A Sea of Troubles

got called in: accidents were reported to the Capitaneria di Porto; crimes were dealt with either by the Carabinieri or, and here the operator's voice grew a bit strained, by themselves.

'I understand,' Brunetti said. 'But who goes out to investigate?'

'It depends, sir,' the operator said, his voice a study in discretion. 'If we don't have a boat available, then we call the Carabinieri and they go-'

Brunetti knew too well why the Carabinieri divers had been unavailable to examine the wreck of the Squallus, so he merely made a note of this, believing it wiser not to comment.

'And in the last few years ...' Brunetti began, then stopped himself and said, 'No, forget it. I'll wait for Signorina Elettra.'

Just as he hung up, he thought he heard the operator's voice, disembodied by distance, say, 'We're all waiting for her', but he couldn't be sure.

Like all Italians, Brunetti had grown up hearing Carabinieri jokes: Why are two Carabinieri always sent to investigate? One to write and one to read. He understood that the Americans told the same jokes about Poles, and the English told them at the expense of the Irish. During his career, Brunetti had seen much to prove the truth of this piece of folk wisdom, but it was only in recent years that anything had weakened his faith in a second belief: that, however stupid, however dim they might be, the Carabinieri were rocklike in their honesty.

Becalmed, he could invent nothing with which to busy himself, and so he pulled towards him a sheaf of unread papers and reports and began to glance through them, skimming the texts, paying little attention save to find the place at the end where he was meant to initialize them before passing them on to the next reader. When the kids were younger, he'd been told that the homework they did had all to be collected by their school, put into an archive and kept for ten years. He couldn't remember now who'd told him, though he did remember having visualized, at the time, an enormous archive, as large as the city, itself, where all official papers were stored. The Roman historians he so loved had often described an Italian peninsula densely, in parts impenetrably, covered in trees: oak, beech, chestnut; all gone now, of course, cut down to clear land for farming or to build boats. Or, he thought sadly, to be turned into paper to add to the already stored documents that, if unchecked, might some day cover the entire peninsula once again. He'd consigned his fair share of papers to that archive in his time, he thought, as he put his initials on another sheet and set it aside. He glanced at his watch and, reluctant to be perceived as nagging at Signorina Elettra for the information he'd requested, decided to go home for lunch.

9

He found Paola at the kitchen table, head bent over a copy of either Panorama or Espresso, the two weekly magazines to which she subscribed. Her custom was to let back issues pile up for at least six months before reading them, for she insisted that this was sufficient time to put things into proper perspective and thus allow the current pop star to die of an overdose and lapse into well-merited obscurity; to permit Gina Lollobrigida to launch and abandon yet another career, to wipe the slate clean of all talk of plans for the current political riforma and replace it with an entirely new one.

Glancing down, he saw a photo of two men wearing the distinctive white coats of chefs and the red and white banded hoods of Father Christmas. On the page to their left was a heavily laden table: the evergreens and red candles told him that Paola's reading had finally taken her as far as the end of last year.

'Oh, good,' he said as he bent to kiss the top of her head. 'Does this mean we're having goose for lunch?' When she ignored him, he added, 'Bit hot for that, isn't it? Though whatever it is, it smells wonderful.'

She looked up and smiled. 'Would that goose were what they suggested for Christmas dinner,' she added, tapping at one of the pages with a disapproving forefinger. ‘I can't believe these people.'

As this was a frequent response to her reading of these magazines, Brunetti turned his attention to a bottle of Pinot Grigio which he took out of the refrigerator. Pulling two glasses from the cabinet behind, he filled them halfway. As he set Paola's beside her, he made an inquisitive noise.

She chose to construe this as a sign of interest and replied, 'They're telling us that we should abandon all new ideas about eating and return to the way our parents and grandparents ate.' Brunetti, who had had enough of nouvelle cuisine to last a lifetime, could not have agreed more strongly. Knowing that Paola, a more adventurous eater, differed from him in this, he kept his opinion to himself.

'Listen to what they suggest as a way to begin a Christmas dinner in the style of our grandparents.' She picked up the magazine and shook it angrily, as if the attempt would shake some sense into it.' 'Goose liver with small pear tarts al Taurasi - whatever or whoever that is - with pineapple flavoured with limoncello.' She looked up at Brunetti, who had the presence of mind to shake his head in what he thought was a damning fashion.

Encouraged, she went on, 'Then listen to this. 'Sartu - whatever that is - of rice with slices of eggplant with eggs and tiny meatballs di annecchia with a sauce of San Marsano tomatoes.'' Overcome with disgust at this final excess, she tossed the magazine on to the table, where it closed, thus providing Brunetti with a sight of the prosperous female breasts which served both magazines as a sort of obligatory cover logo. 'Where do they think our grandparents lived - at the court of Louis the Fourteenth?' she demanded.

Brunetti, who knew that at least one of Paola's great-grandparents had served at the court of the first king of Italy, again chose silence as a response.

Pushing the magazine farther away, she asked, 'Why is it so difficult for them to remember what a poor country Italy was, and not so long ago?'

This seemed something more than a rhetorical question, and so Brunetti answered, ‘I think people prefer to remember happy times, well, happier times, and if they can't remember them, then to change the memories and make them happier.'

'Old people seem to,' Paola agreed. 'If you listen to the old women at Rialto, all you hear is how much better things were in the past, how much better they lived, even with less.'

'Or maybe it's because most of the journalists are young, so they really don't remember how things were.'

She nodded. 'And we certainly have no sense of historical memory, not as a society, that is. I had a look at Chiara's history book last week, and it frightened me. In the chapters on this century, it just glides right past the Second World War. Mussolini makes a walk-on appearance in the Twenties, then he's led astray by the wicked Germans, and then it's all over and Rome is free again. Though not before our valiant troops fought like lions and died like heroes.'

'We were never taught anything at all about it in school, not that I can remember,' Brunetti said, pouring himself another half-glass of wine.

'Well,' Paola said after taking a sip of her own, 'when we were in school, the Right was in power, so they'd hardly want an honest discussion of Fascism. And once they formed their alliance with the Left, it would be inconvenient to talk about Communism.' Another sip. 'And since we changed sides during the war, I suppose they have to be careful who they present as the bad guys or the good guys.'

'Who's 'they'?' Brunetti asked.

'The people who write the history books. Or, rather, the politicians who decide who will write the history books, at least the ones that get used in the schools.'

'And the idea of simple historical truth?' Brunetti asked.

'You spend most of your time reading history, Guido: that should be enough to show you there is no such thing.'

He had only to call to mind the difference between the Protestant and Catholic histories of the Papacy to see how right she was. But that was religion, where everyone is expected to lie; here, they were talking about living memory: people were still alive who had taken part in the events they were talking about; the fathers of most of his friends had fought in the war.

'Maybe it's harder to distinguish the truth when you know it from your own experience,' he suggested, then, seeing her confusion, he added, 'If it's just records of people you never knew, from hundreds of years ago, then you can be honest, or at least you're more likely to be honest.'

'Like the Church's account of the Inquisition?' she inquired.

He grinned at his defeat and asked, 'If not goose, what are we having?'

Gracious in her victory, she said, ‘I thought we'd eat the food of our forefathers.'