'By raising their percentages. People were desperate to sell and get out of the country if they could. Towards the end, most of them finally realized that they would die if they stayed here. No’ he corrected .himself, 'not die: be killed. Be sent off to be murdered. But some of them still lacked the courage to cut and run and leave everything behind them: houses, paintings, clothing, apt, papers, family treasures. That's what they should have done, just left it all and tried to get to Switzerland or Portugal, even to North Africa, but too many of them weren't willing to take the loss. But then finally they had no choice’
'And so?' Brunetti prodded.
'So, in the end, they were forced to sell everything they had, turn it into gold or stones or into foreign currency, into something they thought they could carry out of the country with them’
'Couldn't they?'
This is going to take a long time to explain, Guido’ Lele said, almost apologetically. 'Good’
'All right. It worked, at least many times, it worked like this. They contacted the agents, many of whom were antiquarians, either here or in one of the big cities. Some of the big collectors even tried to deal with Germans, men like Haberstock in Berlin. The word had got around that Prince Farnese in Rome had managed to sell a lot of things through him. But, anyway, people contacted the agents, who came and had a look at what they had to sell, and then they offered to buy what they liked or thought they could sell’ Again, Lele stopped.
Puzzled about what in all of this could have turned Lele pyrotechnic, Brunetti prompted. 'And?'
'And they'd offer a fraction of what the objects were worth and say that's all they could expect to get for them’ Even before Brunetti could ask the obvious question, Lele explained. 'Everyone knew it wasn't worth the trouble to contact anyone else. They'd formed a cartel, and as soon as one of them gave prices, he'd tell all the others what the prices were, and none of them would offer more.'
'But what about men like your father? Couldn't people contact him?'
'By then my father was in prison.' Lele's voice was like ice. 'On what charge?'
'Who knows? What does it matter? He was reported to have made defeatist remarks. Of course he did. Everyone knew we had no chance of winning the war. But he made those remarks only at home, only with us. It was the other agents. They gave his name and the police came around and took him away, and it was made clear to him while he was being questioned that he should no longer work as an agent’
'For people who wanted to leave the country?'
'Among others. He was never told just whom he shouldn't deal with, but he didn't have to be, did he? My father got the message. By the third beating, he got the message. So when they let him go, and he came home, he no longer attempted to help those people.'
'Jews?' Brunetti asked.
'Primarily, yes. But also non-Jewish families. Your father-in-law's, for example’
'Are you serious, Lele?' Brunetti asked, unable to disguise his astonishment.
This is a subject about which I do not joke, Guido’ Lele said with unusual asperity. 'Your father-in-law's father had to leave the country, and he came to my father and asked if he would handle the sale of certain items for him.'
'And did he?'
'He took them. I think there were thirty-four paintings and a large collection of Minutius first editions.'
'He wasn't afraid of the warning he'd just had?'
'He didn't sell them. He gave the Count a certain sum of money and told him he'd keep the paintings and books for him until he came back to Venice.'
'What happened?'
The family, including your father-in-law, went overland to Portugal and then to England. They were among the lucky ones.'
'And the things your father had?'
'He put them in a safe place, and when the Count and his family came back after the war, he returned all of them.'
'Where did he keep them?' Brunetti asked, not because it made any difference but because the historian in him needed to know.
'I had an aunt who was a Dominican abbess, in the convent over by the Miracoli. She put all of them under her bed.' Brunetti was too amazed to say anything, but Lele explained, anyway. 'Actually, there was a large space beneath the floor of the abbess's bedroom, and she placed her bed directly over the entrance to it. I never thought it polite to ask what an abbess would want to hide there, so I don't know what its original purpose was.'
'We can but hope,' Brunetti observed, recalling childhood tales of the misbehaviour between priests and nuns.
'Indeed. At any rate, it all stayed there until the war was over and the Faliers came home, when my father gave everything back. The Count gave him the money. He also gave him a small Carpaccio, the one that’ s now in our bedroom.'
After considering all of this, Brunetti said,
'Orazio doesn't talk about what happened during the war’
Surprised that Lele should speak so familiarly of a man Brunetti had never addressed, not in more than two decades, by his first name, he asked, 'But how do you know about it? From your father?'
'Yes, at least part of it. Orazio told me the rest.'
'I didn't know you knew him that well, Lele’
'We fought together with the Partisans for two years.'
'But he said he was only a boy when they left Venice.'
That was in 1939. Three years later, he was a young man. A very dangerous young man. He was one of the best. Or worst, I suppose, if you were a German.'
'Where were you?' Brunetti asked.
Up near Asiago, in the mountains,' Lele said, paused, and then added, 'Anything else you want to know about this, I think you better ask your father-in-law’
Taking that as the command it so clearly was, Brunetti went back to the subject at hand. Tell me more about your father, before he was arrested’
'Before that, he'd taken only his ten per cent, and he'd done his best to try to get as much as he could for the things his clients had to sell. And, for whatever it's worth, he never bought anything from them. No matter how good the price they offered him, and no matter how much he wanted to own the object, he refused to buy anything for himself’
'And Guzzardi?' Brunetti asked, bringing the story back where he wanted it to be.
'They were a perfect team. The father was the money man and the son was the artist’ Lele's voice dribbled acid on the word. They got into the antiques business almost by accident. They must have smelled how much money they could make at it. People like that always do. At the beginning, they hired someone to work as an appraiser for them, and because both of them were senior Party members, they had no trouble in getting themselves into the cartel. And before you knew it, people here, and in Padova and Treviso, who wanted to sell things and needed to do it fast, well, they ended up dealing with the Guzzardis. And they sold. The Guzzardis sucked up everything. Like sharks.'
'Did they have anything to do with your father's arrest?'
Lele said, cautious as always, given his belief that all phone conversations were monitored by some agency of the state, 'If s always wise business procedure to eliminate the competition.'
'Did they buy only for themselves or also for clients?'
'When they started out - because neither of them had any taste at all - they bought for clients, people who might have heard that a certain collection was for sale and who didn't want to get their hands dirty by being seen to buy things openly. This happened more and more, the closer it got to the end of the war. People wanted the art works, but they didn't want it to be seen that they'd bought them.'
'And the Guzzardis?' Brunetti asked.
Toward the end, they are said to have bought only for themselves. By then Luca had developed a fairly good eye. Even my father admitted that. He wasn't stupid, Luca, not at all.'
'What sort of things?'
