bulls raised up upon its surface in low relief.
‘What is it?’ he asked, pointing down at the photo.
‘The Ishtar Gate of Babylon,’ she said. ‘Much of it’s been reconstructed, but that’s where the brick came from. That or a structure like it, from the same place.’ Before he could ask, she explained, ‘I remember that some of the bricks were in the storerooms of the museum when we were working there.’
‘But how did it get on to his desk?’ Brunetti asked.
Brett smiled again. ‘The perks of the job, I suppose. He was the director, so he could have pretty well anything he wanted from the permanent collection brought up to his office.’
‘Is that normal?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, it is. Of course, they can’t have a Leonardo or a Bellini hanging there just for them to look at, but it’s not unusual for pieces from a museum’s holdings to be used to decorate an office, especially the director’s.’
‘Are records kept of this kind of borrowing?’ he asked.
From the other side of the table, Flavia crossed her legs with a slither of silk and said softly, ‘Ah, so that’s how it is.’ Then she added, as if Brunetti had asked, ‘I met him only once, but I didn’t like him.’
‘When did you meet him, Flavia?’ Brett asked, ignoring Brunetti’s question.
‘About a half hour before I met you,
Almost automatically, Brett corrected her, ‘It wasn’t my exhibition.’ Brunetti had the feeling that this same correction had been made many times before.
‘Well, whosever it was, then,’ Flavia said. ‘It had just opened, and I was being shown around the city, given the full treatment — visiting diva and all that.’ Her tone made the idea of her fame sound faintly ridiculous. Since Brett must know this story of their meeting, Brunetti assumed the explanation was directed at him.
‘Semenzato showed me through the galleries, but I had a rehearsal that afternoon, and I suppose I might have been a bit brusque with him.’ Brusque? Brunetti had seen Flavia’s ill humour, and brusque was hardly an adequate term to describe it.
‘He kept telling me how much he admired my talent.’ She paused and leaned towards Brunetti, placing a hand on his arm while she explained, ‘That always means they’ve never heard me sing and probably wouldn’t like it if they did, but they’ve heard enough to know that I’m famous, so they feel they have to flatter me.’ That explanation given, she removed her hand and sat back in her chair. ‘I had the feeling that, while he was showing me how wonderful the exhibition was—’ here she turned to Brett and added, ‘and it was,’ then turned her attention back to Brunetti and continued — ‘what I was supposed to be registering was how wonderful he was for having thought of it. Though he didn’t. Well, I didn’t know that at the time — that it was Brett’s show — but he was pushy about it, and I didn’t like it.’
Brunetti could well imagine that she wouldn’t like the competition of pushy people. No, that was unfair, for she didn’t push herself forward. He had to admit that he had been wrong the last time he met her. There was no vanity here, only the calm acceptance of her own worth and of her own talent, and he knew enough about her past to realize how hard that must have been to achieve.
‘But then you came by with a glass of champagne and rescued me from him,’ she said, smiling at Brett.
‘That’s not a bad idea, champagne,’ Brett said, cutting short Flavia’s flow of memory, and Brunetti was struck at how very similar her reaction was to Paolas whenever he began to tell people about the way they met, crashing into one another at the end of one of the aisles in the library of the university. How many times in their years together had she asked him to get her a drink or otherwise interrupted his story by asking someone else a question? And why did the telling of that story bring him such joy? Mysteries. Mysteries.
Taking the hint, Flavia got out of her chair and went across the room. It was only eleven thirty in the morning, but if they felt like drinking champagne, he hardly thought it his place to contradict or try to prevent them.
Brett flipped a page in the book, then sat back in the sofa, and the pages floated back into place, showing Brunetti the gold bull, part of which had killed Semenzato.
‘How did you meet him?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I worked with him on the China show, five years ago. Most of our contact was through letters because I was in China while most of the arrangements were being made. I wrote and suggested a number of pieces, sending photos and dimensions, and weights, since they all had to be air-freighted from Xian and Beijing to New York and London for the exhibition there, and then to Milan, and then trucked and boated here.’ She paused for a moment and then added, ‘I didn’t meet him until I got here to set the show up.’
‘Who decided what pieces would come here from China?’
This question caused her to grimace in remembered exasperation. ‘Who knows?’ When he failed to understand, she tried to explain. ‘Involved in this were the Chinese government, their ministries of antiquities and foreign affairs, and, on our side’— he noticed that Venice was, unconsciously, ‘our side’ — ‘the museum, the department of antiquities, the finance police, the ministry of culture, and a few other bureaus I’ve forced myself to forget about.’ She allowed the memory of officialdom to flow across her. ‘Here, it was awful, far worse than for New York or London. And I had to do all this from Xian, with letters delayed in the mail, or held up by the censors. Finally, after three months of it - this was about a year before it opened - I came here for two weeks and got most of it done, though I had to fly down to Rome twice to do it.’
‘And Semenzato?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I think, first, you have to understand that his was pretty much a political appointment.’ She saw Brunetti’s surprise and smiled. ‘He had museum experience, I forget where. But his selection was a political payoff. Anyway, there were—’ she corrected herself immediately - ‘there are curators at the museum who actually take care of the collection. His job was primarily administrative, and he did that very well.’
‘What about the exhibition here? Did he help you set it up?’ From the other side of the apartment, he could hear Flavia moving around, hear drawers and cabinets being opened and closed, the clink of glasses.
‘To a small degree. I told you how I more or less commuted back and forth from Xian for the openings in New York and London, but I came here for the opening.’ He thought she was finished, but then she added, ‘And I stayed
