Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(62)

No sooner had she said that than a Number One tram slid into the stop on the other side of the street: people got off, people got on. Brunetti recalled a story his mother had told him of the only trip she ever made to what she always referred to as ‘Italy’, meaning to anywhere else in Italy, aside from Mestre, where she’d been twice. She’d gone to a cousin’s wedding, more than fifty years before, had taken a train for the only time in her life, had ridden on a tram, and had met the ‘Torinesi,’ those members of her family who had emigrated to Torino to work in the Fiat factory and who had, in the doing – at least according to his mother – grown rich, rich enough to have earned the name, ‘Torinesi,’ which word was always used in reference to them and was, for her, a synonym for ‘rich’. And he had married one, Brunetti reflected, and now had two children his own mother would consider ‘Torinesi’.

He felt a hand on his arm and turned suddenly towards it. The old woman moved back half a step and said, ‘It’s here, signore.’

The woman’s hand had pulled him back to Piazzale Cialdine and to the tram, which stood, doors open, in front of them. He smiled and thanked her, took her arm and helped her step up into the tram. She lowered herself into an aisle seat while Brunetti thanked her again and moved to the front, the better to see the traffic that came towards them. Ahead of them, he could see the single rail on which the tram ran, amazed that this could be possible.

They glided: every acceleration and deceleration a fluid change of speed. They slipped past the motionless lines of cars and on to Il Ponte della Libertà. To the right stretched the horror of Marghera, smokestacks stretching out endlessly; then the shipyard and the half-finished carapace of yet another cruise ship: how perverse, that they were built here – how even more perverse that they were still built anywhere – so close to the city they savaged with their every passage in and out.

It seemed to Brunetti that they slipped into Piazzale Roma and slid to a stop. He moved back and helped the woman to step down and wished her a pleasant evening. She patted his arm but said nothing.

All Gaul was divided into three parts, the first of which were those who commuted out of the city to work on the mainland; the second were those who commuted the other way for the same reason; and the third were people like Brunetti, who lived and worked in the city and who did not ordinarily take the tram. Walking towards the bridge that would take him into Santa Croce, he felt as if he had exchanged his routine with one of the Venetians working out on the mainland and was only now back on familiar ground.

As he walked along the Canale del Gaffaro, Brunetti was struck to see so few people on the street, but then he remembered the acqua alta. The moon was not full, there had been no rain in the north, nor strong wind behind the tide coming in from the Adriatic, yet two days ago the water had risen relentlessly to the knees of the people who walked in Piazza San Marco. Within minutes, those photos made the orbit of the planet, and within a few more, the cancellation of hotel and B&B reservations had flown back to the city to fall upon the already-bowed heads of the owners of those rejected empty rooms.

Brunetti was of two minds: he felt a residual sympathy for the people who would lose income, but most of those earning the income were doing so at his cost and the cost of the other residents: rents impossible for normal people, fast food on offer where once normal people could buy what they needed, masks, and blah blah blah. Brunetti had recently vowed no longer to enter into this discussion nor comment on tourism or cruise ships because there was no longer anything to say, add, proclaim, or hope. Like acqua alta, tourism came when it wanted, could be stopped by nothing, and would gradually destroy the city.

He pulled out his phone and hunted through the numbers he had filed under Vio’s name, stopped at Filiberto Duso’s and pressed his number.

At the second ring, Duso answered, ‘Sì?’

‘Signor Duso,’ Brunetti said in a friendly voice. ‘It’s Commissario Brunetti.’

‘Good evening, Commissario,’ the young man answered.

Brunetti remained silent, a tactic he used with people inex-perienced in the methods of the police.

After what seemed like a long time, Duso said, ‘What is it you’d like, Commissario?’

‘I’ve just got back to the city and wondered if you’d have time to talk to me again,’ he said, hoping to sound jovial.

‘Where are you?’

Brunetti gave a laugh and said, ‘Since I’m asking the favour, Signor Duso, I’ll gladly come to wherever’s convenient for you.’

‘I’m at home,’ Duso said.

‘Ah, near to Nico’s,’ Brunetti enthused. ‘Perhaps we could meet there for a coffee. What I have to say will take only a minute.’

‘Can’t we do it on the phone, then?’ Duso inquired.

‘I’d rather talk face to face, if you don’t mind,’ Brunetti answered.

After a long hesitation, which Brunetti imagined the other man spent trying to find a way to worm his way out of this, Duso said, unable to disguise his reluctance, ‘All right, then. How long will it take for you to get there?’

‘Ten minutes,’ Brunetti answered, already quickening his pace.

Duso was standing in front of Nico’s gelateria, gazing down at the ice cream displayed in the metal containers behind the glass case in front of the bar. As he came down the bridge, Brunetti slowed to watch the young man. It was obvious that he had no interest whatsoever in the ice cream. Quite the opposite: he shifted restlessly from foot to foot, as though only force of will kept him anchored there.