Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(3)

He took his phone from his pocket and punched in Paola’s number. It rang a few times before she answered. ‘Sì?’ she asked. Only that.

‘Ah,’ Brunetti exclaimed, forcing his voice into a deeper register, ‘The voice of love responds, and my heart opens, brimming with the joy of . . . ?’

‘What is it, Guido?’ Then, before he could respond to the definite chill in her voice, she added, ‘I’m here with one of my students.’

Brunetti, who had been about to ask her what she planned to cook for dinner, instead said, ‘I wanted only to declare the enormity of my love, my dear.’

‘Thank you so much,’ she said and broke the connection without even bothering to wait for him to indulge in some romantic invention.

He glanced at the newspaper and decided it would be preferable to the reports that sat unread on his desk. It might provide information about what was happening in the world that began at the end of the Ponte della Libertà. He often chastised the children for their lack of curiosity, not only about their own country, but about the wider world, as well. How would they be able to take their place as citizens if they knew nothing about their leaders, the laws, the alliances that bound them to Europe and to places beyond?

Even before he opened the Gazzettino, Brunetti had outlined a speech in praise of patriotism that would have done Cicero proud. He’d had no trouble with the Narratio: the children were ignorant of the current state of politics in their own country. The Refutatio was child’s play: he’d easily punched away any claim that Italy was a pawn in a geopolitical game being played by Germany and France. He was halfway through the Peroratio, enjoining them to assume the full responsibility of their citizenship, and approaching the end of his discourse when his eye fell on that day’s headline ‘Morta la moglie strangolata: Una settimana di agonia.’ So she had died, the young woman strangled by her heroin-addicted husband, but not before a week of agony, poor thing. She left one child. As was often the case, they were in the midst of getting a separation. Indeed.

He noticed a small article about two young women, identified as American, who had been found on the dock outside the Emergency Room of the Ospedale Civile in the early hours of Sunday morning. The article gave their names and reported that one had a broken arm.

Inexorably, his eye was drawn to the article below: this one dealt with the ongoing search at an abandoned pig farm near Bassano, where the remains of the two wives of the former owner – he now dead of natural causes – had been discovered. And now there were traces of a third woman, whom neighbours said had lived there for some time, and then didn’t.

It was the word ‘traces’ that drove Brunetti to his feet and down the stairs. Outside, on the riva, he turned right, his body in sole command, and went down to the bar, heedless of anything save the urgent need to distract himself from the effect of that word.

When Brunetti entered, he saw that Bamba Diome, the Senegalese barman, had come on shift and replaced his employer behind the bar. Brunetti nodded in greeting but couldn’t bring himself to speak. He looked to his left and saw that the three booths were occupied. Better this way, he told himself, he was here to refuel and only that. He looked into the glass case filled with tramezzini: they’d been made by Sergio, who still cut them into triangles, while Bamba preferred rectangles. Maybe an egg and tomato? Bamba returned and gave a brisk swipe at the counter in front of Brunetti.

‘Water, Dottore?’

Brunetti nodded, ‘And a tomato and egg.’ He saw the Gazzettino on the counter and pushed it away. Seeing him reject the newspaper, Bamba said, ‘Terrible, isn’t it, Dottore?’ and set down the glass of water and the single tramezzino.

‘Yes. Terrible,’ Brunetti said, not knowing which article the barman had read. Bamba cast his eyes towards the row of booths, saw a raised hand, and slipped out from behind the bar to answer the summons.

Brunetti picked up the egg and tomato, took a bite, and replaced it on the plate. He drank the water. He realized that, if this were to be his lunch every day, he’d give thought to killing himself. This was indeed fuel, not food: they were good tramezzini, but that did not alter the fact that they were tramezzini, not lunch. And what would follow if we slowly came to accept having a sandwich for lunch?

Brunetti, although his degree was in law, had always read history, and his reading of modern history had shown him how dictatorships often began with the small things: limiting who could do what jobs, who could marry whom, live here or there. Gradually, those small things had always expanded, and soon some people could not work at all, nor marry, nor – in the end – live. He gave himself a shake and told himself he was exaggerating: the road to hell was not paved with tramezzini.

He went and stood in front of the cash register. Bamba came back, rang up the bill, and gave the receipt to Brunetti. The bill was three Euros fifty. Brunetti gave Bamba a five Euro note and turned away before the barman could offer him the change.

On the way back to the Questura, Brunetti waited for the first faint stirring of returning life from somewhere inside of him.

Outside, the sun had weakened and dropped behind the buildings on his left. The weather had come to its senses, Brunetti thought, and it would soon be time for risotto di zucca. Leaves would begin to turn: he and Paola could wait a few weeks and then have a walk down to I Giardini and see the show the trees put on every year. They used to go and sit under the trees in the Parco Savorgnan, but three of his favourites had been blown down in recent storms, and Brunetti, at the loss of his old friends, had stopped going, even though that decision meant renouncing the pastries at Dal Mas. Until then, they had the colour show at the Giardini Reali: recently they’d been restored; besides, they had the additional attraction of a wonderful café, where the staff didn’t bother people who wanted to sit and read.