He thought that should be obvious to her. 'Because it might help.'
'About Claudia?' she asked. He wished there had been some trace of hope in her voice, but he knew she was too old to find hope in anything that followed death.
He decided to tell her the truth, rather than what he wanted to say. 'Perhaps.' Then he led her back to his original question. 'What was the agreement?'
She lit another cigarette and smoked half of it before she decided to answer. 'With the judges. That he would confess to everything and, when he had his collapse, they'd send him to San Servolo, where he could stay a year or two and when everyone had forgotten about him, he'd be released.' She finished the cigarette and stuffed it among the others in the ashtray. 'And come back to me’ she added. After a long pause, she said, That was all I wanted.'
'But what happened?'
She studied Brunetti's face, then answered, 'You're too young to know about San Servolo, about what really happened there.'
He nodded.
'I was never told. I went there one Saturday morning. I went out every week, even when all they did was tell me I couldn't see him and send me home. But that time they told me he had died.' Her voice ground to a halt, and she looked down at her lap, where her hands lay, inert. She turned them over and looked down at the smooth palms, rubbing at the left with the tips of the first three fingers of the right in what seemed to Brunetti an attempt to erase the lifeline. That's all they told me’ she went on. 'No explanation. But it could have been anything. One of the other patients could have killed him. That was always covered up, when it happened. Or it could have been one of the guards. Or it could have been typhus, for all I know. They were kept like animals, once people stopped coming to see them.' She drew her hands into tight fists and pressed them on her thighs.
'But what about the agreement with the judges?' Brunetti asked.
She smiled and laughed, almost as if she really found his question amusing. 'You, of all people, Commissario, should know better than to believe anything a judge promises you.' When Brunetti didn't argue the point, she continued. Two of the judges were Communists, so they wanted someone to be punished, and the third was the son of the Fascist Party chief in Mestre, so he had to prove that he was the purest of the pure and not at all influenced by his father's politics.'
'What about the Amnesty?' Brunetti asked, thinking of the general slate-cleaning Togliatti had orchestrated just after the end of the war, pardoning all crimes committed by either side during the Fascist era. He didn't understand how Guzzardi could have been convicted when thousands went free for having done the same things, or far worse.
The judges declared that the crime took place on Swiss territory’ she said simply. 'No amnesty would cover that.'
‘I don't understand’ Brunetti protested.
The home of the Swiss Consul. They said it was Swiss territory.'
'But that’ s absurd’ Brunetti said.
That’s not what the judges said’ she insisted. 'And the appeal court confirmed it. Legally, I did everything I could.' Her voice was truculent and had taken on that hard edge voices acquire when they are used to defend a belief rather than a fact.
Brunetti had heard enough stories from his father's friends about what went on just after the end of the war to believe that Guzzardi had been convicted because of this invented technicality. Many grudges and injuries had been racked up during the war, and many of them were paid back after the German surrender. The judges could easily have persuaded Guzzardi, or his lawyer, to accept their offer, only to renege on it once the convicted man had been taken to San Servolo.
He glanced at the old woman and saw that she sat with one fist pressed against her lips. 'When Claudia came to me,' he said, 'she wanted to know if it were possible to reverse a judgment for someone who was convicted just after the war, and when I asked her about it, she said only that it was for her grandfather, but she didn't give me much information.' He paused to see if she would respond; when she did not, he went on. 'Now after what you've said, I have a clearer understanding. If s been a long time since I studied law, Signora, but I don't think the case is very complicated. I think it's likely that a formal request to reverse this decision would be granted, but I don't think that would lead to an official proclamation of innocence.'
She watched him as he said these last sentences, and he watched her making other calculations or recalling other words. A very long time passed before she spoke. 'Are you sure of this? That there would be no official declaration, some sort of ceremony that would restore his honour and his good name?'
From what Brunetti had heard of Guzzardi, it seemed unlikely that he had ever had much honour worth saving, but Signora Jacobs was too old and too frail to be told that. 'Signora, to the best of my knowledge, there is no legal mechanism or process for that. Whoever might have told you that the possibility of such a thing exists is either misinformed or is intentionally telling you something that isn't true’ Brunetti stopped here, not willing to consider, or mention, how long the reversal of a judgment made a half a century ago would be likely to take, as it would not be achieved in this woman's lifetime. If the redemption of her grandfather's good name had been something Claudia wanted to offer to her grandmother, then her trip to Brunetti's office had been a fool's errand, but the old woman hardly needed to hear this.
She turned her head and looked over at the line of photos, and for a long time she ignored Brunetti and stared at them. She pressed her thin hps together and closed her eyes, letting her head fall forward wearily. As they sat, Brunetti decided to ask her about the events that had precipitated Guzzardi's Luciferian fall from high estate to the dark horror of San Servolo. As she raised a hand from her lap, Brunetti asked, 'What happened to the drawings?'
She had been reaching for another cigarette when he spoke, and he saw her hand hesitate in mid-air. She gave him a surprised glance, then looked back at her hand, followed through on the gesture, and took a cigarette. 'What drawings?' she asked; her look had prepared Brunetti for her protestation of ignorance.
'Someone told me that the Swiss Consul had given some drawings to the Guzzardis.'
'Sold some, you mean’ she said with a heavy emphasis on the first word.
'As you like’ Brunetti conceded and left it at that.
That was something else that happened after the war’ she said, sounding tired. 'People who had sold things tried to get them back by saying they'd been forced to sell them. Whole collections had to be given back by people who had bought them in good faith’ She managed to sound indignant.
Brunetti had no doubt that things like this had happened, but he had read enough to know that most of the injustice had been suffered by those who, from timidity or outright menace, had been led to sell or sign away their possession. He saw no point, however, in disputing this with Signora Jacobs.
Suddenly he felt his wrist imprisoned by her thin fingers. ‘It’s the truth’ she whispered, her voice tight and passionate. 'When he was on trial they all got in touch with the judges, saying he had cheated them out of this or that, demanding their things back’ She yanked savagely on his hand, pulling him closer until his face was a hand's breath from hers. 'It was all lies. Then and now. All of the things are his, legally his. No one can trick me.' Brunetti breathed in the raw stench of tobacco and bad teeth, saw something fierce flare up in her eyes. 'Luca could never have done something like that. He could never have done anything dishonourable.' Her voice had the measured cadence of one who had said the same thing many times, as if repetition would force it to be true.
There was nothing to be said here, so he waited, though he moved slowly back from her, waiting to hear what her next defence would be.
It seemed, however, that Signora Jacobs had said all she was going to, for she reached over for another cigarette, lit it, and puffed at it as though it were the only thing of interest in the room. At last, when the cigarette was finished and she had dropped it on top of the pile of butts, she said, without bothering to turn to him, 'You can go now.'
19
Walking home, Brunetti played back in his mind the conversation with Signora Jacobs. He was puzzled by the paradox between her bleak observation that Guzzardi was capable of loving only himself and the profundity of the love she still felt for him. Love rendered people foolish, he knew, sometimes more than that, but it usually provided
