Donna Leon - The Jewels of Paradise

Caterina was struck by his use of that word, for Dottor Moretti, more than any other thing, seemed a prudent man. For Caterina, however, the term was only descriptive and could as easily be a vice as a virtue. She hoped that it was a virtue in the lawyer.

Her reflections were interrupted by a loud knocking at the front door.

Dottor Moretti looked at his watch and said, looking at Roseanna, “You were right, Signora, it’s just noon. Indeed, our two guests do think in numbers.”

ROSEANNA GOT TO HER FEET, SAYING, “DOTTORE, MIGHT I ASK you to open the door for our guests?” It was Monday, Caterina recalled, the day the library was closed to visitors, so they would have it to themselves. It was the only room she had so far seen with more than two chairs and thus was the only place where all of them could meet. She had not seen the cousins since the interviews in that same room, when she had met with them to present her qualifications.

She and Roseanna went down the corridor to the library. The room was warmer than either her office or Roseanna’s had been; the heat, unfortunately, brought out the scent of the bodies and clothing that had been present in the room during the last weeks. Roseanna went immediately to the windows and threw them wide, then went back to the door and opened it. Caterina could feel the draught sweeping past her and out the door. “Keep them open as long as you can,” Roseanna said and went to receive the visitors.

Caterina, in the accidental role of majordomo, went over to the windows and stood in the draft cutting into the room. When the footsteps approached, she shut the windows and moved back to stand on the other side of the table. In less than a minute, Roseanna came through the door, followed by Dottor Moretti, carrying his briefcase. Caterina wondered whether the cousins would force themselves through the door side by side or stand outside to fight about who went first.

Her fantasy was wasted. Signor Stievani came in first, closely followed by his cousin, the usurer. Or would it have been better to say that the tax evader came in first, closely followed by his cousin, Signor Scapinelli? Caterina smiled with every indication of pleasure and shook hands with both men, then turned to the table and pulled out a chair for one, just as Roseanna pulled out the one opposite for his cousin. None of the men seemed to notice the smell in the room, and neither of the cousins seemed surprised by Roseanna’s presence.

With casual authority, Dottor Moretti moved to the head of the table, waited for everyone else to sit, and then took his place. He nodded to both men and began in medias res . “I’ve already explained the conditions of her employment to Dottoressa Pellegrini. You are both already familiar with what they are. She has no objections to any of the requirements. In fact, she was just about to sign the agreement as you arrived.” So saying, he nodded to Caterina, who took the pen he handed her and signed the agreement, then passed it back to him.

Dottor Moretti opened his briefcase and pulled out a blue folder. He slipped the agreement into it and replaced it in his briefcase, which he set back on the floor, where it made a surprisingly heavy thump. “If either of you, Signor Scapinelli or Signor Stievani, has anything to say to the Dottoressa, or to either Signora Salvi or to me, then perhaps you could do so now?”

While Dottor Moretti spoke Caterina studied the two men, trying to judge whether her first opinion—negative in both cases—would find confirmation in this second encounter with them. So far, however, all they had done was sit, carefully avoiding the sight of the other by giving their attention to Dottor Moretti.

Seeing the two men together, Caterina realized that Stievani must be older than his cousin, perhaps by as much as a decade. He had the rough skin of a man who worked outside and had never thought to protect himself from the sun, skin that reminded her of the leather of Dottor Moretti’s briefcase, though the lawyer had taken better care of the briefcase than Signor Stievani had of his face. Or his hands, for that matter. The knuckles of both hands were swollen, the fingers twisted at odd angles, perhaps from arthritis, perhaps from decades of work on boats in cold weather. She was surprised to see that his nails were neatly trimmed and filed, surely the work of a manicurist.

His nose was long and straight, his eyes clear blue under sharply arched brows. But the face was bloated and puffed up, perhaps from alcohol, perhaps from disease, and the swelling had pushed out the possibility of beauty, leaving the wreckage of a man.

When she glanced at his cousin, Signor Scapinelli, her attention was drawn, as it had been the first time, to his eyes. Her memory flashed, not to anything he had said when they met, but to the vision Dante had given of the usurers. She forgot what circle he had consigned them to—the seventh? The eighth? They sat, for all eternity, on the burning sands of hell, flapping at falling flames the way dogs swat at flies to rid themselves of them. Around their necks hung bags, small purses that held their meaningless wealth, and Dante described the way their eyes still, even in that place, feasted on the sight of those bags. Their eyes, she decided, must have been eyes like Signor Scapinelli’s: deep set, never still, with dark half moons below them.

She had watched him notice Dottor Moretti’s briefcase and the gold frames of his glasses, had seen him tote up the cost of his suit, and she felt a shiver of embarrassment that she had done much the same. To save herself from her own harsh accusations, she offered the excuse that she had done it in a complimentary way, in admiration of his taste and not in envy that he had the available wealth to permit himself that casual elegance.

Scapinelli’s clothing disguised his wealth, had perhaps been chosen to achieve that end. His jacket was faintly threadbare at the cuffs; a button had been replaced by another that could do nothing better than resemble the others, and not very closely. His hands were as large as his cousin’s, though much better cared for, as were, strangely enough, his teeth, where she saw evidence of a great deal of work and expense.

He was round-faced and balding and walked with the ponderous splay-footed tread of the obese, though he was not a fat man. Caterina had no clear idea how closely related the two sides of the family might once have been, but all resemblance had been worn away by the passing of time, and now the only way these men looked alike was in the possession of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

Scapinelli, she was reminded when he caught her glance and moved his mouth in a quick rictus, had the distracting habit of smiling at inappropriate times, as if his face were on a timer or programmed to respond to certain expressions. Strangely, the smile never came in reaction to anything funny or witty or ironic. The last time, she had attempted to figure out what the key was, but she had abandoned the task as hopeless and let him smile at will, which he did when he said even the most innocuous things, or when he heard them.

One might dismiss him as a happy fool because of those smiles, but that would be a mistake, for above the vacuous smile rested those reptilian eyes.

He spoke first, in the rough voice she remembered and speaking in Veneziano. “Good. If she’s accepted all the terms, then she can go to work.” What was next, Caterina wondered? They put a time clock by the front door and she stamped in and out every day?

Before she could ask that, Dottor Moretti spoke again. “Before she does, Signor Scapinelli, there are a few things that remain to be settled.”

“Like what?” Scapinelli asked with a pugnacity Caterina thought unnecessary.