ashamed of what he was doing. But whatever they had to say to each other they said in low voices.
The woman in the blue smock appeared at the top of the steps. Brunetti pulled himself away from the door and walked toward her. Explaining that he had finished with the dressing room, he handed her the key, smiled, thanked her, and went back down the stairs to the stage area, where he found a chaos that amazed him. Gowned figures slumped against the walls, smoking and laughing. Men in tuxedos talked about soccer. And stagehands roamed back and forth, carrying paper ferns and trays with champagne glasses glued solidly to the bottom.
Down the short corridor to the right was the door to the conductor’s dressing room, closed now behind the new conductor. Brunetti stood at the end of the corridor for at least ten minutes, and no one bothered to ask him who he was or what he was doing there. Finally, a bell sounded and a bearded man in a jacket and tie went from group to group backstage, pointing in various directions and sending them off to whatever it was they were supposed to do.
The conductor left the dressing room, closed the door behind him, and walked past Brunetti without paying any attention to him. As soon as he was gone, Brunetti went casually down the corridor and into the room. No one saw him go in or, if they saw him, bothered to ask him what he was doing there.
The room was much as it had been the other night, save that a small cup and saucer were sitting on the table, not lying on the floor. He stayed only a moment, then left. His departure was as little noticed as his entrance, and this only four days after a man had died in that room.
* * * *
CHAPTER SEVENTEN
By the time he got home, it was too late to take Paola and the children to dinner, as he had promised he would do that evening; besides, he could smell the mingled odors of garlic and sage as he climbed the stairs.
As he walked into the apartment, he had a moment of total disorientation, for the voice of Flavia Petrelli, which voice he had last heard singing Violetta twenty minutes before, was performing the end of the second-act in his living room. He took two sudden and completely involuntary steps forward, until he remembered that the performance was being broadcast live that evening. Paola wasn’t much of an opera fan and was probably watching to figure out which of the singers was a murderer. In which curiosity, he was sure, she was joined by millions of households all over Italy.
From the living room, he heard the voice of his daughter, Chiara, call out, ‘Papa’s home,’ over which Violetta begged Alfredo to leave her forever.
He went into the living room just as the tenor threw a fistful of paper money into Flavia Petrelli’s face. She sank to the floor, gracefully, in tears, Alfredo’s father hurried across the stage to reprove him, and Chiara asked, ‘Why did he do that, Papa? I thought he loved her.’ She glanced up at him from what looked like math homework and, receiving no answer, repeated the question. ‘Why’d he do that?’
‘He thought she was going out with another man,’ was the best Brunetti could come up with by way of explanation.
‘What difference would that make? It’s not like they’re married or anything.’
‘Well,’ Chiara persisted. ‘Why is he so angry?’
Brunetti walked in front of her and lowered the volume on the television, wondering what it was that rendered all teenagers deaf. He could tell from the way she held her pencil in front of her and wiggled it in the air that she had no intention of letting this one go. He decided to compromise. ‘They were living together, weren’t they?’
‘Yes; so what?’
‘Well, when people live together, they usually don’t go out with other people.’
‘But she wasn’t going out with anyone. She did all that just to make him think she was.’
‘I guess he believed her, and he got jealous.’
‘He doesn’t have any reason to be jealous. She really loves him. Anyone can see that. He’s a jerk. Besides, it’s her money, isn’t it?’
‘Hmm,’ he temporized, trying to remember the plot of
‘Why didn’t he go out and get a job? As long as she’s supporting him, then she’s got the right to do whatever she wants.’ The audience thundered its applause.
‘It’s not always like that, angel’
‘Well, sometimes it is, isn’t it, Papa? Why not? Most of my friends, if their mothers don’t work, like Mamma does, then their fathers always decide everything—where they’ll go on vacation, everything. And some of them even have lovers.’ This last was delivered weakly, more as a question than as a statement. ‘And they get to do it because they earn the money, so they get to tell everyone what they have to do.’ Not even Paola, he believed, could so accurately have summed up the capitalist system. It was, in fact, his wife’s voice he heard in Chiara’s speech.
‘It’s not as easy as that, sweetheart.’ He pulled at his tie. ‘Chiara, would you be an angel of grace and mercy and go into the kitchen and get your poor old father a glass of wine?’
‘Sure.’ She tossed down her pencil, more than willing to abandon the issue. ‘White or red?’
‘See if there’s some Prosecco. If not, bring me whatever you think I’d like.’ In family jargon, this translated to whatever wine she wanted to have a taste of.
He lowered himself into the sofa and kicked off his shoes, propping his feet on the low table. He listened as an announcer filled the audience in, rather unnecessarily, on the events of the last few days. The man’s eager, ghoulish tone made it sound like something from an opera, of the more bloody verismo repertory.
Chiara came back into the room. She was tall, utterly lacking in physical grace. From two rooms away, he could tell when it was Chiara’s turn to do the dishes by the crashes and bangs that filled the house. But she was pretty, would perhaps become beautiful, with wide-spaced eyes and a soft down just beneath her ears that melted his heart with tenderness each time he saw it caught in a revealing light.
