The Death of Faith (3 page)

‘Three months.’

‘Did she say this to anyone else, about the money?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t talk to many people.’

‘And the other woman?’

‘Signora Cristanti,’ Maria clarified. ‘She was much more direct. She said that she wanted to leave her money to the people who had been good to her. She said it to everyone, all the time. But she wasn’t... I don’t think she was able to make that decision, not really, not when I knew her.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘She wasn’t very clear in her mind,’ Maria answered. ‘At least not all of the time. There were some days when she seemed all right, but most days she wandered; thought she was a girl again, asked to be taken places.’ After a moment’s pause, in an entirely clinical voice, she added, ‘It’s very common.’

‘Going back into the past?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. Poor things. I suppose the past is better for them than the present. Any past.’

Brunetti remembered his last visit to his mother but pushed the memory away. Instead, he asked, ‘What happened to her?’

‘Signora Cristanti?’

‘Yes.’

‘She died of a heart attack about four months ago.’

‘Where did she die?’

‘There. At the
casa di cura.’

‘Where did she have the heart attack? In her room or in some place where there were other people?’ Brunetti didn’t call them ‘witnesses’, not even in his mind.

‘No, she died in her sleep. Quietly.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, not really meaning it. He allowed some time to pass before he asked, ‘Does this list mean you think these people died of something else? Other than what’s written by their names?’

She looked up at him, and he was puzzled by her surprise. If she had got so far as to come to see him about this, surely she must understand the implications of what she was saying.

In an obvious attempt to stall for time, she repeated, ‘Something else?’ When Brunetti didn’t answer, she said, ‘Signora Cristanti never had any trouble with her heart before.’

‘And the other people on this list who died of heart attacks or strokes?’

‘Signor Lerini had a history of heart trouble,’ she said. ‘No one else.’

Brunetti looked down at the list again. ‘This other woman, Signora Galasso. Did she have trouble with her health before?’

Instead of answering him, she began to run one finger along the top of her bag, back and forth, back and forth.

‘Maria,’ he said and paused after he said her name, waiting for her to look up at him. When she did, he continued, ‘I know it’s a serious thing to bear false witness against your neighbour.’ That startled her, as if the devil had started to quote the Bible. ‘But it is important to protect the weak and those who can’t protect themselves.’ Brunetti didn’t remember that as being in the Bible, though he thought it certainly should be. She said nothing to this, and so he asked, ‘Do you understand, Maria?’ When she still didn’t answer, he changed the question and asked, ‘Do you agree?’

‘Of course, I agree,’ she said, voice edgy. ‘But what if I’m wrong? What if this is all my imagination and nothing happened to those people?’

‘If you believed that, I doubt you would be here. And you certainly wouldn’t be dressed the way you are.’ As soon as he said it, he realized that it sounded like deprecation of the way she was dressed, though his words referred only to her decision to leave the order and remove her habit.

Brunetti pushed the list to the side of his desk and, in a verbal equivalent of that gesture, changed the subject. ‘When did you decide to leave?’

If she had been waiting for the question, her answer could have come no more quickly. ‘After I spoke to the Mother Superior,’ she said, voice rough with some remembered emotion. ‘But first I spoke to Padre Pio, my confessor.’

‘Can you tell me what you said to them?’ Brunetti had been away from the Church and all its works and pomps for so long that he no longer remembered just what could and could not be repeated about a confession or what the penalty for doing so was, but he remembered enough to know that confession was something people were not supposed to talk about.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Is he the same priest who says Mass?’

‘Yes. He’s a member of our order, but he doesn’t live there. He comes twice a week.’

‘From where?’

‘From our chapter house, here in Venice. He was my confessor in the other nursing home, too.’

Brunetti saw how willing she was to be diverted by details, and so he asked, ‘What did you tell him?’

She paused a moment, and Brunetti imagined she was remembering her conversation with her confessor. ‘I told him about the people who had died,’ she said and stopped, looking away from him.

When he saw that she was going to say nothing further, Brunetti asked, ‘Did you say anything else, anything about their money or what they had said about it?’

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know about it then. That is, I hadn’t remembered it then, I was so troubled by their deaths, so that’s all I said to him, that they had died.’

‘And what did he say?’

She looked at Brunetti again. ‘He said that he didn’t understand. And so I explained it to him. I told him the names of the people who had died and what I knew of their medical histories, that most of them had been in good health and had died suddenly. He listened to everything I had to say and asked me if I was sure.’ In a casual aside, she added, ‘Because I’m Sicilian, people up here always assume I’m stupid. Or a liar.’

Brunetti glanced at her to see if there was some reprimand, some comment on his own behaviour hidden in this remark, but there seemed to be none. ‘I think he just couldn’t believe it, that it was possible. Then, when I insisted that so many deaths were not normal,’ she continued, ‘he asked me if I was aware of the danger of repeating such things. Of the danger of causing slander? When I told him that I was aware of that, he suggested I pray about it.’ She stopped.

‘And then?’

‘I told him that I had prayed, that I had prayed for days. Then he asked me if I knew what I was suggesting, what a horror it was.’ She stopped again and then added as an aside, ‘He was shocked. I don’t think he could understand the possibility. He’s a very good man, Padre Pio, and very unworldly.’ Brunetti smothered a smile at hearing this said by someone who had spent the last twelve years in a convent.

‘What happened then?’

‘I asked to speak to the Mother Superior.’

‘And did you?’

‘It took two days, but she finally saw me, late one afternoon, after Vespers. I repeated everything to her, about the old people dying. She couldn’t hide her surprise. I was glad to see that because it meant Padre Pio hadn’t said anything to her. I knew he wouldn’t, but what I had said was so terrible, well, I didn’t know . . .’ Her voice trailed away

‘And?’ he asked.

‘She refused to listen to me, said she would not listen to lies, that what I was saying would damage the order.’

‘And so?’

‘She told me, ordered me, under my vow of obedience, to keep full silence for a month.’

‘Does that mean what I think it does, that you were not to speak to anyone for a month?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about your work? Didn’t you have to speak to the patients?’

‘I wasn’t with them.’

‘What?’

‘The Mother Superior ordered me to spend my time in my room and in the chapel.’

‘For a month?’

‘Two.’

‘What?’

‘Two,’ she repeated. ‘At the end of the first month, she came to see me in my room and asked if my prayers and meditations had shown me the proper path. I told her that I had prayed and meditated — and I had — but that I was still troubled by the deaths. She refused to listen and told me to resume my silence.’

‘And did you?’

She nodded.

‘And then?’

‘I spent the next week in prayer, and that’s when I began to try to remember anything those people had told me, and that’s when I remembered what Signora da Prè and Signorina Cristanti had said to me, about their money. Before that, I wouldn’t let myself think about it, but once I did, I couldn’t stop remembering.’

Brunetti considered the wide variety of things she might have ‘remembered’ after more than a month of solitude and silence. ‘What happened at the end of the second month?’

‘The Mother Superior came to my room again and asked me if I had come to my senses. I said that I had, which I suppose is true.’ She stopped talking and again gave Brunetti that sad, nervous smile.

‘And then?’

‘And then I left.’

‘Just like that?’ Immediately, Brunetti began to consider the practical details: clothing, money, transportation. Strangely enough, they were the same details that had to be considered by people who were about to be released from prison.

‘That same afternoon, I walked out with the people who had been there for visiting hours. No one seemed to think it was strange; no one noticed. I asked one of the women who was leaving if she could tell me where I could buy some clothing. All I had was seventeen thousand lire.’

She stopped speaking and Brunetti asked, ‘And did she tell you?’

‘Her father was one of my patients, so she knew me. She and her husband invited me to go back to their home with them for supper. I had no place to go, so I went. To the Lido.’

‘And?’

‘On the boat, I told them what I’d decided to do, but I didn’t say anything about the reason. I’m not sure I even knew, or know now. I wasn’t slandering the order or the nursing home. I’m not doing that now, am I?’ Brunetti, who had no idea, shook his head and she continued. ‘All I did was tell the Mother Superior about the deaths, that it seemed strange to me, so many of them.’

In an entirely conversational tone, Brunetti said, ‘I’ve read that old people sometimes die in a series, with no reason.’

‘I told you that. It’s usually right after the holidays.’

‘Could that be the explanation here?’ he asked.

Her eyes flashed in what Brunetti believed was anger. ‘Of course it could be. But then why did she try to silence me?’

‘I think you told me that, Maria.’

‘What?’

‘Your vow. Obedience. I don’t know how important that is to them, but it could be that they were worried about that, more than anything else.’ When she didn’t answer, he asked, ‘Do you think that’s possible?’ She still refused to answer, so he asked, ‘Then what happened? With the people on the Lido?’

‘They were very kind to me. After we had dinner, she gave me some of her clothes.’ She swept her hands open to show the skirt she was wearing. ‘I stayed with them for the first week, and then they helped me get the job at the clinic.’

‘Didn’t you have to show some sort of identification to get it?’

She shook her head. ‘No. They were so glad to find someone willing to do the work that they didn’t ask any questions. But I’ve sent to the city hall in my home town and asked that copies of my birth certificate and
carta d’identità
be sent to me. If I’m going to come back to this life, then I suppose I’ll need them.’