Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(56)



‘If only it were that easy,’ Nieddu said, patted his upper arm a few times, and left without saying goodbye. It was only when he was walking home that he remembered he had forgotten to ask her opinion of Capitano Alaimo.





20


Dinner, which Paola and Chiara were just putting on the table when he got home, failed to lift Brunetti’s spirits. There was pumpkin soup, which he loved, and then grilled branzino, but even this historically magic combination did not work its spell, and he sat, listening to what was being said but not engaging in the conversation.

Chiara was complaining about a new rule the school was trying to impose upon the students: from the beginning of the following week, they were to leave their telefonini in a set of lockers – each student was to be allotted one and given the key – during class time. They were free to use the phones during the lunch break, but telefonini were prohibited from classrooms, nor were they to be used during the rest of the school day.

Chiara was, expectedly, indignant and spoke of her ‘right’ to remain in touch with the world during the day and insisted that she was old enough to know how to moderate her use of time. ‘We’re being treated as if we were slaves,’ she said in the tone of righteous indignation common to those whose luxuries are questioned or compromised.

Brunetti set his fork on his plate, careful to do it quietly. ‘I beg your pardon?’ was all he said.

She looked across at her father, her rhetoric impeded by his calm voice. ‘For what?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘You said you were being treated like slaves,’ Brunetti said.

‘That’s right,’ she told him. Then, ignoring the warning his dispassionate tone had given, she added, ‘It’s true: they’re treating us like slaves.’

‘Slaves?’ Brunetti repeated.

‘Slaves,’ Chiara confirmed with the same certainty that sprang from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

‘In what way?’ Brunetti asked, reaching for his glass.

‘It’s what I was just saying, Papà. They’re telling us we can’t use our phones while we’re at school.’

This was already an exaggeration of what she had first said, Brunetti reflected, but he did not point this out to his daughter.

He took a sip of wine, set the glass down on the table, and shifted it from side to side. Both Paola and Raffi had grown silent and joined Chiara in looking at him. He glanced up at his daughter. ‘I’m not sure I understand the comparison,’ he said in a soft voice.

‘But I told you, Papà,’ Chiara said. ‘They won’t let us use our phones during school.’

Brunetti smiled and said, ‘I understand that, Angel. It’s the comparison I don’t understand.’

‘What’s not to understand?’ she asked. ‘We’re being stopped from doing what we want to do.’

He held the stem and twirled the wine around to the right, then to the left. He took a very small sip and nodded, although it was not clear if he was nodding in approval of the wine or of what Chiara had said. Finally he asked, ‘And that’s a definition of slavery?’

He kept his eyes from acknowledging the presence of Raffi and Paola, silent as owls. Nor did he look directly at Chiara; she, nevertheless, responded to something hidden in his voice by setting her fork on her plate and giving him her complete attention.

‘Papà,’ she said and smiled. ‘You’re setting up one of your traps, aren’t you?’ She put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands as she looked across at him. ‘Next you’re going to ask for a definition of slavery, and I’m not going to be able to give you an adequate one, and every time I try, you’re going to point out holes as big as melons in what I say.’

She sat up straighter and pushed out her left arm to support the barrel of an invisible rifle, her right arm pulling back so she could put her finger on the trigger. She took aim at something in the air above Brunetti’s head, pulled the trigger and gave an energetic ‘BAM’ before her arm jerked up and back with the power of the recoil.

She turned quickly to her right side, raised the gun higher and shouted, ‘There’s another one. A Bad Definition!’ She sighted along the barrel as the second Bad Definition floated towards the table. Another ‘BAM,’ another falling victim, this one noisy when she set down the rifle and slammed her hand on the table to make the sound of the falling Bad Definition.

Brunetti watched in silence, shocked only as parents can be by legitimate protest from their children. He lowered his head to the table, pressed his right cheek against the tablecloth, and muttered, in English, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth. . .’ but before he could say more, Chiara, joined by Paola and Raffi, united in finishing the line for him . . .‘is it to have a thankless child.’

Order, or something resembling it, was restored by the arrival of dessert.

The next morning, Brunetti arrived at the Questura punctually at nine. Although he had no information to give Patta, he thought it would be politic to go to his office and seek his advice about the case. It was always easier to take charge of Patta when he believed he was in charge. When he entered Signorina Elettra’s office, Brunetti found her behind a copy of Il Sole 24 Ore, which she had long maintained was the only newspaper worth reading. He had no idea why she would read the financial newspaper, for she had never given evidence of an interest in the accumulation of wealth, although she did seem familiar with the major national and international companies and spoke well or ill, but always knowledgeably, of the various officials and officers of those companies as they followed one another into and out of the courtrooms – seldom the prisons – of the Northeast.

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