Authors: Donna Leon
He set his cup down. ‘I don’t think I can do anything until I know what he was convicted of, this man who is or is not her grandfather.’ If things like this had ever come up in any of his university law classes, he had long since forgotten. ‘If it was something minor, like theft or assault, a pardon
would
hardly be necessary, especially after all this time, but if it was a major crime, like murder, then perhaps, perhaps…’ He considered further. ‘Did she say how long ago it happened?’
‘No, but if he was sent to San Servolo, then it had to be before the
Legge Basaglia
, and that was in the Seventies, wasn’t it?’ Paola said.
Brunetti considered this. ‘Umm,’ he muttered. After a long silence, he said, ‘It’ll be hard, even if we learn his name.’
‘We don’t need to know his name, Guido,’ Paola insisted. ‘All the girl wants is a theoretical answer.’
‘Then the theoretical answer is that no other kind of answer is possible until I know what the crime was.’
‘Which means no answer is possible?’ Paola asked acerbically.
‘Paola,’ Brunetti said in much the same tone, ‘I’m not making this up. It’s like asking me to put a value on a painting or a print without letting me see it.’ Both of them, later, were to recall this comparison.
‘Then what am I supposed to tell her?’ Paola asked.
‘Tell her exactly what I’ve said. It’s what any lawyer of good conscience…’ he began, ignored Paola’s raised eyebrows at this most absurd of possibilities, and went on, ‘would tell her. What is it that schoolmaster in that book you’re always quoting says? “Facts, facts, facts”? Well, until I have the facts or anyone else has the facts, that’s the only answer she’s going to get.’
Paola had been weighing the cost and
consequences
of further opposition and had decided they were hardly worth it. Guido was acting in good faith, and the fact that she didn’t much like his answer didn’t make it any less true. ‘Good, I’ll tell her,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ Smiling, she added, ‘It makes me feel like that other Dickens character and makes me want to tell her that she’s saved five million lire in lawyer’s costs and should go right out and spend it on something else.’
‘You can always find whatever you’re looking for in a book, can’t you?’ he asked with a smile.
Instead of a simple answer, something she seldom gave him, Paola said, ‘I think it was Shelley who said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. I don’t have any idea if that’s true or not, but I do know that novelists are the unacknowledged gossip-mongers of the world. No matter what it is, they thought of it first.’
He pushed back his chair and stood. ‘I’ll leave you to the contemplation of the splendours of literature.’
He leaned down to kiss her head and waited for her to come up with another literary reference, but she did not. Instead, she reached behind with one hand and patted him on the back of his calf, then said, ‘Thank you, Guido. I’ll tell her.’
4
BECAUSE THE REQUESTS
for information came from what might be termed minor players in their lives, both Brunetti and Paola forgot about them or at least allowed them to slip to the back of their minds. A police department burdened with the increase in crime resulting from the flood of unregulated immigration from Eastern Europe would no more have concerned itself with the attempt to stamp out minor corruption in a city office than Paola would have turned from rereading
The Golden Bowl
to attend to those semicolons in Calvino.
When Claudia did not show up for the next lecture, Paola realized that she felt almost relieved. She didn’t want to be the bringer of her husband’s news, nor did she want to grow more involved in
the
personal life or non-academic concerns of one of her students. She had, as had most professors, done so in the past, and it had always either led nowhere or ended badly. She had her own children, and their lives were more than enough to satisfy whatever nurturing instincts the current wisdom told her she must have.
But the girl was present the following week. During the lecture, which dealt with the parallels between the heroines of James and those of Wharton, Claudia behaved as she always did: she took notes, asked no questions, and seemed impatient with the student questions that displayed ignorance or insensitivity. When the class was over, she waited while the other students left the room and then came up to Paola’s desk.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here last week, Professoressa.’
Paola smiled but before she could say anything Claudia asked, ‘Did you have time to speak to your husband?’
It occurred to Paola to ask the girl if she thought that perhaps she might not have had occasion to speak to her husband during the last two weeks. Instead, she turned to face Claudia and said, ‘Yes, I asked him about it, and he said that he can’t give you an answer until he has an idea of the seriousness of the crime for which the man was convicted.’
Paola watched the girl’s face register this information: surprise, suspicion, and then a quick assessing glance at Paola, as if to assure herself that no trick or trap lay in her answer. These expressions flashed by in an instant, after which she said, ‘But in general? I only want to know if he
thinks
it’s possible or if he knows there’s some sort of process that would allow, well, that would allow a person’s reputation to be restored.’
Paola did not sigh, but she did speak with a sort of over-patient slowness. ‘That’s what he can’t say, Claudia. Unless he knows what the crime was.’
The girl considered this, then surprised Paola by asking, ‘Could I speak to your husband myself, do you think?’
Either the girl was too obsessed with finding an answer to care about the distrust her question showed of Paola or too artless to be aware of it. In either case, Paola’s response was a lesson in equanimity. ‘I see no reason why you couldn’t. If you call the Questura and ask for him, I’m sure he’d tell you when you could go and speak to him.’
‘But if they won’t let me speak to him?’
‘Then use my name. Tell them you’re calling for me or that I told you to call. That should be enough to make them put you through to him.’
‘Thank you, Professoressa,’ Claudia said and turned to leave. As she turned, she bumped her hip against the edge of the desk, and the books she was holding fell to the floor. Bending to pick them up, Paola, with the instinct of every lover of books, had a look at them. She saw a book with a title in German, but because it was upside down she couldn’t make it out. There was Denis Mack Smith’s history of the Italian monarchy as well as his biography of Mussolini, both in English.
‘Do you read German, Claudia?’
‘Yes, I do. My grandmother spoke it to me when I was growing up. She was German.’
‘Your real grandmother, that is?’ Paola said with an encouraging smile.
Still on one knee, arranging the books, the girl shot her a very suspicious glance but answered calmly, ‘Yes, my mother’s mother.’
Not wanting to be perceived as prying, Paola contented herself with saying only, ‘How lucky you were to be raised bilingual.’
‘You were, too, weren’t you, Professoressa?’
‘I learned English as a child, yes,’ Paola said and left it at that. She did not add that it had not been from her family but from a succession of English nannies. The less any student knew about her personal life, the better. With a gesture to the Mack Smith books, Paola asked, ‘What about you?’
Claudia got to her feet. ‘I’ve spent summers in England.’ That, it seemed, was the only explanation Paola was going to get.
‘Lucky you,’ Paola said in English and then added with a smile, ‘Ascot, strawberries, and Wimbledon.’
‘It’s more like mucking out the stables at my aunt’s place in Surrey,’ Claudia answered in the same accentless English.
‘If your German is as good, it must be quite extraordinary,’ Paola said, not without a trace of envy.
‘Oh, I seldom get to speak it, but I still like to read in it. Besides,’ she said, hefting the books on to her hip, ‘it’s not as if there were any Italian accounts of the war that are particularly reliable.’
‘I think my husband will be pleased to talk to you, Claudia. He’s very fond of history, and I’ve
listened
to him say for years what you’ve just said.’
‘Really? He reads?’ Claudia asked, then, aware of how insulting that sounded, added lamely, ‘History, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ Paola answered, gathering up her papers and resisting the impulse to add that her husband was also able to write. In a voice just as pleasant as previously, she said, ‘Usually the Romans and the Greeks. The lies they tell seem to leave him less angry than the ones contemporary historians tell, or so he says.’
Claudia smiled at this. ‘Yes, I can understand that. Would you tell him that I’ll call him, probably tomorrow? And that I’m very eager to meet him?’
Paola found it remarkable that this attractive young woman seemed to find nothing at all unusual in telling another woman how eager she was to meet her husband. The girl was by no means stupid, so it must result only from a sort of ingenuousness Paola had not seen in a student in quite some time or from some other motive she could not discern.
It went against everything she had learned about the necessity of avoiding involvement with students, but curious now to know what was behind Claudia’s request, she said, ‘Yes, I’ll tell him.’
Claudia smiled and said, quite formally, ‘Thank you, Professoressa.’
Bright, apparently widely read, at least trilingual, and respectful to her elders. Considering these things, it occurred to Paola that perhaps the girl had been raised on Mars.
5
BECAUSE PAOLA HAD
told him the night before that the girl wanted to talk to him directly, Brunetti realized who it must be when the guard at the entrance to the Questura phoned him to say that a young woman was downstairs, asking to speak to him.
‘What’s her name?’ Brunetti asked.
There was a pause, after which the guard said, ‘Claudia Leonardo.’
‘Show her up, please,’ Brunetti said and set down the phone. He finished reading a paragraph from a meaningless report on spending proposals, set the paper aside and picked up another, not at all unaware that this would show him to be busy when the girl arrived.
There was a knock, the door opened, and he saw
a
uniformed arm, quickly withdrawn, and then a young woman. She came into the office, certainly looking far too young to be a university student preparing for her last exams, as Paola had said.
He stood, motioning toward the chair that faced him. ‘Good morning, Signorina Leonardo. I’m very glad you found time to come and see me,’ he said in a tone he attempted to make sound avuncular.
Her quick glance told him she was accustomed to being patronized by older people; it also showed him how little she liked it. She seated herself, and Brunetti did the same. She was a pretty girl in the way young girls are almost always pretty: oval face, short dark hair and smooth skin. But she seemed bright and attentive in a way they seldom are.
‘My wife told me there’s something you wanted to discuss with me,’ he said when he realized she was leaving it for him to speak.
‘Yes, sir.’ Her gaze was direct, patient.
‘She said you were curious about the possibility of a pardon for something that happened a long time ago and for which, unless I misunderstood what my wife told me, a man was convicted.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she repeated, her glance so unwavering as to make Brunetti wonder if she were waiting for him to resume patronizing her and was curious only as to what new form it would take.
‘She also said that he was sent to San Servolo and died there.’
‘That’s right.’ There was no sign of emotion or eagerness on the girl’s face.
Sensing that there would be no warming her with these questions, he said, ‘She also told me you were reading the Mack Smith biography of Mussolini.’
Her smile revealed two rows of immaculate teeth and seemed to open her eyes wider, until the dark brown irises were completely surrounded with brilliant, healthy white. ‘Have you read it?’ she asked, her voice charged with eager curiosity.
‘Some years ago,’ Brunetti answered, then added, ‘I usually don’t read much modern history, but I had a conversation at dinner one night with someone who started telling us all about how much better it would be if only he were here again, how much better it would be for all of us if he could…’
‘Instil some discipline into young people,’ she seamlessly completed his phrase, ‘and restore order to society.’ Claudia had somehow managed a perfect echo of the orotund voice of the man who had spoken in favour of Il Duce and the discipline he had managed to instil into the Italian character. Brunetti threw back his head and laughed, delighted and encouraged by the way her imitation dismissed with contempt the man and his claims. ‘I don’t remember seeing you there,’ he said when he stopped laughing, ‘but it certainly sounds like you were at the table and heard him talking.’
‘Oh, God, I hear it all the time, even at school,’ she said with exasperation. ‘It’s fine for people to complain about the present. It’s one of the staples of conversation, after all. But once you start to
mention
the things in the past that made the present the way it is, then people begin to criticize you for having no respect for the country or for tradition. No one wants to go to the trouble of thinking about the past, really thinking about it, and what a terrible man he was.’
‘I didn’t know young people even knew who Il Duce was,’ Brunetti said, exaggerating, but not by much, and mindful of the almost total amnesia he had discovered in the minds of anyone, of whatever age, with whom he had attempted to discuss the war or its causes. Or worse, the sort of cock-eyed, retouched history that portrayed the friendly, generously disposed Italians led astray by their wicked Teutonic neighbours to the north.
The girl’s voice drew him back from these reflections. ‘Most of them don’t. This is old people I’m talking about. You’d think they’d know or remember what things were like then, what he was like.’ She shook her head in another sign of exasperation. ‘But no, all I hear is that nonsense about the trains being on time and no trouble from the Mafia and how happy the Ethiopians were to see our brave soldiers.’ She paused as if assessing just how far to go with this conservatively dressed man with the kind eyes; whatever she saw seemed to reassure her, for she continued, ‘Our brave soldiers come with their poison gas and machine-guns to show them the wonders of Fascism.’