'I don't know where she is. Someone said she was here, in the city,
but I couldn't call her.' Perhaps it was the way he said 'couldn't'
that caused Paola not to question him about this, either.
Instead, she asked, 'What makes you think it might not be?'
'Habit,' he ventured.
The habit of doubt?' she asked. 'I suppose you could call it that,'
Brunetti answered and finally allowed himself a sip of wine. Cool,
tight on his tongue, it gave him little comfort, though it reminded him
that comfort did exist in the world.
'Do you want to talk about it?' Paola asked, sipping for the first
time at her own wine.
'Later, perhaps. After dinner.'
She nodded, took another sip, and set the glass down. 'If you want to
go and read for a while, I'll set the table. The kids should be home
soon she began, and both of them were conscious of the word 'kids' and
the casual assertion it made that things had at least remained the same
for them, their family safe. Like a horse suddenly breaking stride to
avoid a hole below its front foot, her voice jogged over into
artificial jollity and she added, 'And then we'll eat.'
Brunetti went into the living room. He placed his glass on the table,
sat on the sofa, and picked up his book, Anna Comnena's life of her
father, the Emperor Alexius. Half an
hour later, when Chiara came in to tell her father that dinner was
ready, she found him on the sofa, his book lying open and forgotten in
his lap, as he stared out at the rooftops of the city.
Much as Brunetti hoped that talking to Paola about the boy's death
would serve to lessen the horror with which it filled him, it did not.
In bed, Paola curled beside him, he told her the events of his day,
struck by the grotesqueness of their bedtime talk. When he finished,
not hiding from her the anguish that had caused him to flee from-his
office without trying to contact Signora Moro, she propped herself up
on one elbow and looked down at his face.
'How much longer can you do this, Guido?' she asked.
In the dim moonlight, he glanced at her, then returned his attention to
the opposite wall, where the mirror glowed dimly in the light reflected
from the tiles of the terrace.
She allowed a certain time to pass in silence, and then asked,
'Well?'
'I don't know,' he answered. 'I can't think about that until this is
finished.'
'If it's decided he committed suicide, then isn't it already finished?'
she asked.
The don't mean finished that way he said dismissively. 'I mean really
finished.'
'Finished for you, you mean?' she asked. At other times, the words
would have been a demand, perhaps even a sarcastic observation, but
tonight they were only a request for information.
'I suppose so,' he admitted.
'When will that be?'
The accumulated exhaustion of the day enveloped him, almost as if it
had decided to wrap its arms around him and lull him to sleep. He felt
his eyes close and he rested in those other arms for a moment. The
room began to move away from him as he felt himself drawn towards
sleep. Suddenly able to see the events affecting the Moro family only
as a triangle created by coincidence, he whispered, 'When the lines
aren't there,' and gave himself to sleep.
The next morning, he woke to ignorance. The rays of the sun, reflected
off the same mirror and on to his face, pulled him from sleep, and in
the first moments of waking, he had no memory of the events of the
previous day. He moved a bit to the right and his body sensed Paola's
absence; he turned his head to the left and saw the bell tower of San
Polo, the sunlight so clear upon it that he could make out the grey
blobs of cement that held the bricks together. A pigeon glided toward
the eaves under the tower roof, spread its wings to reduce speed, and
then set itself down in a soft-footed landing. It turned around twice,
bobbed about a bit, and then tucked its head under one wing.
Nothing the bird did was reminiscent of the events of the previous day,
but as its head disappeared under its wing, Brunetti had a sharp vision
of Ernesto Moro's face at the moment that Vianello pulled the hem of
his cape across it.
Brunetti got out of bed and, careful to avoid himself in the mirror,
went down to the bathroom to take a shower. As he stood there,
shaving, he had no choice but to confront his
own eyes, and the face he saw looking back at him had the weary
dullness of every grief-stricken parent he had ever had to speak to.
