The mood of the meal could not be lightened, even by Paola’s reminder that half of a date and almond cake waited in the refrigerator: not even Raffi was interested. She sent them all out of the kitchen and washed the dishes. Brunetti, who was in the living room, was conscious of how very quietly she worked that evening, entirely without the clacks and thuds that were a part of the process when she had a final comment to make on something that had been said over the meal.
He chose to listen to the noise she was making rather than return to the Trojan Women. He sat on the sofa and mused about this: these fictive people and what happened to them were much more upsettingly real to him than what he read in even the most graphic police reports. Himself no writer, a man who had no special ability with words, Brunetti found in their power traces of what he was embarrassed to call the divine.
Paola came to the door and asked, ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
He heard her steps fade back towards the kitchen. What would it be to be herded on to a beach by the strange and violent men who had exterminated your family, your city, your past, and held there until they could decide to which of their friends you would be given? Nothing left of what you’d had than the clothes you wore. No rights, no possessions, no power to say no to anything. They had killed everything; the only freedom left to you, really, was to kill yourself. The gods had taken your sacrifices for years and then had washed their hands of you and gone over to the other side. And you were there, on the beach. Perhaps the swollen corpses of the familiar dead still washed up and back in the surf at your feet; behind you were the crashed-down towers, the shattered gates, and only devastation to be seen, with a slow rain of greasy ash to fall on you and everyone else with grim, slithery equality. You were a person without country and, more horrific, without family.
‘Guido?’ he heard, and looked up to see his wife standing and holding a cup and saucer towards him.
‘Ah, thank you, my dear,’ he said and took them from her.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, sitting on the low table that faced him, setting her cup and saucer to one side.
‘Yes. I was just thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘About how a writer can make even the most awful things …’ Brunetti didn’t want to say ‘beautiful’, but that was what he meant. ‘Can make them powerful,’ he chose, instead. It wasn’t the same, but it was also true.
She surprised him by saying, ‘I’ve never understood why you studied law.’ She picked up her coffee and took a sip.
‘I’m not sure I do, either.’
‘Do you regret it?’
He shook his head. ‘No. The law is beautiful. It’s like building a cathedral.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Paola said with a smile.
‘You want to make something that will last and that will give shelter, so you have to make it hold together, with no weak places. You have to think of all the problems that could arise if one part is weak or badly planned. You have to try, at least, to make it perfect.’
‘That certainly sounds fine and noble,’ she said. She leaned forward and placed both of her palms on his knees. ‘But it doesn’t do those things, does it?’
He shook his head and turned to tap the cover of the book that lay beside him. ‘Perhaps that’s why I’ve abandoned history for tragedy,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Because the writers don’t have to worry about giving an accurate record of events.’
‘What do you think they want to do?’ Paola asked.
‘Forget about the facts and tell us the truth,’ Brunetti said with the certainty of a person who has come lately to a belief.
This time Paola laughed. ‘I’ve been telling you that for years, my dear.’ She picked up her coffee but, finding it cold, set the cup and saucer back on the table.
Later, when she’d moved over to sit next to him, they spoke of Chiara’s growing willingness to form her own judgements, even if they didn’t agree with them. ‘Even about Gonzalo?’ Brunetti asked.
Paola shrugged. ‘She sees him only through love’s eyes, Guido.’
‘You think that makes a difference?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I should hope so, Guido,’ she said, then with a slight shrug, ‘We’ve done what we can.’ If Brunetti expected more than that, he was disappointed: Paola picked up the cups and saucers and took them back to the kitchen.
Later, when Paola had come back with a book to sit next to him and read, Brunetti asked her, ‘Can you think of anyone who might know more about his … feelings?’
Paola gave him a long look, as if surprised to find that word on his lips. ‘The only one of his friends I ever knew well was Rudy. And he’s gone.’ After a minimal pause, she added, voice grown more sombre, ‘I wish he could find a way to be happy. He’s been in my life for as long as I can remember.’
She picked up Brunetti’s hand and stroked the back of his fingers. ‘You really have beautiful hands. Did I ever tell you that?’
‘Six hundred and twelve times, I think, though I lost count during our honeymoon.’
Tossing his hand away, she said, ‘You are such a fool, Guido.’
Surprised by a realization, Brunetti asked, ‘But why don’t we know any of his friends any more?’
‘Should I consider this police harassment?’ she asked.
‘No, that’s when I tell you that if you don’t answer my questions, we’ll torture your husband.’
‘Oh, yes sir, please sir, please, please, please.’
‘It’s not right that we don’t know anything about his life or anyone who might tell us.’
She threw herself against the back of the sofa and muttered, ‘I’m married to a lunatic.’
‘Do you …’
Paola cut him off by saying, ‘Dami.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Padovani,’ she said. ‘He’s back here for a sabbatical. I saw him two weeks ago.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’ Brunetti said.
‘Jealous?’ Paola asked and smiled. Her university classmate was one of the leading art critics in the country: talented, acerbic, funny, and flamboyantly gay.
‘If he’s still as clever as he was, then yes.’
‘If anyone knows the art world, it’s Dami, and Gonzalo was part of it for years,’ Paola said.
‘When can I see him?’
Instead of answering, Paola got up and went down to her study. When she came back, she had her telefonino in her hand. She plunked herself down next to him, punched in a number and, when it began to ring, handed him the phone and moved towards the kitchen.
The phone rang four times before it was answered by a deep voice, asking, ‘Paola?’
‘No, Dami, it’s Guido.’
‘Ah,’ Padovani said and sighed deeply, then cleared his throat, quite as if he were preparing to play a different character from the one that gave the sigh. ‘What a pleasure to hear your voice after all these years, Guido.’
‘Paola said you were back here on a sabbatical.’
‘You can call it that. In fact, I can call it that.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Not really.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘An American foundation has asked me to write a book.’
‘About what?’
‘A painter who lived here for some time.’
‘Who?’
‘No one you would have heard of, believe me, Guido. He had no talent but masses of money. He lived in Palazzo Giustinian for three years and painted about seventy portraits of his dog. He was a very sweet man, convinced of his talent, and good to his friends.’
‘And how is it that you’re writing the book? Did you know him?’
‘I did meet him once, about fifteen years ago, at a dinner.’
‘And was that enough to make you want to write the book?’
Padovani burst into laughter. ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ And then he was gone for a while in laughter. When he stopped, he said, in an entirely serious voice, ‘I imagine you called to ask me about something else.’
‘You have no faith in my motives, Dami.’
‘Quite the opposite, Guido. I have every faith in them. Only they’re often motives I don’t understand.’
‘Right, well …’ Brunetti began. ‘There is someone I’d like to talk to you about, if you’d be willing, and assuming that you know him.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Gonzalo Rodríguez …’ Brunetti began, only to have Padovani join him in a duet for ‘de Tejeda’.
‘Ah, then you do know him,’ Brunetti said.
‘There was a time when it seemed that everyone in Christendom – or at least in Rome – knew Gonzalo.’
‘Is that a compliment?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Am I a Christian?’ Dami asked with a short laugh, then continued, ‘Yes, I know him, or knew him, at least during the time he lived in Rome. I haven’t seen him in a few years, but I do hear from him from time to time.’
‘Will you talk to me about him?’
Padovani took a moment before he answered. ‘Only if you know in advance how highly I think of him,’ he surprised Brunetti by saying.
‘Tomorrow?’ Brunetti tried to think of a place to invite Padovani, a place suitable to discuss Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejeda. ‘Florian’s at ten?’
‘Oddio , you must have heard how much I’m being paid to write this book. If I come, will you let me talk about my painter?’
‘I’m paying, so you don’t get to talk about him.’
‘I’m desperate to find someone who will listen. It’s the only way I might think of something to write.’
‘That bad?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Worse,’ Padovani said and was gone.