Donna Leon - About Face

The Conte moved aside to look at another painting, a life-sized portrait of a fat-faced woman bedecked in jewels and brocade. ‘If only she weren’t so vulgar,’ he said, glancing back at Brunetti. ‘It’s so beautifully painted, I’d buy it in a minute. But I couldn’t stand to live with her in the house.’ He reached out his hand and literally dragged Brunetti to stand in front of the painting. ‘Could you?’

Fashions in beauty and body size changed over the centuries, Brunetti knew, and so her girth might have been appealing to some seventeenth-century lover or husband. But her look of swinish gluttony would be offensive through the ages. Her skin glistened with grease, not with health; her teeth, however white and even, were those of an eager carnivore; the creases in the fat of her wrists spoke of embedded dirt. The gown from which her bosom spilled did not so much cover her flesh as restrain it from bursting out.

But, as the Conte had observed, she was gloriously well painted, with brush strokes that captured the glint of her eyes, the rich abundance of her golden hair, even the plush red brocade of the gown that exposed too much of her bosom.

‘It’s a remarkably modern painting,’ the Conte said and took Brunetti aside to a pair of velvet-covered armchairs that might originally have been made to seat members of the senior clergy.

‘I don’t see it,’ Brunetti said, surprised at how comfortable the formidable chair was. ‘Not modern.’

‘She represents consumption,’ the Conte said, waving back at the painting. ‘Just have a look at the size of her and think of the amount she’s had to eat in her lifetime to create that mass of flesh, to make no mention of what she’d have to eat to maintain it. And look at the colour of those cheeks: that’s a woman much given to drink. Again, just imagine the quantities. And the brocade: how many silkworms perished to produce her dress and mantle, or the silk on her chair? Look at her jewellery. How many men died in the gold mines to produce it? Who died digging out the ruby in the ring? And the bowl of fruit on the table next to her? Who cultivated those peaches? Who made the glass next to the fruit bowl?’

Brunetti looked at the painting with this new optic, seeing it as a manifestation of the wealth that feeds consumption and is in turn fed by it. The Conte was right: it could easily be read this way, but just as easily it could be seen as an example of the skill of the painter and the tastes of his age.

‘And are you going to make some connection in all of this to Cataldo?’ Brunetti asked in a light voice.

‘Consumption, Guido,’ the Conte went on as if Brunetti had not spoken. ‘Consumption. We’re obsessed by it. Our desire is to have not one, but six, televisions. To have a new telefonino every year, perhaps every six months, as new models are produced. And advertised. To upgrade our computers every time there is a new operating system, or every time the screens become bigger, or smaller, or flatter or, for all I know, rounder.’ Brunetti thought of his request for his own computer and wondered where this speech was going.

‘If you’re wondering where all of this is leading,’ the Conte astonished him by saying, ‘it’s leading into the garbage.’ The Conte turned to him as though he had just delivered the final proof of the validity of a syllogism or an algebraic formula, and Brunetti stared at him.

The Conte, no mean showman, allowed time to pass. From the other room of the gallery, they heard the owner turn a page of his book.

At last the Conte said, ‘Garbage, Guido. Garbage. That’s what Cataldo wanted to propose to me.’

Brunetti remembered the list of Cataldo’s businesses and began to study them in a new light. ‘Aha,’ he permitted himself to say.

‘You at least did some research on him, didn’t you?’ the Conte asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And you know what businesses he’s involved in?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, ‘at least some of them. Shipping: cargo ships and trucks.’

‘Shipping,’ the Conte repeated. ‘And heavy equipment for excavation,’ he added.’ He has a shipping line, and trucks. And earth-moving equipment. He also — and I found out about this only through my own people, who are sometimes as good as yours — has a waste disposal business that gets rid of all of those things I was just talking about that we don’t want any more: telefonini , computers, fax machines, answering machines.’ The Conte glanced back at the portrait of the woman and said, ‘Most desirable model one year; the next year, useless junk.’

Brunetti, who knew where this was leading, decided to remain silent.

‘That’s the secret, Guido: new model one year, junk the next. Because there are so many of us and because we consume so much junk and throw away so much junk, someone has to be around to pick it up and dispose of it for us. It used to be that people were happy to be handed old junk: our kids took our old computers or our old televisions. But now everyone has to have new junk, their own junk. So now we not only have to pay to buy it; we also have to pay to get rid of it.’ The Conte’s tone was calm, descriptive. Brunetti had heard his daughter and granddaughter give much the same speech, but the Conte’s descendants delivered it with anger, not with his cool dispassion.

‘And this is what Cataldo does?’

‘Yes. Cataldo is the garbage man. Other people amass it, and when they get tired of it, or it breaks, he sees that it is taken out of their way.’

When Brunetti did not reply, the Conte went on more quietly. ‘That’s what his interest in China is all about, Guido. China, the garbage heap of the world. But he waited too long.’

‘Too long for what?’ Brunetti asked.

‘He overestimated the Africans,’ the Conte said. In response to the inquisitive noise with which Brunetti greeted this, the Conte continued. ‘Three ships he chartered left Trieste a month ago.’ Before Brunetti could ask, he said, ‘Yes, garbage ships. Filled with material it would be very expensive to dispose of here. He’s been working with the Somalians for years. If what my people have told me is to be believed, he’s sent them hundreds of thousands of tons. If he paid them enough, they’d take anything he wanted to send them: no questions asked about where it came from or what it was. But times change, and there’s been so much bad press — especially after the tsunami — that the UN is trying to blockade the traffic, so it’s almost impossible to send things there any more.’ From the Conte’s tone, it was impossible to judge his opinion of this.

‘Besides, it doesn’t make sense now. You have to pay the Africans to take it,’ he added, shaking his head at the thought of these old-fashioned business practices. ‘The Chinese will pay you to bring most things to them. Then they pick through it and save what they can and, I suspect, send the really dangerous stuff out to be dumped in Tibet.’ He shrugged, ‘There’s very little they won’t take.’

He gave Brunetti a long look, as if weighing whether he could be trusted with information. He must have liked what he saw, for he expanded, ‘Have you ever asked yourself why the Chinese went to the trouble and expense of building a railway line from Beijing to Tibet, Guido? You think there are enough tourists to justify an expense like that? For a passenger train?’

All Brunetti could do was shake his head.

‘But I was talking about Cataldo,’ the Conte resumed. ‘And his ships. He miscalculated. There are some things even the Chinese balk at taking now, and he’s got three ships full of it. They’ve got nowhere to go, and they can’t come back here until they get rid of their cargo because no European port would let them in.’