'Could you find it?'
'I'm sure Signorina Elettra could.'
'But why bother?' Paola suddenly countered. 'There's no surprise
here: rich boys, rich parents, so everything goes suddenly quiet and,
next thing you know, it's disappeared from the press and, for all I
know, from the public record.'
'I can still ask her to have a look Brunetti said. Then he asked,
'What else did Susanna say?'
That she never felt comfortable there. She said there was always an
undercurrent of resentment at the fact that she was a woman.'
'No way she could change that, is there?' Brunetti asked.
They did the next best thing when they hired her replacement Paola
said.
'Let me guess. A man?'
'Very much so.'
Speaking carefully, always conscious of when he was about to stumble
over one of Paola's hobby-horses, he asked, 'It couldn't be a bit of
reverse sexism I'm detecting here, could it?'
Paola's look was fierce, but then it disappeared, replaced by a
tolerant smile. 'According to Susanna, he spoke English about as well
as the average Parisian taxi driver, but he'd been to the Naval Academy
in Livorno, so it didn't matter how well he spoke it. For that fact,
it probably didn't matter if he spoke it at all. You know the place is
just a finishing school for those boys before they step into their
fathers' shoes in the Army or into whatever businesses they run, and
it's not as if the Army's an institution that makes serious
intellectual demands on anyone.' Before Brunetti could question this,
Paola said, 'But, yes, it might be that she exaggerated. Susanna does
tend to see sexism where it doesn't exist.'
When he got his breath back, Brunetti asked, 'You remember her saying
all of this at the time?'
'Of course. I was one of the people who recommended her for the job,
so when they let her go, she told me. Why do you ask?'
'I wondered if you've talked to her since this happened.'
'You mean the boy?'
'Yes.'
'No, we haven't spoken in, oh, at least six months. But I remember it,
probably because it confirms everything I've ever thought about the
military. They have the morals of pit vipers. They'll do anything to
cover up for one another: lie, cheat, commit perjury. Just look what
happened when those Americans flew into the cable car. You think any
of them told the truth? I haven't noticed any of them going to jail.
How many people did they kill? Twenty? Thirty?' She made a noise of
disgust, poured herself a small glass of wine, but left it untouched on
the counter as she went on. They'll do anything they want to anyone
who isn't a member of the group, and the instant the public begins to
ask questions, they all clam up and talk about honour and loyalty and
all that other noble shit. It's enough to make a' pig vomit.' She
stopped talking and closed her eyes, then opened them enough to see her
glass of wine and pick it up. She took a small sip, and then a larger
one. Suddenly she smiled. 'End of sermon.'
Brunetti had, in his youth, done eighteen months of undistinguished
military service, most of it spent hiking in the mountains with his
fellow Alpini. His memories, and he admitted that they had acquired
the golden patina of age, were chiefly of a sense of unity and
belonging entirely different from those his family had given him. As
he cast his mind back, the image that came through with greatest
clarity was of a dinner of cheese, bread and salami, eaten in company
with four other boys in a freezing mountain hut in
Alto Adige, after which they had drunk two bottles of grappa and sung
marching songs. He had never told Paola about this evening, not
because he was ashamed of how drunk they had all got, but because the
memory could still fill him with such simple joy. He had no idea where
the other boys men now had gone or what they had done after finishing
their military service, but he knew that some sort of bond had been
forged in the cold of that mountain hut and that he would never
experience anything like it again.
He pulled his mind back to the present and to his wife. 'You've always
hated the military, haven't you?'
Her response was instant. 'Give me one reason not to.'
Certain that she would dismiss his memory as the worst sort of male
bonding ritual, Brunetti found himself with precious little to say.
'Discipline?' he asked.
'Have you ever ridden on a train with a bunch of them?' Paola asked,
then repeated his answer with a little puff of contempt.
'Discipline?'
