Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

This was enough to encourage Fontana to remove his attention from his knees. He looked at Brunetti, who was struck by the sadness in his eyes. Fontana said, ‘So do I.’

‘Could you tell us about him, then, Signore?’ Brunetti asked.

‘He was a good man,’ Fontana began, surprising Brunetti by using the same words as Signora Zinka. ‘My uncle was a good man, and he raised Araldo that way.’ If Brunetti found it strange that Fontana did not mention his cousin’s mother, he kept it to himself.

‘We were always close when we were kids, maybe less so as we got older, but I guess that’s normal.’ It was said as a statement, but Brunetti sensed that it was really a question. Fontana took a breath and went on. ‘But then I married and had children. And things changed.’ Brunetti smiled at this and did not glance in Vianello’s direction. ‘I had less time for Araldo then.’

‘Did you still see him?’

‘Oh, of course. He’s the godfather of both of my children, and he took it seriously.’ Fontana paused and looked away from them, out the window at the roof of the Casa di Cura across the canal. It seemed to Brunetti that the mention of his children had strengthened Fontana; it had certainly strengthened his voice. Brunetti made no attempt to call his attention back.

They waited and, after some time, Fontana said, ‘He was homosexual, Araldo.’

Brunetti nodded, a nod that both acknowledged the remark and declared that the police already knew this.

Fontana reached into his pocket and brought out a cotton handkerchief. He wiped his face and put the handkerchief back. ‘He told me years ago, perhaps fifteen, perhaps more than that.’

‘Were you surprised?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I think I wasn’t,’ Fontana said. Absently, he glanced down at his lap and pinched the crease in his trousers, ran his fingers back and forth along it, though the gesture made no difference against the weight of humidity in the room, in the city. ‘No, I wasn’t. Not really,’ he corrected. ‘I’d thought for years that he was. Not that it mattered to me.’

‘Did it matter to his parents, do you think?’ Vianello asked. ‘Were they surprised?’

‘His father was dead when he told me.’

‘And his mother?’ the Inspector asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Fontana said. ‘She’s a great deal smarter than she lets on. She might have known. Or suspected.’

‘Would it have bothered her?’ Vianello asked.

Fontana shrugged, started to say something, stopped, then went on, speaking quickly, ‘So long as no one knew about it and he paid the rent, she wouldn’t care, not really.’

Brunetti interrupted to remark, ‘That’s an unusual thing to say about a man’s mother.’

‘She’s an unusual woman,’ Fontana said, giving him a sharp look.

A silence fell. Interesting as a discussion of Signora Fontana might be, Brunetti thought it was of little use to them. It was time to get back to Fontana’s death, so he asked, ‘Did your cousin ever say anything about his private life?’

‘Do you mean sex?’ Fontana asked.

‘Yes.’

Fontana tried again to help the crease in his trousers, but again the humidity won. ‘He told me,’ he began and stopped to clear his throat a few times. ‘He told me once that he envied me.’ He stopped.

‘Envied you what, Signor Fontana?’ Brunetti was finally forced to ask him.

‘That I love my wife.’ He looked away from Brunetti after he said this.

‘And why was that?’ Brunetti asked.

Again Fontana cleared his throat, gave a few coughs, and said, not looking at him, ‘Because — this is what he said — he never managed to make love with anyone he really loved.’

Brunetti nodded again, suggesting that he was already in possession of this information. In his most sympathetic voice he said, ‘That must have made his life very difficult.’

Fontana gave the phantom of a shrug and said, ‘In a way, but not really.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ Brunetti said, though, thinking of Fontana’s mother, perhaps he did.

‘That way, he could separate his emotional life from his sexual life. He loved me and his mother and his friend Renato, but we were already — what’s the right way to say this? — out of bounds sexually.’ He paused, as if considering what he had just heard himself say, then went on. ‘Well, Renato isn’t, I suppose. But I think Araldo couldn’t stand confusion of any sort in his life. So by separating them, those two things, then he didn’t have confusion. Or he thought he didn’t.’ Again, that shrug, and Fontana said, ‘I don’t know how to explain this, but it makes sense to me. Knowing him, I mean. How he is. Was.’

‘You said a moment ago, Signore, that you think this might have had something to do with his death,’ Brunetti said. ‘Could you explain that to us, please?’

Fontana folded his hands primly on his lap and said, speaking to Brunetti, ‘By keeping things separate, he was free — if that’s the word — to have anonymous sex. When we were younger. . that sort of thing was all right, I suppose. And then I, well, I changed. But Araldo didn’t.’

After the silence had grown long, Brunetti asked, ‘Did he tell you this?’

Fontana tilted his head to one side. ‘Sort of.’

‘Excuse me,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ He probably did, but he wanted to hear from Fontana what the other man had in mind.

‘He’d tell me things, answer questions, sort of hint at things,’ Fontana said, abruptly getting to his feet. But all he did was pull his trousers away from the back of his thighs and take a few steps on the spot to let them fall free from his body. He sat down again and said, ‘I knew what he meant to say, even if he didn’t say it.’

‘Did he tell you where this took place?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Here and there. In other people’s homes.’

‘Not in his?’

Fontana gave Brunetti a severe look and asked, ‘Have you met his mother?’

‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, glancing at the surface of his desk and then back at Fontana.

As if as a form of apology for the sharpness of his last remark, Fontana offered this: ‘Once, when I went to visit them, the speaker phone and door latch were broken, so I had to call Araldo on my telefonino , and he came down to let me in. As we were crossing the courtyard, he stopped and looked around. Then he said something about it being his little love nest.’

‘What did you say?’ Vianello broke in to ask.

‘I was embarrassed, so I ignored him and pretended he hadn’t said anything.’ A moment passed and he said, ‘I didn’t know what to say. We’d been so close as kids, and then he’d say something like this. I didn’t understand.’

‘Maybe he was embarrassed, as well,’ Brunetti suggested. Then, more appositely, ‘Did he ever mention anyone by name or make a remark that would allow you to identify one of his. .‘ Brunetti struggled to find the right word: ‘lovers’ seemed wildly wrong, given what Fontana had been telling him. ‘. . partners?’

Fontana shook his head. ‘No. Nothing. Araldo would have thought that was wrong.’ He waited for them to ask him about that, and when they did not, he continued. ‘It was all right for him to talk about his own life, but he never said anything about anyone else: no names, not even ages. Nothing.’

‘Just that he couldn’t love them?’ asked Vianello in a sad voice.

Fontana nodded, then whispered, ‘Or shouldn’t.’

After that, the information Fontana provided was routine: his cousin had never introduced him to anyone who was other than a friend from school or a colleague at work, nor had he ever spoken with particular affection of anyone except Renato Penzo, whom he had praised as a good friend. He had always gone on vacation with his mother and had once joked that it was more work than going to work.