trust.'
The words, at first, offended Brunetti and roused in him a desire to
defend himself and his honour, but in the stillness that fell after
Moro stopped talking, he realized that the doctor's words had nothing
at all to do with him personally: Moro saw him as contaminated simply
because he worked for the state. Brunetti realized he had too much
sympathy for that position to attempt to argue against it.
Brunetti got to his feet, but he did so tiredly, with none of the faked
energy he had devoted to the same gesture when talking to Patta. 'If
you decide you can talk to me, Dottore, please call me.'
'Of course,' the doctor said with the pretence of politeness. Moro
pushed himself from his own chair, led Brunetti to the door, and let
him out of the apartment.
Outside, he reached for his telefonino, only to realize he'd left it in
the office or at home in another jacket. He resisted the siren song
whispering to him that it was futile to call Signora Moro this late in
the afternoon, that she wouldn't talk to him. He resisted it, at any
rate, long enough to make two unsuccessful attempts to call her from
public phones. The first, one of the new, aerodynamic silver phones
that had replaced the reliable ugly oranges ones, refused to accept his
plastic phone card, and the second rejected his attempts with a
repeated mechanical bleat in place of a dialling tone. He yanked the
card from the phone, slipped it back in his wallet and, feeling
justified that he had at least made the effort, decided to go back to
the Questura for what little remained of the working day.
As he stood in the gondola traghetto that ran between the Salute and
San Marco, his Venetian knees adjusted automatically to the thrust and
counter-thrust between the strokes of the gondolieri's oars and the
waves of the incoming tide. He looked ahead as they made their slow
passage across
the Canal Grande, struck by just how jaded a person could become: ahead
of him lay Palaz/o Ducale, and behind it popped up the gleaming domes
of the Basilica di San Marco: Brunetti stared as though they were
nothing more than the painted backdrop in a dull, provincial production
of Otello. How had he got to the point where he could look on such
beauty and not be shaken? Accompanied by the dull squeal of the oars,
he followed this train of thought and asked himself how, equally, he
could sit across from Paola at a meal and not want to run his hands
across her breasts or how he could see his children sitting side by
side on the sofa, doing something stupid like watching television, and
not feel his bowels churn with terror at the many dangers that would
beset their lives.
The gondola glided in to the landing, and he stepped up on to the dock,
telling himself to leave his stupid preoccupations in the boat. Long
experience had taught him that his sense of wonder was still intact and
would return, bringing back with it an almost painful awareness of the
beauty that surrounded him at every turn.
A beautiful woman of his acquaintance had, years ago, attempted to
convince him that her beauty was in some ways a curse because it was
all that anyone cared about, to the almost total exclusion of any other
quality she might possess. At the time, he had dismissed it as an
attempt to win compliments, which he was more than willing to give, but
now perhaps he understood what she meant, at least in relation to the
city. No one really cared what happened to her how else explain her
successive recent governments? just so long as they could profit from
and be seen in the reflection of her beauty, at least for as long as
that beauty lasted.
At the Questura, he went up to Signorina Elettra's office, where he
found her reading that day's Gazzettino. She smiled at his arrival and
pointed at the lead story. The Americans' Appointed President seems to
want to eliminate all
restrictions on the burning of carbon-based fuels she said, then read
him the headline: 'a slap in the face for the
FCOf OOTSTS'.'
'Sounds like something he'd do Brunetti said, not interested in
continuing the discussion and wondering if Signorina Elettra had been
converted to Vianello's passionate ecological views.
She looked up at him, then back to the paper. 'And this: 'venice
condemned'.'
'What?' Brunetti demanded, taken aback by headline and with no idea of
what it referred to.
'Well, if the temperature rises, then the ice-caps will melt, and then
the seas will rise, and there goes Venice.' She sounded remarkably
calm about it.
'And Bangladesh, as well, one might observe Brunetti added.
'Of course. I wonder if the Appointed President has considered the
consequences.'
'I don't think that's in his powers, considering consequences Brunetti
observed. It was his custom to avoid political discussions with the
people with whom he worked; he was uncertain whether foreign politics
were included under that ban.
