Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

‘And in front of the ones they do know?’ asked an astonished Brunetti.

Ignoring him, she said, in a completely different tone, ‘But deceit does have its uses: without it, and without betrayal, there’d be no literature.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti replied, not certain how talk of Signorina Elettra’s reflections on honesty had led them to the point of literature, however familiar that point was and however varied Paola’s wiles in getting them to it.

‘Think of it,’ she said, stretching an expansive arm towards him. ‘Gilgamesh is betrayed, so is Beowulf, so is Otello, someone leads the Persians around behind the Spartans. .’

‘That’s history,’ Brunetti interrupted.

‘As you will,’ Paola conceded. ‘Then what about Ulysses? What is he if not the grand betrayer? And Billy Budd, and Anna Karenina, and Christ, and Isabel Archer: they’re all betrayed. Even Captain Ahab. .’

‘By a whale ?’

‘No, by his megalomania and his desire for revenge. You could say by his own weaknesses.’

‘Aren’t you stretching things a bit, Paola?’ he asked in a reasonable tone. Tired by a long day, his mind swirled off to the cases that weren’t cases, where he could proceed only unofficially and where he wasn’t even sure there was a crime. He had to consider two cases of what was probably human betrayal, and his wife wanted to talk about a whale.

She sobered instantly and turned to punch at the pillow lying against the arm of the sofa. ‘I was trying it out. To see if it might prove an interesting idea for an article.’

‘It’s wide of the field of Henry James, isn’t it?’ he asked, not absolutely certain that she had mentioned a James character in her list.

She grew even more sober. ‘I’ve been thinking that of late,’ she said.

‘Thinking what?’

‘That the world of Henry James is becoming very small for me.’

Brunetti got to his feet and looked at his watch: it was after eleven. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now,’ he said, too stunned to think of anything else to say.

The Ferragosto holiday seemed to expand each year, as people added days to either side of the official two-week period, in the hope of expanding their vacation as much as avoiding the traffic. The news, both radio and television, was filled with injunctions about safe driving and spoke of the twelve million cars — or fourteen, or fifteen — that were projected to be on the roads that weekend. One of the news reporters said that, if placed bumper to bumper, these cars would stretch in an unbroken line from Reggio Calabria to the Gotthard Pass. Brunetti, having no idea of the average length of an automobile, didn’t even bother to check the numbers. Though he had a licence, he was in truth a non-driver and was almost entirely without interest of any sort in automobiles. They were big or small, red or white or some other colour, and far too many young people died in them every year. He had decided to travel by train: even to discuss renting a car was to run the risk of one of Chiara’s ecological denunciations. They would go to Malles, where a car would meet their train and take them to his cousin’s house; there was a bus that went up and down to Glorenza twice a day.

Preparing for their holiday, each of the family had begun to pack. Paola created a pile of books on the top of their dresser, whose composition changed each day in conformity with the books she thought she would select for the class in the British Novel she was to teach during the coming term. Brunetti studied the titles every night and thus became party to the ongoing struggle: Vanity Fair lost place to Great Expectations , a substitution Brunetti attributed to weight; The Secret Agent lasted three days but was replaced by Heart of Darkness , though the weight differential seemed minimal to Brunetti; a day later, Barchester Towers took over from Middlemarch , suggesting that the weight rule was back in force. Pride and Prejudice appeared the first evening and stayed the course.

Three nights before their expected departure, curiosity got the better of him, and he asked, ‘Why is it that all the fat books have disappeared, and A Suitable Boy , which is the fattest, remains?’

‘Oh, I’m not going to teach that,’ Paola said, as if surprised by his question. ‘I’ve wanted to reread it for years. It’s my reward book.’

‘What are you being rewarded for?’ Brunetti asked.

‘You can ask that of a person who teaches at Cà Foscari? In the Department of English Literature?’ she asked, using the voice she reserved for Expressions of Public Outrage.

Then, in a more moderate tone, she said, ‘I’ve looked at the books you’re taking.’

Brunetti had hoped she would, thinking the sobriety of his choices would set a salutary example against the vain frivolity of some of hers.

‘Do I detect an unwonted modernity in your choices?’ she asked.

‘I’ve decided to read some modern history,’ he asserted proudly.

‘But why Russian?’ she asked, pointing to a book entitled A People’s Tragedy .

‘It interests me, the Revolution,’ he said.

‘What interests me is the way so many of us bought it all,’ she said in a voice that had suddenly grown harsh.

‘We in the West, you mean?’

‘We. In the West. Our generation. The workers’ paradise. Brothers under Socialism. Whatever nonsense we wanted to spout to show our parents that we didn’t like their choices in life.’ She covered her face with her hands, and Brunetti detected nothing false in the gesture. ‘To think I voted Communist. Of my own free will, I voted for them.’

The only consolation Brunetti could think of to offer her was to say, ‘History swept them away.’

‘But not soon enough,’ she said savagely. ‘You know me well enough to know I’m not much for shame or guilt, but I will forever feel guilty that I voted for those people, that I refused to listen to common sense or believe what I didn’t want to believe.’

‘They never had any real power here,’ Brunetti said. ‘You know that.’

‘I’m not talking about them , Guido; I’m talking about me . That I could have been so stupid and have been so stupid for so long.’ She picked up his book and flipped through it, stopped to look at some of the photos, then closed it and set it down. ‘My father always hated them. But I wouldn’t listen to him. What could he know?’

‘You think we’ll have to put up with the same thing?’ he asked to change the subject. ‘From our kids?’

She opened a drawer and pulled out a sweater, the very sight of which caused Brunetti to break out in a sweat. ‘Raffi came to his senses quickly enough,’ she said. ‘I suppose we should be grateful for that. But they’re sure to drag home some other ideas sooner or later.’

Brunetti moved over to the window that gave on to the north and felt the faint stirring of a breeze. ‘You think the weather could be changing?’ he asked.

‘Getting hotter, probably,’ she said and pulled out another sweater.

The next day Signorina Elettra was meant to have coffee with her admirer at the Tribunale. Brunetti assumed she would want to get the flowers early in the morning, before the heat had a chance to grab the city by the throat. Allowing time for a leisurely coffee, interspersed with interesting conversation about common acquaintances and people at the Tribunale, she would probably get to the Questura by eleven, he estimated. He was prevented from going down to see if she had arrived, however, by a long phone call from a friend who worked in the Palermo Questura, asking him if he knew anything about two new pizzerias and a hotel that had recently opened in Venice.