Morandi’s failure to realize what this said about himself.
‘I told him I wouldn’t sign anything until he gave them to me.’ As the old man told his story, Brunetti was reminded of why he had thought him a thug. His voice hardened, as did his eyes; his mouth grew tighter in the telling of the tale. Brunetti’s face was impassivity itself.
‘And then the old woman had some sort of crisis – I forget what it was. Breathing, something like that. And he panicked, Cuccetti, and he must have gone to her place and got them, and he brought them to the hospital and put them in her closet.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Brunetti asked.
Morandi answered immediately. ‘If anyone asked, he could say she asked him to bring them to her so she could look at them again.’ His nod showed how clever he judged this move on Cuccetti’s part to have been. ‘But she didn’t see them. She was gaga by then.’
Brunetti thought again of Dante’s lizards and of the way they repeatedly changed shape, returning ineluctably to the form of what they had once been.
‘So you signed it?’
‘Yes,’ Morandi said.
‘And was that really Signora Sartori’s signature?’
Morandi blushed again, far more strongly than at any time in the past. The fight went out of him; he actually seemed to deflate again. ‘Yes,’ he said and bowed his head to await the blow of Brunetti’s next question.
‘What did you tell her?’
Morandi started to speak but then burst into nervous coughing. He bowed his head over his knees and kept it there until the coughing fit ended, then pushed himself up and against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Brunetti would not let him go to sleep again, would poke him in the side before he’d allow that. The old man opened his eyes and said, ‘I told her that I’d watched the old woman write it. That Cuccetti and I had been there and she’d written it by herself.’
‘Who really wrote it?’ Brunetti asked.
Morandi shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was on the table when I went into the room.’ He looked at Brunetti and said, making no attempt to disguise his eagerness, ‘So she could have written it, couldn’t she?’
Brunetti ignored this. ‘It could have been anyone who signed it?’ Brunetti demanded levelly. ‘But you and Signora Sartori witnessed her signature?’
Morandi nodded, then covered his eyes with his right hand, as if the sight of Brunetti’s knowledge was too much for him to bear. Brunetti glanced away for a moment, and when he looked back he saw that tears were seeping from beneath his fingers.
For some time the old man sat like that, then heaved himself to one side and pulled an enormous white handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose, folded the handkerchief carefully, and put it back in his pocket.
As if he had not heard Brunetti’s question, Morandi said, ‘The old woman died a few days later. Three. Four. Then Cuccetti submitted the will, and we were asked about it. I had to explain to Maria that she had to say we saw her sign it, or we’d all get in trouble.’
‘And she did?’
‘Yes. Then.’
‘But later?’
‘But later she began not to believe me.’
‘Was it because of the apartment?’
‘No, I told her my aunt left it to me. She lived in Torino and she died about then, so I told Maria that’s what happened.’
‘She believed you?’
‘Yes. Of course.’ Seeing Brunetti’s face, he said, voice almost pleading, ‘Please. You have to understand that Maria is an honest person. She couldn’t lie, even if she wanted to. And she doesn’t think other people can.’ He paused, considering, and then added, ‘And I never had. Not to her. Not until then. Because I wanted us to have a home we could be proud of and be together there.’
How convenient that desire made things for him, Brunetti found himself thinking.
‘What did you do with the drawings?’ Brunetti asked. He was tired of this, tired of having to consider everything Morandi said to determine which of the two men he had seen in him was speaking.
As if he had been expecting the question, Morandi said, with a vague gesture towards Brunetti’s pocket, as if they were there, ‘I put them in the bank.’
Brunetti stopped himself from smacking his palm against his forehead and shouting out, ‘Of course, of course.’ People like Morandi didn’t live in large apartments near San Marco, and no one expected poor people to have safe deposit boxes. But what else was that key if not the key to a safe deposit box?
‘When did she take the key?’
Morandi pulled his lips together in the manner of a schoolboy being reproved for some minor offence. ‘A week ago. Remember, that warm day?’ Brunetti did indeed remember: they’d had dinner on the terrace, but the warm spell had ended suddenly.
‘I went out into the
‘Did she know what the key was?’ Brunetti said.
Morandi shook his head. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I never thought she knew anything or understood what had happened. About the apartment. Or about the drawings.’ He gave Brunetti a long look and said, his confusion to be heard in every word, ‘But she must have, don’t you think?’ Brunetti did not answer, and Morandi asked, ‘To take the key? She must have known? All these years?’ There was a hint of desperation in his voice at the need to consider what this possibility did to his vision of and belief in the sainted Maria.
Brunetti found no words. People knew things they said and thought they did not know. Wives and husbands learned far more about the other person than they were ever meant to learn.
‘I have to have the key,’ Morandi blurted out. ‘I have to have it.’
‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew.
‘To pay the bills.’ The old man looked around the room, ran his palm across the velvet of the sofa. ‘You know what the public places are like: you’ve seen them. I can’t let her go there.’ At the thought, the tears began again, but this time Morandi was unconscious of them. ‘You wouldn’t put a dog there,’ he insisted.
Brunetti, who had not put his mother there, said nothing.
‘I have to pay them. I can’t move her now, not from this into one of those places.’ He choked on a sob, as surprised by it as was Brunetti. Morandi struggled to his feet and walked to the door. ‘I can’t be inside,’ he said and headed for the elevator.
28
Brunetti had no choice but to follow him, though this time he took the stairs and arrived sooner than the elevator. Morandi’s face softened when he saw him there, and together they walked out into the early evening sun. The old man went back to the same bench, and within minutes the birds had altered their flight paths and were landing not far from his feet. They taxied up to him, but he had nothing to give them, nor did he appear to notice them.
Brunetti sat on the bench, leaving a space between them.
The old man reached into his pocket and pulled out cigarette papers and tobacco. Sloppily, spilling tobacco on to his trousers and shoes, he managed to roll a cigarette and get it lit. He took three deep puffs and sat back, ignoring the birds who, in their turn, ignored the tobacco that fell around them. They looked up at him, their indignant peeps making no impression on Morandi. He puffed again and again, until his head was encircled in a cloud and he went off into another fit of coughing. At the end of it, he tossed the cigarette from him in disgust and
