CB19 A Question of Belief (2010) (2 page)

‘Watch out not to fall down the stairs or watch out for a tall, dark-haired stranger?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never watched them. It sounds ridiculous.’

‘It doesn’t sound ridiculous, Lorenzo,’ Brunetti assured him. ‘Strange, perhaps, but not ridiculous.’ He added, ‘And maybe not even so strange, come to think of it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s an old woman,’ Brunetti said, ‘and we tend to assume – and if Paola were here, or Nadia, they’d accuse me of prejudice against both women and old people for saying this – that old women will believe that sort of thing.’

‘Isn’t that why the witches got burnt?’ Vianello asked.

Even though Brunetti had once read long passages of
Malleus Maleficarum
, he still had no idea why old women had been the specific targets of the burnings. Perhaps because many men are stupid and vicious and old women are weak and undefended.

Vianello turned his attention to the window and the light. Brunetti sensed that the Ispettore wanted no prodding; he would get to whatever it was sooner or later. For the moment, Brunetti let him study the light and used the moment to study his friend. Vianello never bore the heat well, but he seemed more oppressed by it this summer. His hair, slicked down by perspiration, was thinner than Brunetti remembered. And the skin of his face seemed puffy, especially around his eyes.Vianello broke into his observations to ask, ‘But do you think old women really are more likely to believe in it?’

After considering the matter, Brunetti said, ‘I’ve no idea. You mean any more than the rest of us?’

Vianello nodded and turned back towards the window, as if willing the curtains to increase their motion.

‘From what you’ve said about her over the years, she doesn’t sound the type,’ Brunetti eventually said.

‘No, she isn’t. That’s why it’s so confusing. She was always
the brains in the family. My uncle Franco’s a good man, and he was a very good worker, but he never would have had the idea to go into business for himself. Or the ability to do it, come to that. But she did, and she kept the books until he retired and they moved back here.’

‘Doesn’t sound like the sort of person who would begin her day by checking what’s new in the house of Aquarius,’ Brunetti observed.

‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ Vianello said, raising his hands in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘Whether she is or not. Maybe it’s some sort of private ritual people have. I don’t know, like not going out of the house until you’ve found out the temperature or wanting to know what famous people were born on your birthday. People you’d never suspect. They seem normal in everything, and then one day you discover they won’t go on vacation unless their horoscope tells them it’s all right to go on a journey.’ Vianello shrugged, then repeated, ‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m still not sure why you’re asking me about this, Lorenzo,’ Brunetti said.

‘I’m not sure I know, either,’ Vianello admitted with a grin. ‘The last few times I’ve gone to see her – I try to stop in at least once a week – there were these crazy magazines lying around. No attempt to hide them or anything. “Your Horoscope.” “The Wisdom of the Ancients.” That sort of thing.’

‘Did you ask her about them?’

Vianello shook the question away. ‘I didn’t know how.’ He looked across at Brunetti and went on, ‘And I suppose I was afraid she wouldn’t like it if I did ask her.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘No reason, really.’ Vianello pulled out a handkerchief and wiped at his brow. ‘She saw me looking at them – well, saw that I noticed them. But she didn’t say anything. You know, make a joke and say one of her kids left them there or one of her friends had been to visit and had forgotten them. I mean,
it would have been normal to say something about them. After all, it was like finding magazines about hunting or fishing or motorcycles. But she was almost – I don’t know – almost secretive about it. I think that’s what bothered me.’ He gave Brunetti a long, inquisitive look and asked, ‘You’d say something, wouldn’t you?’

‘To her, you mean?’

‘Yes. If she were your aunt.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘What about your uncle? Can you ask him?’

‘I suppose I could, but talking to Zio Franco is like talking to any of those men of his generation: they have to make a joke about everything, slap you on the back and offer you a drink. He’s the best man in the world, but he really doesn’t pay much attention to anything.’

‘Not even to her?’

Vianello was silent before he answered, ‘Probably not.’ Another silence, and then he added, ‘Well, not in a way anyone would recognize. Men of his generation really didn’t pay much attention to their families, I think.’

Brunetti shook his head in a mixture of agreement and regret. No, they didn’t, not to their wives nor to their children, only to their friends and colleagues. He had often thought about this difference in – was it sensibility? Perhaps it was nothing more than culture: surely he knew a lot of men who still thought it a sign of weakness to display any interest in soft things like feelings.

He could not remember the first time it had occurred to him to wonder whether his father loved his mother, or loved him and his brother. Brunetti had always assumed that he had: children did. But what strange manifestations of emotion there had been: days of complete silence; occasional explosive bouts of anger; a few moments of affection and praise when his father had told his sons how much he loved them.

Surely, Brunetti’s father was not the sort of man one told secrets to, or confided in about anything. A man of his time, a man of his class, and of his culture. Was it only manner? He tried to remember how his friends’ fathers had behaved, but nothing came to mind.

‘You think we love our kids more?’ he asked Vianello.

‘More than whom? And who are we?’ the Inspector asked.

‘Men. Our generation. Than our fathers did.’

‘I don’t know. Really.’ Vianello twisted round and tugged repeatedly at his shirt, then used his handkerchief to mop at his neck. ‘Maybe all we’ve done is learned new conventions. Or maybe we’re expected to behave in a different way.’ He leaned back. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Why’d you tell me?’ Brunetti asked. ‘About your aunt, I mean.’

‘I guess I wanted to hear how it sounded, whether if I listened to myself talk about it, I’d know if I should be worried about her or not.’

‘I wouldn’t worry until she starts reading your palm, Lorenzo,’ Brunetti said, trying to lighten the mood.

Vianello shot him a stricken look. ‘Might not be far off, I’m afraid,’ he said, failing to make a joke of it. ‘You think we should drink coffee in this heat?’

‘Why not?’

In the bar at Ponte dei Greci, Bambola, the Senegalese helper Sergio had hired last year, was behind the bar. Both Brunetti and Vianello were accustomed to seeing Sergio there: robust, gruff Sergio, a man who had, over the decades, surely overheard – and kept to himself – enough police secrets to have kept a blackmailer in business for decades. So accustomed were the staff of the Questura to Sergio that he had achieved a state approaching invisibility.

The same could hardly be said of Bambola. The African wore a long beige djellaba and a white turban. Tall and slender, his dark face gleaming with health, Bambola stood behind the counter looking rather like a lighthouse, his turban reflecting back the light that shone in through the large windows that gave out on to the canal. He refused to wear an apron, but his djellabas never showed a spot or stain.

As the two men entered, Brunetti was struck by the increased brightness of the place and looked up to see if Bambola had turned on the lights, hardly necessary on a day that gleamed as did this one. But it was the windows. Not
only were they cleaner than he had ever seen them be, but the posters and stickers for ice-cream, soft drinks and different makes of beer had all been peeled or shaved away, an innovation which redoubled the light that flooded into the bar. The windowsill had been swept clean of old magazines and newspapers, nor was there any sign of the fly-specked menus that had lain there for years. Instead, a white cloth ran from end to end, and in the middle rested a dark blue vase of pink strawflowers.

Brunetti noticed that the battered plastic display case which, for as long as he could remember, had held pastries and brioche had been replaced by a three-tier case with glass walls and shelves. He was relieved to see that the same pastries were there: Sergio might not be the most rigorous of housekeepers, but he understood pastries, and he understood
tramezzini
.

‘Urban renewal?’ he asked Bambola by way of greeting.

His answer was a curved gleam of teeth, like a secondary light suddenly flashing on beneath the main beam of his turban. ‘
Sì
, Commissario,’ Bambola said. ‘Sergio’s down with summer flu, and he asked me to take over while he’s sick.’ With a cloth so white it could have been an extension of his turban, he took a swipe at the bar and asked what he could offer them.

‘Two coffees, please,’ Brunetti said.

The Senegalese turned away and busied himself with the machine. Unconsciously, Brunetti prepared himself for the familiar clanks and thumps of Sergio’s technique as he prised loose the handle that held the used coffee grounds, banged it clean, then flipped the lever that would fill it with fresh coffee. The noises came, but muted, and when he glanced at the machine he saw that the wooden bar on which Sergio had been banging the metal cup for decades had been covered with rubber stripping that effectively buffered the noise. The name of the machine’s maker, ‘Gaggia’, had been liberated
from the accumulation of grime and coffee stains that had obscured it since Brunetti had first come to the bar.

‘Will Sergio recognize the place when he comes back?’ Vianello asked the barman.

‘I hope so, Ispettore. And I hope he likes it.’

‘The case?’ Vianello asked with a nod of his chin in the direction of the pastries.

‘A friend found it for me,’ Bambola explained and gave it an affectionate swipe with the towel. ‘Even keeps them warm.’

Brunetti and Vianello did not exchange a look, but the long silence with which they greeted the barman’s explanation had the same effect. ‘Bought it for me, Ispettore,’ Bambola said in a more sober voice, emphasis heavy on the first word. ‘I have the receipt.’

‘He did you a favour, then,’ Vianello said with a smile. ‘It’s much better than that old plastic thing with the crack on the side.’

‘Sergio thought people didn’t notice it,’ Bambola said, his normal voice restored.

‘Hah!’ Vianello said. ‘This one makes you want to open it and eat.’ Fitting the deed to the word, he opened the case and, careful to take a napkin first, grabbed a crème-filled brioche from the top shelf. He took a bite, covering his chin and the front of his shirt with powdered sugar. ‘Don’t change these, Bambola,’ he said as he licked away his sugar moustache.

The barman put the two coffees on the counter, setting a small ceramic plate beside Vianello’s.

‘No paper plates,’ Vianello observed. ‘Good.’ He rested the remaining half of the brioche on the plate.

‘It doesn’t make sense, Ispettore,’ Bambola said. ‘Ecological sense, that is. Use all that paper, just to make a plate that gets used once and thrown away.’

‘And recycled,’ Brunetti offered.

Bambola shrugged the suggestion away, a response
Brunetti was accustomed to. Like everyone else in the city, he had no idea what happened to the garbage they so carefully separated: he could only hope.

‘You interested in that?’ Vianello asked. Then, to avoid confusion, added, ‘Recycling?’

‘Yes,’ Bambola said.

‘Why?’ Vianello asked. Before the barman could answer, two men came in and ordered coffee and mineral water. They took their places at the other end of the bar.

When they were served and Bambola came back, Vianello returned to his question. ‘You interested because it will save Sergio money? Not using paper plates.’

Bambola removed their cups and saucers and placed them in the sink. He rinsed them quickly and set them inside the dishwasher.

‘I’m an engineer, Ispettore,’ he finally said. ‘So it interests me professionally. In terms of cycles of consumption and production.’

‘I figured you’d studied,’ Vianello said. ‘But I didn’t know how to ask you.’ After waiting a moment to see how Bambola accepted this last, he asked, ‘What sort of engineer?’

‘Hydraulic. Water purification plants. Things like that.’

‘I see.’ Vianello pulled some change from his pocket, sorted through it, and left the right amount on the bar.

‘If you speak to Sergio,’ Brunetti said as he moved towards the door, ‘please say hello and tell him to get better.’

‘I will, Commissario,’ Bambola said and turned away towards the two men at the end of the bar. Brunetti had expected Vianello to return to the subject of his aunt, but the impulse, it seemed, had been left in the Questura and Brunetti, having no particular desire to continue that conversation, did not pursue it.

Outside, both men paused involuntarily under the whip of the sun. The Questura was less than two minutes’ walk, but in the heat that appeared to have increased while they were
inside, it might have been half a city away. The sun blasted down on the pavement along the canal. Tourists sat under the umbrellas in front of the trattoria on the other side of the bridge. Brunetti studied them for a moment, seeking some sign of motion. Could it be that the heat had dried them out, and they were no more than empty shells, like locusts? But then a waiter took a tall glass of some dark liquid to one of the tables, and the guest moved his head slowly to watch his arrival.

They set off. Bodies of water, Brunetti knew, were meant to cool the places where they were found, but the flat, dark green surface of the canal seemed only to reflect and redouble the light and heat. Instead of relief, it provided humidity. They trudged on.

‘I had no idea he was an engineer,’ Vianello said.

‘Me neither.’

‘Hydraulic engineer at that,’ Vianello added with undisguised admiration. The door to the Questura was only a few steps away. The guard, understandably, had retreated inside.