Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

‘Where’s your Mummy?’ Vianello asked.

‘She works. That’s why we have Zinka. She stays with me. We were supposed to go to the beach today — we have a cabina at the Excelsior — but Mamma says it’s too hot today, so we stayed home. Zinka was going to let me help make lunch.’

‘Good for you,’ Vianello said. ‘What are you going to make?’

‘ Minestra di verdura . Zinka says if I’m good, I can peel the potatoes.’

Brunetti turned his attention to the woman, who appeared to be following the conversation with no difficulty. ‘Signora,’ he said with real warmth. ‘If I hadn’t promised to ask only about Signora Fontana, I’d ask you to teach me how I could convince my daughter that I might let her clean her room.’ He smiled to show her the joke; her face softened, and then she smiled in return.

The illegality of what he was doing suddenly descended on Brunetti, but heavier was the weight of the seaminess of it. She was just a child, for heaven’s sake: how great was his need to know, if he would sink to this?

He turned to the woman. ‘It’s not right to ask Lucia any more questions, I think. So perhaps we should let you both get back to your minestra .’ Vianello gave him a surprised glance, but he ignored it and said to the girl, ‘I hope it cools down enough for you to go to the beach tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, Signore,’ she said with learned politeness, then added, ‘Maybe it’s not so bad if we can’t go. Zinka hates the beach.’ Then, turning to her, she asked, ‘Don’t you?’

The woman’s smile reappeared, broader now. ‘The beach doesn’t like me, either, Lucia.’

Brunetti and Vianello stood. ‘Could you tell me when I might find the Marsanos at home? We’ll come back then.’

She looked at the little girl and said, ‘Lucia, go down to kitchen see if I left glasses there, please?’

Happy to obey, the girl jumped down from the chair and left the room.

‘Signor Marsano won’t tell you things. Signora no, also.’

‘Tell me what, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Fontana was good man. Fight with Signor Marsano, fight with upstairs people.’

She used the word for battle, so Brunetti asked, ‘Word fight or hand fight, Signora?’

‘Word fight, only word fight,’ she said, as though the other possibility frightened her.

‘What happened?’

‘They call names: Signor Fontana say Signor Marsano not honest, same with man upstairs. Then Signor Marsano say he is bad man, go with men.’

‘But you think he was a good man?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I know ,’ she said with sudden force. ‘He found me lawyer. Good man at Tribunale. He help me with papers, for staying.’

‘For staying in Italy?’ Brunetti asked.

‘They aren’t there, Zinka,’ the girl shouted from the end of the corridor, then, as she approached, she asked, in that long-drawn-out voice of the impatient child, ‘Can we go back to work now?’

Zinka smiled as the girl appeared at the door and said, ‘One minute, then we work again.’

‘Could you give me the name of the lawyer, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Penzo. Renato Penzo. Friend of Signor Fontana. He is good man, too.’

‘And Signora Fontana,’ Brunetti asked, sensitive to the child’s impatience and the woman’s growing uneasiness, ‘is she a good woman, too?’

The woman looked at him, then down at the child. ‘Our guests go now, Lucia. You open the door for them, no?’

The child, sensing the possibility of getting back to work on the potatoes, all but ran to the front door. She pulled it open and went out on the landing, where she leaned over the railing, looking down into the stairwell. Brunetti saw how nervous it made the woman to see her there and started towards the door.

He stopped just inside it. ‘And Signora Fontana?’ he asked.

She shook her head, saw that Brunetti accepted her reluctance to talk, and said, ‘Not like son.’

Brunetti nodded in return, said goodbye to Lucia, and went down the steps, followed by Vianello.

Remembering the heat that awaited them outside on the embankment, Brunetti lingered in the courtyard and asked Vianello, ‘You ever hear of this Penzo?’

Vianello nodded. ‘I’ve heard his name a few times. He does a lot of pro bono work. Comes from a good family. Public service; all that stuff.’

‘With immigrants, the pro bono ?’ Brunetti asked, remembering now what he had heard about the lawyer.

‘If he’s working with that woman upstairs, then it would seem so. She’s certainly not being paid enough to afford a lawyer.’ Vianello paused and Brunetti could almost hear him rummaging around in his memory. Finally he said, ‘I can’t remember anything connecting him with immigrants specifically, only that vague shadow memory that people think well of him.’ Vianello waved a hand in the air, suggestive of the mystery of memory. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Brunetti agreed. He looked at his watch and was surprised to discover that it was not yet one-thirty. ‘If I call the Tribunale and find out he’s there today, do you think you have the energy to make it that far without collapsing?’

Vianello closed his eyes, and Brunetti wondered if he should prepare himself for melodrama, though Vianello had never been a source of that sort of thing. The Inspector opened his eyes and said, ‘We could take the traghetto from Santa Sofia. It’s the shortest way, and it’s only on Strada Nuova and in the gondola that we’d be in the sun.’

Brunetti called the central number of the Courthouse, was passed to the secretary, and learned that Avvocato Penzo was to appear with a client in court that day. The case was scheduled for eleven, in aula 17 D, but things were going very slowly, so the udienza would probably not have begun before one, though there was no sure way of knowing that without going to the courtroom. Brunetti thanked her and broke the connection. ‘Court’s running late today,’ he told Vianello.

Vianello opened the portone and took a look outside, turned back to Brunetti and said, ‘Sun’s in the sky.’

Twenty minutes later, they entered the Tribunale without being asked to show identification of any sort. They made their way up to the second floor, then down the corridor toward the courtrooms. From the windows on their left, they saw through offices and out the windows that gave a view to the palazzi on the other side of the Grand Canal.

The air was motionless, as were the people who leaned back against the walls or sat in the corridor. All of the chairs were taken; some people had turned their briefcases into chairs or hassocks and sat on them; one man perched on a pile of string-bound legal files. The doors to the offices were all open to allow air to circulate, and occasionally people emerged from them and made their slow way down the crowded hallway, stepping over feet and legs, moving around slumped bodies as best they could.

At the far end they found aula 17 D. Here, as well, the door stood open, and people moved in and out at will. Brunetti stopped a clerk he recognized and asked him where Avvocato Penzo was: his case was being argued now, the clerk said, then added, ‘against Manfredi’, a lawyer known to Brunetti. They walked inside, and in the same instant both of them removed their jackets. Not to do so was to risk their health.

At the far end of the room, the judge sat on a dais that was itself set on a raised platform. He wore his cap and robe, and Brunetti was amazed that he could endure it. He had once been told that, during the summer, some judges chose to wear nothing but their underwear under the gowns: today he believed it. The windows to the canal were open, and the few people in the room all sat in the chairs nearest to them, except for the lawyers, who stood or sat facing the judge; they too were dressed in their formal black robes. One woman lawyer sat at the end of the row of chairs farthest from the windows with her head fallen against the back of the chair. Even from a distance, Brunetti could see that her hair looked as though she had just stepped from the shower. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open: she could as easily have been unconscious as asleep, overcome by the heat as dead.