Death in a Strange Country

‘Next month.’

Brunetti didn’t bother with false promises to try to attend, but he spoke from the heart when he said, ‘I hope you’ll both be happy, Riccardo.’

‘Thanks, Guido. Look, if I hear anything more about this guy, I’ll call, all right?’

‘I’d appreciate it.’ With more good wishes for the future, Brunetti said goodbye and hung up; Could it be this simple? Could his business losses have driven Viscardi to organize something as rash as a fake robbery? Only a stranger to Venice could have chosen Ruffolo, a young man infinitely better at being caught than at being criminal. But perhaps the fact that he was so recently out of prison had served as sufficient recommendation.

There was nothing more he could do here today, and Patta would be the first to scream police brutality if a millionaire was questioned on the same day by three different policemen, especially if the questioning took place while the man was still in hospital. There was no sense in going to Vicenza on a day when the American offices would be closed, though it might be easier to defy Patta’s order if he went in his own time. No, let the doctor swim towards the bait until next week, when he could easily give another gentle tug on the line. For today, he would drop his line in Venetian waters and go after different prey.

Signora Concetta Ruffolo lived, her son Giuseppe sharing it with her during those brief periods when he was not incarcerated, in a two-room apartment near Campo San Boldo, an area of the city characterized by proximity to the severed tower of that church, to no convenient vaporetto stop, and, if one is but willing to expand the definition of the word ‘proximity’, to the church of San Simeone Piccolo, where Sunday Mass is still said, in open protest to concepts such as modernity or relevance, in Latin. The widow lived in an apartment owned by a public foundation, IRE, which rents its many apartments to those people judged sufficiently needy to be awarded them. Often, they were given to Venetians; how Signora Ruffolo had been given one remained a mystery, though no mystery surrounded the reality of her need.

Brunetti crossed the Rialto Bridge and went down past San Cassiano, then cut to his left, soon to find the squat tower of San Boldo on his right. He turned into a narrow calle and stopped in front of a low building. The name ‘Ruffolo’ was engraved in delicate script on a metal nameplate to the right of the bell; rust streaked down from both and discoloured the plaster that slowly peeled from the front wall of the building. He rang the bell, waited a moment, rang it again, waited, and rang it a third time.

A full two minutes after his last ring, he heard a voice ask from inside, ‘Si, chi e?’

‘It’s me, Signora Concetta. Brunetti.’

The door was quickly pulled open and, looking into the dark hall, he had his usual sensation that he was looking at a barrel and not a woman. Signora Concetta, her family history recounted, had forty years ago been the reigning beauty of Caltanisetta. Young men, it was maintained, would spend hours walking up and down Corso Vittorio Emmanuele in the hope of no more than a glimpse of the fair Concetta. She could have had her pick of them, from the mayor’s son to the doctor’s younger brother, but instead she had chosen the third son of the family which had once ruled the entire province with an iron fist. She had become a Ruffolo by marriage, and when Annuziato’s debts had driven them from Sicily, she had become an alien in this cold and inhospitable city. And, in quick succession, she had become a widow, living on a pension paid by the State and the charity of her husband’s family, and, even before Giuseppe could finish school, she had become the mother of a felon.

From the day of her husband’s death, to which event her emotional response was unfathomable, even to her son, perhaps even to her herself - she had clothed herself solidly in black: dress, shoes, stockings, even a scarf for those times she left the house. Though she grew stouter with the years, her face more lined with the grief of her son’s life, the black remained unchanged: she would wear it to her grave, perhaps beyond.

‘Buon giorno, Signora Concetta,’ Brunetti said, smiling and offering her his hand

He watched her face, read her expression as a child would the quickly-turning pages of a comic book. There was the instant recognition, the instinctive chill of disgust at what he represented, but then he saw her remember the kindness he had shown to her son, her star, her sun, and with that her face softened and her mouth turned up in a smile of real pleasure. ‘Ah, Dottore, you’ve come to visit me again. How nice, how nice. But you should have called so that I could give the house a real cleaning, make you some fresh pastries.’ He understood ‘called’, ‘house’, ‘cleaning’, and ‘pastries’, so he constructed her speech to mean that.

‘Signora, a cup of your good coffee is more than I could hope to have.’

‘Come in, come in,’ she said, putting her hand under his arm and pulling him towards her. She backed through the open door of her apartment, keeping her hold on his arm, as if she were afraid he would try to escape her.

When they were inside the apartment, she closed the door with one hand and continued to pull him forward with the other. The apartment was so small that no one could be lost in it, and yet she kept her hand on his arm and led him into the small living room. ‘Take this chair, Dottore,’ she said, leading him to an overstuffed armchair covered in shiny orange cloth, where she finally released him. When he hesitated, she insisted, ‘Sit, sit. I’ll make us some coffee.’

He did as she commanded, sinking down until his knees were on a level almost with his chin. She switched on the light that stood beside his chair; the Ruffolos lived in the endless twilight of ground-floor apartments, but even lights at midday could do nothing to work against the damp.

‘Don’t move,’ she commanded and went to the other side of the room, where she pushed aside a flowered curtain, behind which lay a sink and stove. From his side of the room, he could see that the taps gleamed and the surface of the stove was almost radiant in its whiteness. She opened a cabinet and pulled down the straight cylindrical espresso pot he always associated with the South, he didn’t know why. She unscrewed it, rinsed it carefully, rinsed it again, filled it with water, and then reached down a glass canister filled with coffee. With gestures grown rhythmic with decades of repetition, she filled the pot, lit the stove, and placed the pot over the flame.

The room was unchanged from the last time he was there. Yellow plastic flowers stood in front of the plaster statue of the Madonna; embroidered lace ovals, rectangles, and circles covered every surface; on top of them stood ranks of family photos, in all of which appeared Peppino: Peppino dressed as a tiny sailor, Peppino in the brilliant white of his First Communion, Peppino held on the back of a donkey, grinning through his fear. In all of the photos, the child’s outsized ears were visible, making him look almost like a cartoon figure. In one corner stood what could only be described as a shrine to her late husband: their wedding photo, in which Brunetti could see her long-gone beauty; her husband’s walking stick propped in a corner, ivory knob aglow even in this dim light; his lupara, its deadly short barrels kept polished and oiled, more than a decade after his death, as if even death had not freed him from the need to live up to the cliche of the Sicilian male, ever ready to defend with his shotgun any offence to his honour or his family.

He continued to watch as, seeming to ignore him, she pulled down a tray, plates, and, from another cabinet,