The Waters of Eternal Youth (13 page)

At two, they decided to rest for a while and rowed to a stop at the side of the small canal that cut through a series of grass-­covered ­semi-­islands. From where he stood at the front, Brunetti turned in a ­half-­circle to one side, then to the other. Spread out around them was the emptiness of the
laguna
: grass, water, tufts of reeds; no sound save their breathing, still heavy, and the ­far-­off cawing of a bird. The day had lightened, but still the sun hid itself from them, though it managed to warm them now, out of the wind.

‘Guido,' Lolo called from behind him. When he turned, Lolo tossed him a ­paper-­wrapped sandwich. Brunetti was suddenly so hungry that he didn't bother to look to see what was in the sandwich. He ate it in six bites, still standing, looked back at Lolo and said, ‘I've never eaten anything so good in my life. And I have no idea what it was.'

Monday morning brought paralysis, or something very near to it. Brunetti had gone to bed a happy man, one who had proved his stamina by six hours of rowing, come home bursting with pride in his prowess, eaten two plates of
polpette
with potatoes and
porcini
, four pieces of
merluzzo
with spinach, and then found room for a large slice of
torta della provvidenza
before retreating to his bed with the
Argonautica
and falling asleep before he'd finished two pages.

He woke a different person, a crippled old man who could barely push himself to the edge of his bed and whose body, as he walked towards the shower, made strong protests from a different place with every step. He was unable to step out of his pyjama bottoms, so he let them fall to the floor and left them there, gingerly removed the top, and reached into the shower to turn on the hot water. It finally arrived from five floors below, and he stepped into its healing warmth. He turned the nozzle to the right and moved to stand with his forehead pressed against the tiles, letting the water pound, splash, course, and flow across and down his back.

After five minutes, he felt some of the knots in his spine loosen, as the burning in the muscles of his shoulders was replaced by the burning of the water and the steam that was slowly enveloping the entire bathroom. A few minutes more and he was able to contemplate the ­possibility that he would be able to reach his office that morning, though it would be wonderful to be able to phone Sanitrans and have himself picked up by two strong young men, propped in a chair, and carried down four flights of steps by them and not by these stumps that had once been his legs.

As if one of those young men had been summoned, someone called his first name from the door of the bathroom, but it was a high voice and sounded agitated. He hadn't had enough of standing there, but he decided he was ready to make the effort of getting dressed and so turned off the water and stood in the growing silence.

‘Guido?' a familiar voice said. ‘Are you all right?'

Through the dripping glass, he saw what he thought was Paola, standing in the doorway. ‘Of course I'm all right,' he answered, wondering if he would have to put up with a comment about his use of hot water.

‘Oh, good,' she said and was gone.

He stepped slowly out of the shower and took a towel, dried most of himself and left his lower legs and feet to take care of themselves. Wearing the towel, he went down to their room, where Paola was in bed, reading.

‘You came all that way to check?' he asked.

She peered over her glasses at him. ‘It was a long time. I was concerned.' That said, she returned to her book.

‘Concerned about what?'

Over the glasses again. ‘That you might have fallen.'

‘Ah,' he said and reached for the drawer in which his underwear was kept. His back and right shoulder screamed at him, but he ignored them and, however slowly, began dressing, then pulled out a pair of socks and went over and sat on the bed. The tops of his feet were still wet, but he ignored that and pulled on the socks.

Trousers – not easy, that – a shirt – child's play – the heavy shoes Griffoni had advised him to wear – ­difficult – a tie, and his jacket. When he was dressed, he went over to the bed, bent and kissed the top of Paola's head, and said, ‘I'll go somewhere for lunch. I have to go out to the mainland to talk to people.'

Paola mumbled something. He moved closer, the better to see the title at the top of the page of her book. He read the last words, ‘the Dove', and realized there was no sense in trying to talk to her. The stairs were painful at first but became easier the more of them he descended, until he got to the ground floor and felt in control of his limbs. As he opened the door and stepped out into the sunny day, it occurred to him that she had left Henry James to go and check on him in the bathroom. He was immeasurably cheered by the thought.

By the afternoon, he had learned how to use his body and could walk, bend to pick up objects – as long as they were on desks and not on the ground – and both sit down and get to his feet with reasonable ease. None of these actions was painless, but all were bearable. At two, having had only sandwiches for lunch so as to save time, Brunetti and Griffoni got into a squad car at Piazzale Roma, and the driver set off to the highway that would take them to Preganziol, on the outskirts of which was to be found the riding school.

Griffoni wore a short woollen jacket, jeans, and a pair of boots, attire that, at first, made Brunetti suspect she had dressed for what the English called ‘mucking out', which he thought was pretty much what Hercules had done with the Augean Stables. But a closer look suggested that the jeans would hardly lend themselves to work, and the tan boots, however worn they might be, had the thin double belt and metal toggle at the top that Paola had once pointed out to him on a similar pair in a shop.

Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail tied with a black ribbon: he wondered whether she perhaps had a black riding helmet in her bag.

It was always a strange experience for Brunetti to travel by car. He'd become accustomed to them during the periods he'd been assigned to work in different cities on the mainland, but he hadn't grown up with them, and so cars were ever alien to him and seemed unnecessarily fast and dangerous.

Griffoni, perhaps sensing his nervousness, did most of the talking, finally drawing on her former career as a rider. ‘It's true what people say, about a horse being able to read our feelings, although I think most animals manage to do that.' She looked out of the window as she spoke, at the ­far-­off fields, barren and dry, and, between them and the road, the endless low clusters of shops, restaurants, and factories that lined the road on both sides.

‘I suppose all of this was once farmland,' she said by way of general observation.

The driver, who might have been ten years older than she, answered from his seat in front of her, ‘It was, Commissario. I grew up around here: my parents were farmers.'

They passed an enormous agglomeration of buildings on the right: supermarket, garage, one shipping warehouse then another, a furniture store, enormous trucks backed up to the metal doors at the back of a ­single-­storey building.

‘Why do we need so much stuff?' Brunetti asked, turning to look at the buildings on the other side, equal in kind, variety, and size.

No one answered him. Perhaps because so many of us had second houses, he reflected, we had more space to fill with stuff, or perhaps people now had what was called ‘disposable income', while his parents had barely had an income.

‘It's only another couple of kilometres,' the driver said.

‘You know the place?'

The driver laughed at the thought. ‘I know about it, but I've never been there.' He concentrated on passing another car and then said, ‘The only horse I ever touched was my father's, and all that horse did was pull a wagon and eat a lot of grass.'

‘And you saw that?' Brunetti asked, unable to stifle his reaction. ‘A wagon?'

‘Well, only for us kids. My parents never really used it, but every once in a while they'd hitch him up to it and take us all for a ride. We were mad for it. I was just a little kid, but I still remember.'

‘What happened to the horse?' Griffoni asked.

‘Oh, he died.'

‘What did your parents do?' Brunetti asked, curious to know how a dead horse could have been disposed of.

The driver waited a long time before he asked, ‘Can I tell the truth?'

‘Of course,' they both answered.

‘My father dug a hole in the field with his backhoe, and then he picked him up with the front end of it and lowered him into the grave, and we kids all threw flowers on him, and then he covered him over and told us not to tell anyone what he'd done.' The driver had slowed down while he told them this, and first one car, then another, passed them without his seeming to notice.

No one spoke until a wooden fence appeared and ran beside them on the right. ‘That's it,' the driver said, leaning forward to tap his finger on the screen of the
GPS
.

Not far ahead of them, they saw a gate set back about ten metres from the road. The driver pulled up to it and stopped. There was a ­hand-­printed sign saying to close the gate after entering, so he got out, drove through, and then went back to close it. Brunetti noticed a speakerphone system in place on the left side of the gate, but the handset was cracked and hung from a wire.

When he was behind the wheel again, the driver started up the narrow road running between twin ­wooden-­fenced paddocks on either side. ‘Just like Texas,' he said.

Neither of them answered. They drove forward on an asphalt road that had seen better times. Leaves from the plane trees on both sides lay thick but failed to buffer them from the holes into which the car drove, bouncing them about on the seat. They followed a curve in the road and drew to a stop in front of a low stone building with arched windows and a tiled roof.

An old brown dog of indeterminate ancestry ambled around the corner of the building and approached the car. He ignored them and didn't bother to bark, moved to the driver's door and flopped down on the ground. The driver opened the door very slowly and climbed over the dog. He looked up at the driver, put his head down and appeared to go to sleep.

Brunetti and Griffoni got out and all three of them closed their doors very quietly. A woman with short wispy grey hair came out of the front door of the house, looking worried. ‘Hector didn't frighten you, did he?' she asked with real concern. Her eyes were hazel and seemed lighter in contrast to her tan, the permanent sort common to people who spend most of their time outdoors. She smiled as she approached them. Small, well into her sixties by the look of her, she was wiry and ­quick-­moving, and wore jeans, riding boots, and a thick man's sweater a few sizes too large for her.

‘You must be the police,' she said, sounding delighted, as though the name cards on the dinner table said ‘Police' and, now that they were there, dinner could finally begin. She smiled again, smoothing out for a moment the barcode wrinkles above her lips.

‘Yes,' Brunetti said, taking her extended hand. ‘I'm Commissario Brunetti.' Her grip burst two of the blisters on his right palm and, had he been of weaker stuff, would have brought him to his knees.

As it was, he sucked in some air and turned to his colleague, saying, ‘And this is Commissario Griffoni.' The woman released his hand and took Griffoni's, saying, ‘I'm Enrichetta degli Specchi. Thank you for coming.'

Griffoni showed delight at her greeting and asked, ‘Are you Giovanni's cousin?'

The woman stepped back and took another look at Griffoni. ‘Yes, I am. Do you know him?'

Griffoni's face radiated her own pleasure. ‘We rode together, years ago,' she said, then, after she'd spent a few seconds counting them, added, ‘almost twenty.' And immediately, ‘He often spoke of you.'

‘Tell me your name again, please,' the woman asked, tilting her head and staring at Griffoni with great interest.

‘Griffoni. Claudia.'

The woman's face changed, her smile tossing away years and giving a flash of what a beauty she must have been before the sun had its way with her. ‘Claudia,' she said, her voice filled with delight: Marcellina discovering her lost child. Unable to restrain her emotion, she put her arms around Claudia's shoulders, though she had to stand on her toes to do it, and said, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you. You saved Giovanni's life.' Brunetti noted that she had unconsciously begun to address Claudia in the familiar ‘
tu
'.

As the woman removed her arms, Griffoni said, ‘I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.'

‘But if you hadn't spoken to him, he wouldn't have ridden, and then he would have died,' the woman insisted, stressing the final verb.

‘No, no, no,' Griffoni insisted. ‘He just needed someone to tell him he was the best on the team.' Then, with the force of truth, she added, ‘And he was.'

‘But still . . .' the woman said, not convinced. She turned to Brunetti and explained, ‘My cousin has always suffered terrible panic attacks before competitions.' Brunetti nodded, as if familiar with the emotional vagaries of athletes. ‘So you can imagine what the Olympics did to him. Jumping. He froze. Friends who were there told me he could barely walk.' She glanced at Griffoni for confirmation. Griffoni nodded.

‘He couldn't ride,' the older woman went on, speaking to Brunetti. ‘The horse was saddled. But Giovanni was paralysed. And then she,' she said and gave a dramatic pause to point to Griffoni, ‘took him aside and talked to him, and then he went back and got on his horse as if nothing in the world was bothering him.'

Griffoni bent down and worked at removing a small stone embedded in the heel of her left boot.

‘Gold! He won the gold medal,' the woman said, clapping her hands in delight. ‘And it was all due to you.' She grabbed Griffoni's right arm with both hands and gave her a little shake of thanks, then turned to Brunetti and said, ‘It's true. He wouldn't have done it if she hadn't talked to him.'

‘How is he?' Griffoni asked, completely ignoring everything the woman had said.

‘Fine. Fine. Three kids. Growing olives in Tuscany: God knows why, when . . .' She let this go and gave herself a ­little shake. ‘But you're here about that girl, aren't you?'

‘Manuela ­Lando-­Continui,' Brunetti said. ‘Did you know her well?'

‘No. It was my late husband who ran the place then. I came here only twelve years ago, when we married.'

‘So your husband would have known her?' Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, he did. He told me what happened to her.' She held up her hands in a gesture that signified helplessness in the face of life.