Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

‘Ah, of course. She left. No explanation. That happened a lot to the Signora. But before she went she told her that she knew a girl who could do the ironing and clean, too. She said she was a good girl.’ She stopped and looked at Brunetti.

‘Ana?’ he asked and took another biscuit.

‘Yes. Her mother brought her round, and she talked to the Signora. I wasn’t there. But two days later, Ana moved into a room up on the fourth floor and was in the storeroom all day long, ironing. Then she started to help me with the beds and cleaning.’ The woman’s eyes travelled to that distant past, when she could eat as much sugar as she pleased and had a young girl to help with the heavy work.

‘Did you talk to her, Signora?’ Griffoni asked. ‘She must have been lonely in such a big place,’ she added and took another biscuit.

‘I think she was. At the beginning. But the signora kept us busy.’

So casually that Brunetti could do nothing but marvel at her skill, Griffoni dipped her biscuit into the coffee, bit off only the damp end, and smiled in continuing delight, then asked, ‘What was she like, the Signora?’ It was seamless, and Brunetti, if he had been asked, would have told her everything he knew.

‘She was very religious,’ Signora Ghezzi said, but it was a neutral word, without the least suggestion of approval. She might as well have been saying that the Signora was tall or right-handed. ‘There was a relative, a nun, who lived in the palazzo . We never saw much of her, but the Signora did. And the girls.’ She reached for another biscuit but resisted and settled for finishing her coffee. She looked across at Griffoni. ‘Have more of them. My daughter-in-law makes them.’

‘They’re wonderful,’ Griffoni said, taking another. She dipped it into her coffee and ate it with something approaching glee. Griffoni, he knew, hated coffee without milk and disliked sweets or pastries of any sort. She started to dip the stub end of the biscuit into the coffee but stopped herself, holding it up in the air as visual proof of how arrested she was by her own thought. ‘It can’t have been a very exciting place for young girls,’ she began, as though the idea had flashed upon her, then let her voice trail off, looked at Brunetti and said, ‘Sorry, Commissario.’ Then, to Signora Ghezzi, ‘I don’t mean to . . .’ and let that trail off, too, though this time she managed to blush. To cover that, she finished her coffee.

Signora Ghezzi smiled and leaned forward to pat her arm. ‘Don’t worry, dear. You’re exactly right. And it was religion that made the Signora find out.’

‘Excuse me?’ Brunetti said for both of them.

‘She was away at one of her religious retreats. The Signora. She had another relative – I think it was an aunt – in a convent in Assisi, and she went to stay with her for a week every month. Her confessor was there – she was very close to him – and she told us how she lived with the sisters, following their rules: getting up and going to bed when they did, and eating with them. But not talking. For a week.’ She smiled at Brunetti and said, ‘We were all very impressed with that at the time, I can tell you.’

‘At the time.’ Brunetti was struck by Signora Ghezzi’s language. He smiled back at her but did not interrupt.

‘Well, anyway, this time the Signora was away for ten days, and when she came back, Ana didn’t come to work for three days, so when she did, the Signora hadn’t seen her for almost two weeks, so she noticed the change in her.’ Signora Ghezzi touched the tips of her forefingers together and drew a wide arc above her stomach.

Both Brunetti and Griffoni stared at her.

‘You hadn’t noticed?’ Griffoni asked. Better that she ask, Brunetti thought: this was women’s business.

‘Well, I knew something was wrong. But I wasn’t sure.’

‘Did anyone else in the house know?’ Griffoni asked.

‘Lavinia was away at school, and Lucrezia wasn’t paying attention to much of what was happening around her.’

Like so much of what the old woman had said, that cried out for clarification. Brunetti nodded and waited for her to go on.

‘What happened?’ Griffoni asked.

Signora Ghezzi shook her head. ‘I don’t know. The Signora spoke to her, and then she was gone. That’s when the Signora got sick. At the time, as I told you,’ she repeated, ‘I thought it must be because she was so religious.’ She stopped speaking and took another biscuit. She put it in her mouth all in one piece and chewed.

Silence fell. From the direction of the laguna , they heard the motor of a large boat go past. Neither Brunetti nor Griffoni paid attention to it, not with the interesting sounds that were on offer here.

Few people liked betrayal, he knew. To avoid it or the accusation of it, people would dodge around facts or present them in a way that hid them at the same time as it showed them. ‘“At the time,”’ Signora,’ Brunetti repeated in a level voice. When Signora Ghezzi responded with only a glance in his direction, he added, ‘We saw Lucrezia yesterday, Signora. She’s still not paying much attention to what’s going on around her.’

He noticed Griffoni suddenly remove her arms from the table and sit farther back in her chair, as if to create a distance between herself and Signora Ghezzi. The old woman noticed it, too.

‘Did Signora Lembo ever mention Ana again?’ Brunetti asked.

Surprised, Signora Ghezzi asked, ‘Did you know the Signora, then?’

‘No, Signora. I never met her.’

‘Ah,’ she said. She folded her hands on the table in front of her and looked down at her knuckles. Like Ana’s hands, hers had spent a great deal of time in cold water and harsh detergents. Like his mother’s hands, as well. She looked quickly across the table at him. ‘But you’ve learned enough about her to understand her,’ she observed.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because of your question. That was her way: if she didn’t like something, she made it not exist any more.’ She folded her hands in her lap.

Griffoni interrupted to ask, ‘So she made Ana not exist any more?’

The old woman nodded.

‘And her baby?’ Griffoni asked.

‘Oh,’ she said in a normal voice, ‘She made him not exist, either.’

25

‘What does that mean, Signora?’ Brunetti asked calmly. The boy had become a man, so there had been no abortion or miscarriage or early death. The woman had, however unknowingly, expressed what had been bothering Brunetti from the moment he first heard about Davide Cavanella’s death: his failure ever to exist.

‘She never talked about Ana again or allowed anyone to mention her.’ She looked into the past and said, ‘I can still hear her saying it, when Lucrezia asked where she was: “That person doesn’t exist.” The girl had been there for more than two years, and suddenly she didn’t exist.’ She looked at them, first at one, then the other. ‘That’s exactly what she said. Those were her words. “That person doesn’t exist.”’

She remained silent for some time, so as to allow them to hear the words and then their echo. When she glanced at Brunetti again, it seemed to him that her face had changed somehow or that her eyes had become sharper and she had ceased being the retired old maidservant and become a younger and stronger woman.

‘Why are you asking this?’ she asked.

Brunetti realized that, had the woman who had let them into the house and given them biscuits asked that question, he probably would have given her a sweet lie. But this woman would have none of that and, from the look of her, would laugh at him if he tried it.

‘I want him to have lived.’ He listened to that, unsure why he could not make things clearer.