Donna Leon - The Jewels of Paradise

Thus her flight to Vienna and years of study, more digging through the archives in Saint Petersburg, and then her galley years in Matera after the desire to return to Italy had become too strong to resist. Then the renewed flight to Manchester and now this, whatever this was.

A light knock at the door pulled her from these reflections. “ Avanti, ” she called. Thinking it would be a friendly gesture to be seen approaching whoever was there, Caterina started toward the door just as it opened and a woman the age of her mother entered the room. Like her mother, this woman was short and tended to roundness, as did her soft-skinned face, above which rose a structure of intertwined braids and tresses that sent Caterina’s memory to a production of Cherubini’s Medea she had seen many years ago at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, in which the costume designer had clearly confused Medea with Medusa and had topped the head of the soprano with a loose-fitting helmet of snakes, whose twining and twisting had done a great deal to aid her performance by distracting the attention of the audience from her singing. Unlike those of the singer, this woman’s serpents were motionless.

“Dottoressa Pellegrini?” the woman asked, and Caterina wondered if she had perhaps expected to find someone else in the room. The woman gave a very small smile and extended her hand. “I’m Roseanna Salvi, acting director of the foundation.” Caterina had been told that Dottor Asnaldi, the former director, had left a year before, and his assistant was now in charge until a permanent replacement could be found.

“How very kind of you to come and find me, Dottoressa Salvi,” Caterina said, taking her hand. She addressed her both with her title and in the formal lei.

The contact was fleeting, quite as if Dottoressa Salvi were fearful to entrust her right hand to this other woman for more than a second. She whipped her hand behind her back, embracing it safely with the other.

“Would you care to take a seat?” Caterina asked, deciding to act as though this had always been her own office. She waved toward her desk and only then realized that there was just the one chair in the room.

Caterina smiled at the situation, hoping for a mirror smile on the other woman’s face. Nothing, only attentive politeness. “Dottoressa,” she said, “perhaps you could take the chair.”

Her hands still hidden, the other woman said, “I’m afraid I have to correct you, Dottoressa.”

Here it came, Caterina thought. Territoriality, competition, beat down the newcomer, get the pecking order established. So much for female solidarity. Saying nothing, she smiled.

“There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not a doctor. Not of anything.” As she spoke, Not-Dottoressa Salvi’s face relaxed, and her hands came out from behind her back.

“Ah,” Caterina said, impulsively placing a hand on the other woman’s arm, as if to provide comfort. “No one told me. In fact, no one’s told me anything, really.” Then, because they were women and because the situation needed to be eased, Caterina said, “Call me Caterina, please. And no dottoressa .”

Signora Salvi smiled, and the snakes surrounding her head turned into mere curls. “And I’m Roseanna,” she said, avoiding the informal tu, no doubt leaving it to the dottoressa, however much younger she might be.

“Can we call each other tu ?” Caterina asked. “Since we’re working together.” Caterina didn’t know if that was precisely true, but at least they did work in the same place and that was close enough for collegiality.

As usually happens when one person suggests grammatical informality, the mood of the conversation eased with the establishment of equality. Signora Salvi turned away toward the door and said, “Let’s go to my office.” Then, with a smile, she added, “At least it has two chairs.”

When she followed Signora Salvi into her office, two doors away from her own, Caterina noticed that the second chair was almost the only difference, that and a larger window looking out to the courtyard behind the building. There was a table just as small as Caterina’s. There was no telephone here either, but on the table stood something Caterina had not seen for more than a decade: a typewriter. Electric, assuredly, but still a typewriter. Caterina would have been no more astonished had she seen a woman on the street in a crinoline and bloomers. She drew closer and looked at the keyboard. Yes, the letters were all there.

Signora Salvi saw where her attention rested and said, her shoulders raised in a shrug of resignation or apology, “We don’t have a computer anymore, so I’ve been using that.” Then, remembering her role as hostess, she smiled and pulled the chair away from the desk and offered it to Caterina. She pulled her own to the side of her desk, so that the typewriter was not between them, and sat down.

Neither spoke for some time, each waiting for the other to break the silence and set the mood. Finally Caterina gave in to her simple curiosity—elementary school children did their homework on computers, people used them on trains. “How is it that an institution like this doesn’t have a computer?”

Signora Salvi looked at the typewriter and, when that seemed not to supply the answer, at Caterina. “It was stolen.”

“What happened?”

“Someone broke in one night—it was about three months ago—and took the computer and the printer and some money that was in the drawer,” she said, pointing toward the back of the desk.

“How did they get in?” Caterina asked, thinking of her own tiny window.

“Through there,” Signora Salvi said, pointing to the considerably larger window at the back. “It must have been easy. All they had to do was get into the courtyard and pry open the shutter and break the glass. They didn’t take anything else, so far as I could tell. But that’s because they couldn’t get into the other offices. All of the doors were locked.”

“Were the police here?” Caterina asked.

“Of course. I called them as soon as I saw what had happened.”

“And?”

“Oh, the usual,” Signora Salvi said, as if dealing with the police were part of an annoying daily routine. “First they acted as though they thought I’d done it, and then they said it was kids stealing things to pay for drugs.”

“Is that all?”

“They told me to get the window fixed,” Signora Salvi said with some evidence of disgust. “They didn’t bother to ask what kind of computer it was or to take fingerprints. Or to ask anything at all, for that matter.” Then, sounding even more disgruntled, she added, “And they didn’t talk to anyone else in the building or to the others that share the courtyard.” She shrugged to dismiss the police, then smiled again.

“How do you get on without it?” Caterina asked, nodding toward the typewriter, as if it were a votive statue of the missing computer.

In a confessional tone, Roseanna said, “There was really very little in it. I keep the records of any new documents that are added to the collection and answer the letters that we receive.” She gave Caterina a very small smile and added, “The Foundation doesn’t really do very much, you know. And I’m here only three hours a day. I have to be here in case anyone comes to ask for information.” Her next smile showed signs of embarrassment as she said, “But no one ever does. Well, once in a while, but not to ask questions, just to use the library.” She gave Caterina, who was busy trying to think of how anyone could possibly use such a library, a long, appraising look and then added in a softer voice, “They’re very peculiar.”

“In what way?”

Signora Salvi shifted around in her seat, and Caterina wondered if she had been made nervous by her own impulsive confidence or perhaps she didn’t want to speak badly of the people who, in a sense, helped keep the Foundation running. Caterina smiled and nodded to encourage her.