His reassurances caused no visible signs of relaxation in Fontana, and Brunetti began to suspect this was a man who did not know how to relax or, if he did, would not be capable of doing it in the presence of another person.
Fontana cleared his throat but said nothing.
‘I’ve spoken to your aunt, but in this painful time, it seemed unkind to ask her to speak about her son.’ Effortlessly, he transformed those things he had neglected to do into reality and said, ‘This afternoon, we have appointments with some of his friends.’
‘Friends?’ Fontana asked, as if uncertain about the meaning of the word.
‘The people who worked with him,’ Brunetti clarified.
‘Oh,’ Fontana said, averting his eyes.
‘Do you think colleagues would be a more accurate word, Signore?’ Vianello interrupted to ask.
‘Perhaps,’ Fontana finally said.
Brunetti asked, ‘Did he talk about the people he worked with?’ When Fontana did not answer the question, he said, ‘I’m afraid I have no idea how close you were to your cousin, Signor Fontana.’
‘Close enough,’ was the only response he got.
‘Did he talk about work with you, Signore?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No, not much.’
‘Could I ask you,’ Brunetti began with an easy smile, ‘what you did talk about, then?’
‘Oh, things, family things,’ was his sparse reply.
‘His family or yours?’ Vianello asked in a soft voice.
‘They’re the same family,’ Fontana said with some asperity.
Vianello leaned forward and smiled in Fontana’s direction. ‘Of course, of course. I meant did you talk about your side of the family or his?’
‘Both.’
‘Did he talk about your aunt, his mother?’ Brunetti asked, puzzled that they could have spent so much time talking about so small a family.
‘Seldom,’ Fontana said. His eyes moved back and forth between them, and he always looked at the person who asked him a question, attentive to him while he answered, as if he had been taught this as a child and it was the only way he knew how to behave.
‘Did he ever talk about himself?’ Brunetti asked in a voice he worked at keeping low and steady and warm with interest.
Fontana looked at Brunetti for a long time, as if searching for the trap or the trick that was sure to come. ‘Sometimes,’ he finally answered.
If they kept at it this way, Brunetti realized, they would still be here for the first snow, and Fontana would still be looking back and forth between them. ‘Were you close?’ he finally asked.
‘Close?’ he repeated, as if he had already forgotten being asked this question.
‘In the way of friendship,’ Brunetti explained with no end of patience. ‘Could you talk openly to one another?’
At first Fontana stared at him, as if puzzled at this novel way for two men to interact. But after some thought he said, in a lower voice, ‘Yes.’
‘Did he talk about his private life with you?’ Brunetti asked, imitating the voice of the priest who had heard his first confession, decades ago. He thought he saw Fontana relax minimally and said, ‘Signor Fontana, we want to find who did this.’ Fontana nodded a few times, and Brunetti repeated, ‘Did he talk about his life?’
Fontana looked from Brunetti to Vianello and then he looked at his knees. ‘Yes,’ he said in a voice that was barely audible.
‘Is that why you’ve come to talk to us, Signor Fontana?’ Brunetti asked, wishing he had thought to ask this earlier.
Eyes still lowered, Fontana said, ‘Yes.’
Brunetti had no idea which part of Fontana’s life, personal or professional, could have caused his death, but no trace of this uncertainty was audible in his voice when he said, ‘Good. I think the reason for his death might be there.’
This was enough to encourage Fontana to remove his attention from his knees. He looked at Brunetti, who was struck by the sadness in his eyes. Fontana said, ‘So do I.’
‘Could you tell us about him, then, Signore?’ Brunetti asked.
‘He was a good man,’ Fontana began, surprising Brunetti by using the same words as Signora Zinka. ‘My uncle was a good man, and he raised Araldo that way.’ If Brunetti found it strange that Fontana did not mention his cousin’s mother, he kept it to himself.
‘We were always close when we were kids, maybe less so as we got older, but I guess that’s normal.’ It was said as a statement, but Brunetti sensed that it was really a question. Fontana took a breath and went on. ‘But then I married and had children. And things changed.’ Brunetti smiled at this and did not glance in Vianello’s direction. ‘I had less time for Araldo then.’
‘Did you still see him?’
‘Oh, of course. He’s the godfather of both of my children, and he took it seriously.’ Fontana paused and looked away from them, out the window at the roof of the Casa di Cura across the canal. It seemed to Brunetti that the mention of his children had strengthened Fontana; it had certainly strengthened his voice. Brunetti made no attempt to call his attention back.
They waited and, after some time, Fontana said, ‘He was homosexual, Araldo.’
Brunetti nodded, a nod that both acknowledged the remark and declared that the police already knew this.
Fontana reached into his pocket and brought out a cotton handkerchief. He wiped his face and put the handkerchief back. ‘He told me years ago, perhaps fifteen, perhaps more than that.’
‘Were you surprised?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I think I wasn’t,’ Fontana said. Absently, he glanced down at his lap and pinched the crease in his trousers, ran his fingers back and forth along it, though the gesture made no difference against the weight of humidity in the room, in the city. ‘No, I wasn’t. Not really,’ he corrected. ‘I’d thought for years that he was. Not that it mattered to me.’
‘Did it matter to his parents, do you think?’ Vianello asked. ‘Were they surprised?’
‘His father was dead when he told me.’
‘And his mother?’ the Inspector asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Fontana said. ‘She’s a great deal smarter than she lets on. She might have known. Or suspected.’
‘Would it have bothered her?’ Vianello asked.
Fontana shrugged, started to say something, stopped, then went on, speaking quickly, ‘So long as no one knew about it and he paid the rent, she wouldn’t care, not really.’
Brunetti interrupted to remark, ‘That’s an unusual thing to say about a man’s mother.’
‘She’s an unusual woman,’ Fontana said, giving him a sharp look.
A silence fell. Interesting as a discussion of Signora Fontana might be, Brunetti thought it was of little use to them. It was time to get back to Fontana’s death, so he asked, ‘Did your cousin ever say anything about his private life?’
‘Do you mean sex?’ Fontana asked.
‘Yes.’
Fontana tried again to help the crease in his trousers, but again the humidity won. ‘He told me,’ he began and stopped to clear his throat a few times. ‘He told me once that he envied me.’ He stopped.
‘Envied you what, Signor Fontana?’ Brunetti was finally forced to ask him.
‘That I love my wife.’ He looked away from Brunetti after he said this.
‘And why was that?’ Brunetti asked.
Again Fontana cleared his throat, gave a few coughs, and said, not looking at him, ‘Because — this is what he said — he never managed to make love with anyone he really loved.’
