Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(27)

‘That’s what I thought,’ Paola said. ‘But I also thought it would be more forceful if it came from you.’

‘Because I’m the king of logic?’

‘Something like that,’ Paola conceded.

Chiara, whose fork was poised over the round zucchini her mother had filled for her with the same stuffing she’d used for the chicken, said, ‘Lots of people use it, making it sound like two things are alike, when they really aren’t.’

Raffi chimed in here to say, ‘Politicians do it all the time.’

‘I don’t know why people even bother to talk about politics,’ Chiara observed.

‘Excuse me?’ This from Paola.

‘You heard me, Mamma. Why bother? People talk about politics, the government changes, people talk some more, there’s another election, and after it, the people and the politicians are still repeating the same things, and nothing changes.’

‘That, my angel,’ Paola broke in to observe, ‘is much the same thing I thought when I was your age.’ Before Chiara could protest, Paola added, ‘And still think now.’

Brunetti suddenly realized how much he longed for them to stop or the subject to change. If he could just tabulate all the hours he’d spent talking about politics and politicians during his life and could pack them together like a snowball and somehow add them to his life, how much longer would he live? Even more interesting, how else might he have used that time? He could have learned another language; to knit and have made sweaters or long, uneven scarves for everyone. What colour Judo belt would he be entitled to wear by now?

‘Guido? Guido?’

He looked across the table at Paola and asked, smiling at her, ‘Yes, my love?’

She cast up her eyes, though not her hands, which held a large bowl. ‘I asked if you’d like some persimmons and cream.’ She set the bowl on the table next to another one that rippled with a sea of cream. She put two large spoonfuls of whipped persimmons into a smaller bowl and slid the cream in front of Brunetti.

‘You trust me with this?’ he asked in exaggerated concern.

‘No, I don’t, but I’ve never known you to let the children go hungry.’ She spooned more of the slippery mush of persimmons into two of the remaining bowls and passed one to each of the children.

Brunetti had flattened the surface of his persimmons with the back of his spoon and dropped four or five spoonfuls of whipped cream on top of it. To him, it looked like an orange sea with thick clouds floating on the surface.

He scooped up more persimmons, held the spoon above his bowl and let some of the orange mush dribble on the clouds.

‘Guido,’ Paola said in her schoolmistress voice, ‘if you insist on playing with your food, you can go to your room.’

‘May I take the bowl with me, m’am?’

Paola closed her eyes, shifted her bowl forward on the table, and laid her forehead down where it had been. ‘He’s going to drive me mad, and then, when I’m locked in the attic, he will have to take care of the children.’

Much as he would have enjoyed hearing the rest of her scen-ario, Brunetti – who thought it would appear heartless to continue eating while she described her tragic future – said in an entirely normal voice, ‘This is really wonderful, Paola. I like it that you always put a little bit of sugar in the cream.’

Paola sat up, thanked him for the compliment, and continued eating her dessert. The children had long since finished and were sitting, as quiet as baby chicks, their empty bowls held in their outstretched hands, making soft plaintive noises.

Brunetti woke in the middle of the night, pulling himself free from a dream in which he was behind the wheel of a car, driving at high speed. Just as the car approached a curve in the tree-lined road, he reached to the seat beside him and pulled up a bottle of gin, a drink he loathed. As he put the bottle to his lips, he gave himself a great shake and opened his eyes: the car, the road, the gin were gone, leaving behind an explan-ation of why Vio had gone so slowly on the way to the hospital.

If he had been stopped by the police, with the injured young women in the boat and the damage of the accident still to be seen, the police would have tested him and Duso for alcohol and drugs and if he tested positive, he’d lose his licence and perhaps be convicted of a crime. Once the girls were in the hospital, however, there was no longer any evidence that he had been involved in an accident, and so he risked far less.

With that realization, he returned to sleep until the alarm woke him at 6:15.

When Brunetti arrived at the embarcadero at the Zattere, there were seven people already inside. He excluded the three women and the priest and was left to choose among a man wearing well-ironed jeans, white leather tennis shoes and a brown suede bomber jacket, a white-haired man in a business suit, and a man in his thirties wearing fashionably torn jeans, similar white tennis shoes, and a short blue double-breasted jacket with a decidedly nautical look.

Approaching the man in the bomber jacket, he inquired, ‘Signor Cesco?’

The man looked at him, surprised, while the man in the blue jacket said, ‘That’s me, Signor Brunetti.’ He stepped closer to Brunetti, shook hands, and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Let’s go outside while I smoke this,’ he said quite amiably. His skin was weathered, as was often the case with men who work outdoors, and his dark hair was cut short, a flash of white just above both ears. His face was lightly scarred by the acne of his adolescence, his eyes attentive, his mouth broad and turned up in a grin.