to consult the various tourist sites in Alto Adige. Then he went back to his own office and called a few colleagues to see if they had ever come into contact with Stefano Gorini. He had more success with the train schedule.

A bit after twelve-thirty, he dialled his home number. Paola answered on the third ring, saying, ‘If you can get here in fifteen minutes, there’s prosciutto and figs and then pasta with fresh peppers and shrimp.’

‘Twenty,’ he said and hung up.

To walk it that quickly on a hot day, he feared, would kill him, so he went out to the riva and was lucky enough to step directly on to a Number Two. At San Tomà he caught a Number One that pulled up after two minutes, and got off at San Silvestro. It had taken longer than it would by foot, but he had been spared crossing the city in the middle of the day.

Inside the apartment, Paola and the kids sat at the table in the kitchen: the terrace was a broiler during the day and could be used only after sunset. Brunetti hung up his jacket, wondering if he should wring it out first, and took his place at the table.

He glanced at the faces and wondered if the apathy he saw there was the result of his behaviour about their vacation or merely the heat. ‘How’d you spend your morning?’ he asked Chiara.

‘I went over to Livia’s and tried on some of the new things she got to go back to school,’ Chiara answered, carefully trimming the fat from her prosciutto and passing it silently to Raffi’s plate, she apparently having decided that vegetarians can eat the ham but not the fat.

‘Autumn things? Already?’ Paola asked, putting a plate of prosciutto and black figs in front of Brunetti. She rested her hand on his shoulder when she leaned down with the plate, allowing Brunetti to believe that at least one member of the family looked forward to the vacation.

‘Yes,’ Chiara said, mouth full of fig. ‘When we were in Milano to visit her sister last week — Marisa: she’s at Bocconi — they took me shopping with them. The stuff there is much better than what you find here. Here it’s all for teenies or old ladies.’

His daughter had gone to Milano, Brunetti reflected, site of the Brera Gallery, site of Leonardo’s Cenacolo, site of the greatest Gothic cathedral in Italy, and she had gone shopping. ‘Did you find anything you liked?’ he asked and ate half a fig. His daughter was perhaps a philistine, but the fig was sweet perfection.

‘ No, Papà , I didn’t,’ she said in the descending measures of tragedy. ‘Everything’s crazy expensive.’ She trimmed another piece of prosciutto and used the point of her knife to transfer the fat to Raffi, who was busy with his lunch and apparently uninterested in tales of shopping.

‘I had my own money, but Mamma would have gone crazy if I’d spent two hundred Euros on a pair of jeans.’