detected signs of the second.
'But you see that only now?' he asked, offering her the briefest of
recitativi as a means of prompting the aria.
'We used to see them, my friends and I, swarming around the city in
their capes, and we thought they were the most exciting, wonderful boys
in the world. Whenever one of them spoke to one of us, it was as
though the heavens had opened to allow a god to descend. And then one
of them .. .' she began. Then, seeking the proper words, she changed
her mind and went on, 'I began going out with one of them.'
'Going out?' he inquired.
'For a coffee, for a walk, just to go down to the Giardini to sit on a
bench and talk.' With a rueful smile, she corrected herself. To
listen, that is.' She smiled across at him. 'I believe one could
employ a new noun here, sir: a listen, instead of a conversation.
That's what I had whenever we met: a listen.'
'Perhaps it was a quicker way for you to get to know him Brunetti
suggested drily.
'Yes,' she said brusquely. The got to know him.'
He didn't know quite what question to ask. 'And what was it that makes
you say those things about him?'
'That he was a snob and a Fascist and a bully?'
'Yes.'
'You know Barbara, don't you?' she asked, mentioning her older
sister.
'Yes.'
'She was in medical school at the time, living in Padova, so I didn't
see much of her except on the weekends. I'd been going out with Renzo
for about three weeks when she came home one weekend, and I asked her
to meet him. I thought he was so wonderful, so clever, so thoughtful.'
She snorted at the memory of her own youth and went on. 'Imagine that,
thoughtful. At eighteen.' She took a deep breath and smiled at him,
so he knew that this story was going to have a happy ending.
'Whenever we were together, he talked about politics, history, all
those things I'd heard Barbara and my parents talk about for so long.
Nothing he said sounded much like what they said. But he had dark blue
eyes, and he had a car at home, in Milano, a convertible.' Again, she
smiled at the memory of the girl she had been, and signed.
When she seemed reluctant to continue, he asked, 'And did Barbara meet
him?'
'Oh yes, and they hated one another after three words. I'm sure he
thought she was some sort of Communist cannibal, and she must have
thought he was a Fascist pig.' She smiled again at him.
'And?'
'One of them was right.'
He laughed outright and asked, 'How long did it take you to realize
it?'
'Oh, I suppose I knew it all along, but he did have those eyes. And
there was that convertible.' She laughed. 'He carried a photo of it
in his wallet.'
At first, it was difficult for Brunetti to picture a Signorina Elettra
capable of this folly, but after a moment's reflection, he realized
that it didn't surprise him all that much.
'What happened?'
'Oh, once Barbara started on him, when we got home, it was as if how do
they describe it in the Bible? as if 'the scales fell from my eyes'?
Well, it was something like that. All I had to do was stop looking at
him and start listening to what he said and thinking about it, and I
could see what a vicious creep he was.'
'What sort of things?'
'The same things people like him are always saying: the glory of the
nation, the need to have strong values in the family, the heroism of
men in war.' She stopped here and shook her head again, like a person
emerging from rubble. 'It's extraordinary, the sort of things a person
can listen to without realizing what nonsense it is.'
'Nonsense?'
'Well, when the people who say it are still children, I suppose it's
nonsense. It's when adults say it that it's dangerous.'
'What became of him?'
'Oh, I don't know. I imagine he graduated and went into the Army and
ended up torturing prisoners in Somalia. He was that kind of
person.'
