Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(22)

‘I told him to hurry up. It was cold and it was after two, but Marcello’s really happy only when he’s on a boat, like he’s got salt water in his blood: there’s nothing he likes more. So we went along, and the girls were cold and I was, too, but he was Captain Marcello, and he wouldn’t turn back.’ He stopped speaking.

‘What happened then?’ Brunetti asked.

Duso looked across at Brunetti, nodded, understanding that it was time, and continued. ‘They were both standing, jumping up and down to keep warm. They already had our sweaters over their shoulders, but both were cold.’

It seemed to Brunetti that Duso wanted to keep talking so as to delay telling them what had happened, but then it came. ‘There was a sound, almost like an explosion, and the boat stopped. Water came over the prow and the sides and soaked us. The boat just stopped, the way you can walk into a wall when there’s caigo.’ He was Venetian, after all, so he’d use the Venetian word for the densest fog.

‘The girls fell forward. I was right next to them, but I fell off my seat into the boat, so there was no way I could stop them. One of them fell against the side of the boat and hit her head, and the other one fell down into the bottom, half on me, but she still banged against the side. I think she broke something: her wrist or her arm.’

‘What did you do?’

‘For a while I just lay there. I hit my head enough to make me stupid for a minute. Then they both started screaming, and I heard Marcello going “Uh, uh. Uh,” like someone had hit him.’

He looked across at the two of them and said, ‘I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where we were or if the boat was going to sink.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I keep remembering how dark it was. I could see lights, far away, maybe on Sant’Erasmo.’ His breathing had quickened, and he said, ‘It’s so dark out there. And everything’s so far away.’

Neither Griffoni nor Brunetti spoke: they sat and waited for Duso to calm himself.

‘I asked the girls if they were all right.’ He gave a small laugh entirely absent of humour and added, ‘I guess what I really wanted to know was if they were still alive.’ He tried to laugh, but it came out more choke than laugh.

‘They were moaning. I got them to lie down beside one another, and I put the sweaters over them. And then I went back and asked Marcello what was wrong. He said he’d fallen against the side of the seat in front of him, and it hurt. I told him we had to get to the hospital: for him and for the girls.’ Hearing his voice begin to slip from his control, Duso took deep breaths and closed his eyes until he seemed to quieten down again.

‘But what did you hit?’ Griffoni asked.

‘A briccola. Lots of them have come loose because the tides are stronger, and they’re floating around in the laguna. They’re big, and people keep running into them.’

Before Duso lost himself in explaining the dangers to navigation in the laguna, Brunetti asked, ‘Then what happened?’

‘Marcello said we had to go back, no matter how. I didn’t know where we were or how to navigate, but he did.’

‘And then?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The girls were lying in the bottom of the boat, just sort of whimpering, and I was sitting next to Marcello with my arm around him, trying to keep him warm. The motor was still working, and he said we’d take the girls back, and that I had to help.’

‘What did that mean?’

‘He said we had to take the girls to Pronto Soccorso.’

‘How long did it take you to get to the hospital?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I don’t know, maybe half an hour. I wasn’t thinking clearly any more, but it seemed it took us a lot longer than it took us to get out to Sant’Erasmo.’

‘And when you got there?’

‘Marcello said he could get up on the dock and hold the mooring line, but I had to lift the girls up and put them there. He said it hurt too much for him to do it.’

‘Is that what you did?’

Duso nodded a few times. ‘He pulled the boat up to the dock and stopped, then he climbed up – I had to give him a push from behind so he could get up the ladder. Then I gave him the mooring rope.’

‘Did you manage to move them?’ Griffoni asked.

‘Yes. I picked them up one by one – they were small, both of them – and put them on the dock. They didn’t say anything. I thought maybe they’d – you know – fainted or something.’ Brunetti recalled the video: Duso had been visible, and it seemed that he’d had little trouble lifting the girls to the height of the dock and pushing them across the wooden boards. In the video, they hadn’t moved; Brunetti remembered seeing no sweaters.

‘And Marcello?’

‘He stayed up there while I moved them. I told him to push the alarm by the door, but he stood there like he was paralysed; couldn’t even talk. So I went up on to the dock and pushed the alarm by the door, to let them know inside that there was -trouble.’ He paused here and looked at Brunetti and then at Griffoni. ‘He stood there with a hand in the air, like he didn’t want me to do it, but he didn’t say anything.’ He paused for a moment, as if he expected a question, but when neither of them asked, Duso said, ‘So I went down the ladder, and after a minute, Marcello came down, too. And we left.’