Acqua Alta

class.’

‘Il piccolo marchesino?’ he asked, slighting, with the use of the diminutive, Vittorio, heir apparent to Marchese Francesco Bruscoli. Vittorio, it seemed, had been persuaded to terminate his attendance at the universities of Bologna, Padua and Ferrara, and had, six months ago, ended up at C a Foscari, attempting to take a degree in English, not because he had any interest in or enthusiasm for literature — indeed, for anything that resembled the written word — but simply because the English nannies who had raised him had made him fluent in that language.

‘He’s such a dirty-minded little pig,’ Paola said vehemently. ‘Really vicious.’

‘What’s he done now?’

‘Oh, Guido, it’s not what he does. It’s what he says, and the way he says it. Communists, abortion, gays. Any of those subjects just has to come up and he’s all over them, like slime, talking about how glorious it is that Communism’s been defeated in Europe, that abortion is a sin against God, and gays—’ She waved a hand towards the window, as if asking the roofs to understand. ‘My God, he thinks they should all be rounded up and put in concentration camps, and anyone with AIDS should be sequestered. There are times when I want to hit him,’ she said, with another wave of her hand but ending, she realized, weakly.

‘How do these subjects come up in a literature class, Paola?’

‘They rarely do,’ she admitted. ‘But I hear about him from some of the other professors.’ She turned to Brunetti and asked, ‘You don’t know him, do you?’

‘No, but I know his father.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Pretty much the same. Charming, rich, handsome. And utterly vicious.’

‘That’s what’s so dangerous about him. He’s handsome and very rich, and many of the students would kill to be seen with a marchese, regardless, of what a little shit he is. So they ape him and repeat his opinions.’

‘But why are you so bothered about him now?’

‘Because tomorrow I begin with Whitman and Dickinson, I told you.’

Brunetti knew they were poets; had read the first and not liked him, found Dickinson difficult but, when he understood, wonderful. He shook his head from side to side, asking for an explanation.

‘Whitman was gay, and Dickinson probably was, too.’

‘And that sort of thing is not on il marchesino’s list of acceptable behaviour?’

‘To say the very least,’ replied Paola. ‘That’s why I want to begin with that quotation.’

‘You think something like that will make any difference?’

‘No, probably not,’ she admitted, sitting down in her chair and beginning to straighten out some of the mess on her desk.

Brunetti sat in the armchair against the wall and stretched his feet out in front of him. Paola continued closing books and placing magazines on neat piles. ‘I had a taste of the same today,’ he said.

She stopped what she was doing and looked across at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone who didn’t like gays.’ He paused and then added, ‘Patta.’

Paola closed her eyes for second, then asked, ‘What was it?’

‘Do you remember Dottoressa Lynch?’

‘The American? The one who’s in China?’

‘Yes to the first, and no to the second. She’s back here. I saw her today, in the hospital.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Paola asked with real concern, hands grown suddenly still over her books.

‘Someone beat her. Well, two men, really. They went to her place on Sunday, said they had come on business, and when she let them in, they beat her.’

‘How badly is she hurt?’

‘Not as badly as she could have been, thank God.’

‘What does that mean, Guido?’

‘She’s got a cracked jaw, and a few broken ribs, and some bad scrapes.’

‘If you think that’s not bad, I tremble to think of what would be,’ Paola said, then asked, ‘Who did it? Why?’

‘It might have something to do with the museum, but it might have something to do with what my American colleagues insist on calling her “lifestyle”.’

‘You mean that she’s a lesbian?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that’s insane.’

‘Agreed. But none the less true.’

‘Is it starting here?’ Clearly, rhetorical. ‘I thought that sort of thing happened only in America.’

‘Progress, my dear.’