The Girl of his Dreams - Brunetti 17 (6 page)

'In God?'

'Yes.'

In all these years, the only information he had had about the Contessa's beliefs had come from Paola, and all she had said was that her mother believed in God and had often gone to Mass while Paola was growing up. As to why Paola had, if anything, an adversarial relationship with religion, this had never been explained beyond Paola's maintaining that she had had 'good luck and good sense'.

Because it was not a subject he had ever discussed with the Contessa, Brunetti began by saying, 'I don't want to offend you.'

'By saying that you don't believe?'

'Yes.'

"That could hardly offend me, Guido, since I think it's an entirely sensible position.'

When he failed to hide his surprise, she said, her wrinkles contracting in a soft smile, 'I've chosen to believe in God, you see, Guido. In the face of convincing evidence to the contrary and in the complete absence of p
roof -well, anything a right-th
inking person would consider as proof - of God's existence. I find that it makes life more acceptable, and it becomes easier to make certain decisions and endure certain losses. But it's a choice on my part, only that, and so the other choice, the choice not to believe, is entirely sensible to me.'

'I'm not sure I see it as a choice,' Brunetti said.

'Of course it's a choice,' she said with the same smile, as though they were talking about the children, and he'd just repeated one of Chiara's clever remarks. 'We've both been presented with the same evidence, or lack of evidence, and we each choose to interpret it in a particular way. So of course it's a choice.'

'Do you include belief in the Church in this choice?' Brunetti couldn't stop himself from asking, knowing that the Faliers' social position often put them in contact with members of the hierarchy.

'Good heavens, no. A person would have to be mad to trust them.'

He laughed out loud and shook his head in confusion, encouraging her to say, 'Just look at them, Guido, in their dear little costumes, with their hats and their skirts and their rosaries and their turned around collars. All those things do is demand people's attention, and they often get their respect, as well. I'm sure if all these clerics had to walk around looking just like everyone else and earning respect the way everyone else does - only by the way they act - I'm sure that most of them would have no interest in it, that they'd go out and get jobs and work for a living. If they couldn't use it as a way to make people think they're special, and superior, most of them would have no interest in it at all.' After a long pause, she added, 'Besides, I don't think God profits from the help they offer.'

'That's rather a severe opinion, if I may say so,' Brunetti ventured.

‘I
s it?' she asked, seeming honestly puzzled. Tm sure there are some perfectly nice and decent ones, but I think that, as a group, clerics are best avoided.' Before he could comment, she added, 'Unless, of course, one is forced into their company, in which case they deserve common civility. I suppose.' He waited, familiar with her pauses. 'It's their interest in power, I think, that makes me so dislike them: so many of them are driven by it. I think it distorts their souls.'

'Would you include a man like Leonardo Mutti in what you've just said?' Brunetti asked. He was never sure how to take the Contessa's opinions and wondered if this would prove to have been a long prelude to some sort of revelation about the man.

The glance she gave him was very shrewd but quickly vanished. 'I've heard the name. I just have to remember who it was that mentioned him. When I do, I'll let you know.'

‘I
s there any way you could
...
?' 'Refresh my memory?' she asked. 'Yes.'

'I'll ask some of my friends who are given to that sort of association.' 'With the Church?'

She paused for a good while before she answered him. 'No, I was thinking more of - what shall I call it, Guido? The ancillary Church? The non-mainstream Church? You didn't give him a title, and you didn't say what parish he's associated with, so I must assume he's on the fringe somewhere. Involved with
...'
There followed another long pause, which she concluded by asking, 'Religion Lite?'

After her comments, Brunetti was not surprised by the phrase. 'Do you have friends in this fringe?' he asked.

She gave the tiniest of shrugs.
‘I
know a number of people who are interested in this approach to
...
to God.'

'You sound sceptical
’
Brunetti said.

'Guido, it seems to me that the chance for irregularity, to give it a polite name, expands exponentially once you start moving away from the standard churches. There, if nothing else, they have a reputation to preserve, and so they keep an eye on one another and try to stop the worst abuses, even if from no higher motive than self-interest.'

'Not to frighten the horses?' he asked.

'That was about sex, Guido, as we both know
’
she said with a certain measure of asperity, as if she had sensed the test he'd set by making the reference. 'I'm talking about fraud. Once a group calling itself a religion has no respectability to lose, no vested interest in preserving the faith and goodwill of its believers, then Pandora's box is opened. And, as you know, people will believe in anything.'

The question was out before Brunetti could think. 'Does any of what you've just said affect the way you and Orazio deal with the clergy?' To temper this open avowal of curiosity, he added,
‘I
ask because I know you have to meet them socially, and I assume Orazio has got to deal with them professionally.' Brunetti had learned little over the decades about the precise source of the Faliers' wealth. He knew there were houses, apartments, and the leases on shops here in the city and that the Count was often called away to visit companies and factories. But he had no idea if the Church hierarchy was involved in any of his financial dealings.

The Contessa's face took on the look of near-theatrical confusion which he had so often observed. He had never, however, caught her in the act of applying it, as if it were a fresh coat of lipstick, but to see it so easily appear persuaded him that it was just as artificial and as easily put on or removed. 'Orazio has been telling me since I first met him that power is superior to wealth
’
she said, smiling. 'If truth be told, it's the same thing the men in my family were always saying.' Again, that bland, almost blank, smile: where had she learned it? 'I'm sure it must mean something.'

When they had first met, Brunetti's initial impression had been that the Contessa failed to understand, not only much of what was said to her, but much of what she said herself. With the glittering penetration of youth, he had dismissed her as a woman given exclusively to society and frivolity, whose one saving grace was her dedication to her husband and her daughter. But over the years, as he watched people outside the family form what was in essence the same opinion, he had paid closer attention to her remarks, and he began to find, camouflaged in the most vapid of cliches and generalizations, observations of such incisive accuracy and insight as to leave him gasping. By now, however, her disguise had become so perfect that few people would think of bothering to penetrate it or even realize that there was anything to penetrate.

'Are you sure you wouldn't like something to drink?' she enquired.

Her words pulled him back and he said, looking at his watch, 'No, thank you, really. I think I'll go home: it's almost time for lunch.'

'How lucky Paola is that you work in the city, Guido, so she always has someone to cook for.' The wistfulness in her voice would lead a listener to believe she longed for nothing beyond spending her days at the stove, cooking for the people she loved, and that she spent her every free hour poring over cookbooks to find new dishes with which to tempt them, when, in fact, Brunetti was sure the Contessa had not been inside the kitchen for decades. Luciana would probably have stopped her at the door, anyway.

He got to his feet, and she did the same. She walked with him to the door of her study, reminding him to give her love to Paola and the children. He bent to kiss her again.

'I'll let you know if I hear anything,' she promised, and he went home to lunch.

6

When Brunetti reached the landing just below their apartment, the air brought no hint of lunch. If Paola had, for some reason, not had time to prepare it, perhaps they could go out. Antico Panificio, not two minutes away, made pizza at lunch, and even though he usually preferred to eat it in the evening, Brunetti thought he would quite like a pizza today. Perhaps with rucola and speck, or that one with
mozzarella di bufala
and
pomodorini.
As he walked up the last steps, he busied himself adding and subtracting toppings from his notional pizza until, as he put his key in the door, he was left with rucola, hot sausage, and mushrooms, though he did not know where those last two had come from.

All thought of pizza fled when he opened the door to the apartment and caught sight of Paola turning into the living room with an enormous bowl of salad in her hands. That meant one of the children, no doubt in a moment

of suicidal optimism, had decided they should have lunch on the terrace. Without even closing the door, Brunetti took three steps down the corridor and, sticking his head into the living room, called out to the three of them, now seated outdoors and waiting for him: 'My chair goes in the sun.' By this time of year, the sun appeared on their large terrace for a few hours each day, the period growing longer as the year advanced. But in these first weeks it fell only on the far end of the terrace and then for just two hours, one on either side of true noon. So only one chair could be placed in the sun, and since Brunetti considered it an act of sovereign madness to eat outside this early in the year, he always claimed that seat as his own.

Having staked his claim once again, he went back and shut the front door. From the terrace, he heard scraping sounds. Here in the living room, the sun had been coming in for much of the morning.

His place, the sun shining on to the back of the chair, was at the head of the table. He walked towards it, patting Chiara's shoulder as he passed her. Chiara wore a light sweater, Raffi only a cotton shirt, though Paola wore both a sweater and a down vest he thought belonged to Raffi. How was it that parents as cold-blooded as he and Paola had produced these two tropical creatures?

He was instantly glad of the warmth on his back. Paola reached for Chiara's plate and, from a large bowl in the centre of the table, spooned up fusilli with black olives and mozzarella: it was a bit early in the season for a dish like this, but Brunetti rejoiced in the sight and scent of it. After setting the plate in front of Chiara, she passed her a small dish of whole basil leaves: Chiara took a few and ripped them into small pieces to sprinkle over the top of the pasta.

Paola then served Raffi and Brunetti, both of whom added torn basil leaves to their pasta, and then she served herself. Before she sat down, she set the spoon aside and covered the bowl of pasta with a plate.

'Buon appetito
’
Paola said and began to eat. Brunetti took a few bites, letting his whole body remember the taste. The last time they had eaten this dish had been towards the end of the summer, when he had opened one of the last bottles of the Masi rosato to go with it. Was it too early in the year for rosato? he wondered. Then he saw the bottle on the table and recognized the colour and the label.

'There are
calamari ripieni
after
’
Paola declared, no doubt hoping to make it easier for them to decide who wanted to finish the pasta. Chiara, who had the day before added fish and seafood to the list of things she, as a vegetarian, would not eat, opted for more pasta, as did Raffi, who would no doubt go on to pack away his sister's portion of calamari with undiiriinished appetite and a clear conscience. Brunetti poured himself a glass of wine and assumed the expression of a man who would never think of taking the food from the mouths of his own hungry children.

Chiara helped carry the plates back to the kitchen and returned with a dish of carrots and peas, while Paola brought out a platter of calamari, and he thought he could smell the carrots and leeks - perhaps even chopped shrimp - with which they were filled. Conversation was general: school, school, and school, leaving Brunetti to say he had seen the Contessa that morning and brought her love to all of them. Paola turned her head and gave him a long look when he said this, though the children found it in no way strange.

Seeing Chiara reach for the platter, Paola distracted Raffi by asking him if he and Sara Paganuzzi were still planning to go to the cinema that evening and, if so, would he like to eat something before they went? He explained that the film had been supplanted by a Greek translation Sara had still to finish, and so he would be going to her home that evening, both for dinner and to help her with the translation.

Paola asked him what the text was, and that led to a discussion of the rashness and folly of the Peloponnesian War, which both found sufficiently interesting to distract them from the sight of Brunetti and Chiara finishing the calamari. Nor did they notice Brunetti lift his empty plate and use it to cover his daughter's.