Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(33)

‘There’s no year on it,’ Alaimo said. ‘But family legend says it was 1779.’

‘One of the bad ones,’ Griffoni interrupted, allowing Brunetti to hear, for the first time, her Neapolitan accent, a faint trace of which he had detected in Alaimo’s voice.

Alaimo whipped around to look at her. ‘What?’

‘Not as bad as some of the others in the eighteenth century, and nothing special if you include the entire known history, but still bad.’

‘But you’re working here,’ Alaimo said, as if that fact ruled out what he was hearing.

‘But I come from there,’ she said, waving her hand at the paintings.

His embarrassment audible, Alaimo said, ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear your surname.’

‘Griffoni,’ she offered, ‘Claudia Griffoni.’

‘Oddio,’ Alaimo exclaimed, putting his hands to his head, as if he were trying to keep it from exploding or he was going to pull his hair out. ‘I should have known. A woman as beautiful as you, Signora, could only be from Napoli.’

‘The same is true of a man as gallant as you, Capitano,’ she gave back, leaving Brunetti to wonder when a boat of the Capitaneria di Porto would be placed at Griffoni’s private disposal. He remained calm, apparently rapt in his continued study of the paintings, quite as if the melodrama were not being played out behind him.

There followed a predictable list of subjects: where in Venice can one get decent coffee? Mozzarella? The Captain had it delivered once a week, and if she’d like . . . How will they survive another winter here? Did he/she know him/her? His aunt the abbess of the Chiostro di San Gregorio Armeno. Common friends, a favourite pizzeria deep in the heart of the Spagnoli quarter, the fastest way to get to the airport.

After the briefest change of gears, they proceeded, perhaps in deference to Brunetti’s presence, to list some pleasant aspects of life in Venice.

Brunetti, because he could not see them as they spoke, was particularly sensitive to their voices, to Griffoni’s Neapolitan accent, which grew stronger with every passing sentence. He was surprised to realize that, when she gave in to the linguistic influence of Napolitano, she sounded less bright and, surprisingly, almost shockingly, more vulgar, whining her way through all she missed and culminating in the lack of a good discoteca.

In the years that she had worked with him, Brunetti had heard none of this, just as he had never heard that voice. Was this what people meant when they spoke badly of ‘I terroni’? Did people from the South appear cultured and intelligent only when they adapted to Northern standards? But put them back in the soup of Napolitano, and they reverted to type? Or had the presence of a Neapolitan man so affected her hormones as to turn her into little more than a simple-minded flirt?

He decided he’d heard her prattle on enough, turned away from the paintings, and asked, ‘Would it be possible for me to interrupt you, signori, and return our attention to Venice?’

Alaimo turned, his face failing to disguise a flash of relief, and said, ‘Of course, Commissario.’

And Griffoni chimed in with, ‘It’s so easy to forget when you start talking about home.’ She graced Alaimo with a many-toothed smiled and then asked, in a voice that sounded at least a decade younger than the one she had been using, ‘Could I trouble you for a glass of water, Capitano?’

Alaimo jumped to his feet, saying, ‘How rude of me not to have offered you something to drink.’ Turning to Brunetti, he asked, ‘What may I offer you, Commissario?’

‘A coffee, perhaps,’ Brunetti answered, eager for anything that would release him from the stupor induced by the last minutes of conversation.

Alaimo hurried to the door. As he opened it and stuck his head outside to speak to his staff, Griffoni reached out her foot and kicked Brunetti’s knee. Stunned, he leaned forward without thinking and rubbed at the spot she’d kicked.

‘Leave this to me, Guido,’ she said in a low, insistent voice.

Brunetti was about to protest when he saw the coldness in her eyes. ‘Do it,’ she said, leaned back, and smiled at the returning Alaimo.

The Captain sat, said their drinks would be there in a moment, and, ignoring Brunetti, asked Griffoni what it was that had brought them to speak to him.

Griffoni returned to her Neapolitan voice and said, again giving a small laugh that succeeded – even that, poor little thing – in sounding vulgar to Brunetti’s newly alerted ears, ‘I’m sure you’ve seen the photos we’ve sent of those two boys who took the American tourists to Pronto Soccorso the other night.’ Her pronunciation reminded him of the girls from Forcella he’d known during the time he had been stationed in Naples, years ago.

Alaimo nodded. ‘From the Giudecca, aren’t they?’

The door opened just then and another white-jacketed cadet came in, carrying a tray on which stood three glasses of water and three coffees. As the cadet set them silently in front of Alaimo and his guests, the Captain said, ‘I thought you might like a coffee, as well, Dottoressa.’

‘Ah, how kind,’ Griffoni said, not commenting on how bad the coffee was ‘up here’. Apparently the Rhapsody of Napoli was over, though she kept the Neapolitan accent in place. My God, Brunetti thought, is this the same woman I’ve trusted with my life?

When all of them had drunk the coffees and sipped at the water, Griffoni continued. ‘Yes, from the Giudecca; at least one of them: Marcello Vio. The other, Filiberto Duso, lives in Dorsoduro.’