On the way back to the Zattere stop, Brunetti, walking beside a now-silent Griffoni, thought about Capitano Alaimo. Brunetti conceded to him the charm common to most Neapolitans, whose society and culture, having suffered invasion from countless sources for more than two millennia, had learned the art of the friendly manner and welcoming smile. They’d smiled at the Greeks, the Romans, even the Ostrogoths, which is to make no mention of the Byzantines and the Normans, the Angevins and the Spaniards, all the way up to the Germans and the Allies. They’d tried to fight them off, bargained, bribed, surrendered, and finally admitted the victors through their gates. Centuries of this created the strategy of survival: amiability, flattery, joviality, deceit. Where are to be found the Greeks, the Ostrogoths? The towering walls of Byzantium? But the Neapolitans? Are they not still at home, and are they not still charming?
Brunetti pulled his mind away from these reflections. It was too easy to read history as you pleased, see what you chose to see in the actions of people and cultures long gone.
‘Excuse me?’ he said when Griffoni stopped walking and put her hand on his arm.
‘I don’t know where your thoughts are, Guido, but they’re not here.’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I was thinking about Naples.’
She failed to conceal her surprise. ‘What, specifically?’
‘How you’ve survived invasion, occupation, war, destruction: things like that,’ he answered, managing to make it sound normal.
She grinned. ‘You’ve forgotten sitting beside an active volcano that can go off any time it wants. And that when that happens, there will be more than three million people trying to escape.’
‘Including your family?’
She shrugged. ‘They live a ten-minute walk from the Bay, so they could try to swim, I suppose.’
‘You sound very calm about it,’ Brunetti said, surprised.
‘Either you worry or you don’t,’ she said, sounding resigned. ‘I used to, but I can’t any more.’
‘Just like that?’ Brunetti asked. ‘You can just switch it off?
She turned away from him and walked towards the ticket machines. She tapped her boat pass on the sensor, and the twin metal bars swung back and let her enter. Just as they were beginning to close, a well-dressed man hurried in right behind Griffoni without bothering with a boat pass.
‘Not my business,’ thought Brunetti, tapped his card on the sensor, and moved to stand next to Griffoni. ‘Tell me more about why you think he’s lying and why, of all things, about an abbess.’
‘I think he wanted me to believe he came from a good family, so important that one of them can become an abbess.’
‘An abbess is that important?’ asked Brunetti, making no attempt to hide his astonishment.
‘Religion’s different for us.’
‘Does that mean you’re . . .’ he began, then flailed round to find the right phrase, ‘. . . a believer?’
She let out a snort of laughter. ‘Of course not. But it’s important to look as though you are, and that you respect it.’
When Brunetti made no response, she continued. ‘It’s one of the codes of behaviour. We have to be polite to women, and we have to be solemn about religion.’ Before he could question this, she said, ‘If you don’t trust me, come to the Duomo some day when the Bishop’s showing the blood of San Gennaro,’ she suggested, then added, ‘The liquefaction of the blood, that is.’
‘And Alaimo believes that?’ Brunetti asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she answered without a second’s hesitation. ‘But he thinks someone with my background would believe it. And would be impressed by him if he had an aunt who’s an abbess.’ She raised her hands and shook them in the air, fingers spread, as a sign of confusion. ‘What people believe makes no sense.’
Brunetti started to say something but she held up a hand and said, ‘Trust me, Guido.’ Then, as if this would explain things, she added, ‘We have deceit in our marrow.’
The vaporetto arrived. When they were aboard, she said, speaking directly to Brunetti but speaking softly, ‘It’s simple. He doesn’t want to tell us what he knows about what’s going on.’
As Brunetti watched the Palanca stop approach, he considered what Griffoni said. The vaporetto pulled up, moored, waited for the passengers to leave and more to come on board, cast off and backed away a bit, and then continued on its sober way towards the Redentore. ‘But why?’ Brunetti asked. Both of them understood from his tone that it was not a question; no more than a request for speculation.
Griffoni said nothing, perhaps because she had become familiar with this habit of Brunetti’s in responding to confusing information: open the drawer and start pulling things out to see what’s there.
Into her silence, he suggested, ‘Whatever might cause the officer in charge of the Capitaneria di Porto to lure us away from a possible suspect is important.’
‘It’s not our job to patrol the waters, Guido. You’re not Andrea Doria.’
Ignoring her, Brunetti insisted, ‘If he doesn’t want us to know about Vio, there’s a reason.’ When Griffoni did not respond, he asked, ‘Right?’
‘Maybe Alaimo knows they’re up to something and wants to be the one to arrest him,’ Griffoni suggested.
‘He’s not a policeman, Claudia. That’s us. We do the arresting. Alaimo can catch them out on the water, but we’re the ones who do the arresting.’
Brunetti put his hands in his pockets and rolled back and forth on his feet a few times. The boat banged into the embarcadero at San Zaccaria but he didn’t register the shock and continued rocking back and forth. The sound of the railing being pulled back broke into his reverie, and he stepped to the opening, standing to one side for a moment to let Griffoni pass in front of him.
They turned right and started in the direction of the Questura. He was about to speak but saw that there was something else she wanted to say so remained silent. He saw her attempt to speak, then stop herself. They continued walking and still she didn’t speak.
‘Just say it, Claudia,’ Brunetti told her.
Giving no sign that she’d heard him, Griffoni kept walking. Just as they came down the Ponte della Pietà, she swerved towards the water, stopped at the edge of the riva, and looked across at San Giorgio. ‘May I say a few words about Veneziano?’ she surprised him by asking. She wasn’t looking at him but at the church.
‘If you’d like to, I’d be interested,’ he said.
‘I’ve become accustomed to it. When you and Vianello and the others speak it, I listen to what you say and understand a lot of it. Not all, but most.’
‘I’m happy to learn that,’ Brunetti said, utterly confused as to why they were having this conversation – if it was a conversation – now.
‘I don’t . . .’ she began, turning to face him. ‘I don’t hear it and immediately assume that you all have to be stevedores or bargemen, barely literate and that reluctantly so.’
‘I’m happy to learn that, too,’ Brunetti said, even more confused and deciding to accept her whimsy.
‘But,’ Griffoni went on as though he had not spoken, ‘the instant I start to speak with a Neapolitan accent – and I wasn’t speaking Napolitano with Alaimo, or . . .’ she paused here and took a breath – ‘you might have fainted at the sound.’ A depth charge exploded in Brunetti’s conscience, and he felt his face redden.
‘At the mere sound of my accent, you began to assume that everything I’ve done in the last years is open to question, and at heart I might remain the ignorant terrona that many of our colleagues still suspect me of being.’
It was by force of will that Brunetti kept her gaze and allowed her to see the flush of shame he could not control and could not stop. For a horrible moment, Brunetti feared that he would begin to cry.
He opened his mouth to speak but could find no words. He was her closest colleague here, he knew things about her that no one else here did, and yet she still saw this in him. The shame of it was that she was right. Was this what Blacks and Jews and gays lived with – the possibility that the crack would open in the ice beneath their feet at any step, sucking down all hope of friendship, all hope of love, all hope of common humanity?
He put his palms to his eyes and rubbed at them until he could look at her again.
‘I apologize, Claudia,’ he said, his voice hoarse and uncontrollable. ‘From the deepest place in me. Please forgive me.’
‘We’re friends, Guido. And there’s more than enough good in you to make up for this.’ She reached over and touched the side of his face. ‘It’s gone, Guido. Gone.’ She turned away and started walking again. When he drew up beside her, she said, ‘So shall we work on the premise that Alaimo bears further examination?’
He wanted to say that she was the expert on Naples but thought it might be wise to remain distant from the city until the risk of volcanic activity was eliminated, then had an attack of guilt at still being able to think so lightly of Naples. He wondered when they would be able to talk naturally to one another again. It might help if someone took a shot at one of them, who was then saved only by the valiant heroism of the other. Immediately, he regretted no longer being able to make jokes like this with her. She had said that it was gone, but Brunetti thought it might take a bit more time before that could be true.
‘Yes,’ he finally answered. He glanced at his watch, and saw that it was almost 12:30. In need of time to get away from the justice of Griffoni’s observations and admitting his cowardice to himself, he said, ‘Let’s have a closer look after lunch.’
She smiled and nodded, then after a long pause, said, ‘Good idea. I’ll see you this afternoon.’
The children were there for lunch, so Brunetti did not mention the – he didn’t even know what to call it: scene, interchange, confrontation, conversation – with Griffoni. Paola had prepared a risotto with cauliflower and quick-fried veal cutlets, two of his favourites, but he barely finished the risotto and refused her offer of a second cutlet. Nor did he drink a glass of wine, as was his habit at lunch.
Conversation thus fell to the children, who vied with one another in their enthusiasm for the various foreign television series they watched on their computers. Brunetti feared these programmes were hacked – he preferred the verb ‘pirated’ – and wondered if Raffi was capable of doing that. He avoided the question because he didn’t know how he should respond if his son admitted to a crime. Or his daughter.
He was certain that neither of them was capable of theft: Chiara had once found a briefcase on the vaporetto and, uncertain that it would be properly reported by the crew, had chosen to give it to her father at lunch, leaving him to open it, find the name of the owner, and call him to report its being found.
But streaming services, it seemed, were fair game to both of them. He had inquired about this some time before and been told that, because the programmes and films did not belong to a specific person, no one would be hurt if they were not paid for. Brunetti presented the argument of copyright, only to be told that there was no single author in this case, but an enormous multinational company that, it turned out, owned huge palm oil plantations in Indonesia and thus, it seemed from what they told him, had renounced all moral right to profit of any sort. The most tangential facts could be put together in justification of almost anything. How was it that he had missed the coronation of the non sequitur?
After the kids had disappeared, Paola asked him what was wrong; Brunetti kissed her cheek and said he’d tell her later, then left and grumbled his way back to the Questura.