Suffer the Little Children

status of the person to whom he spoke, he forced his voice to a more accommodating tone. 'That's completely inappropriate. And unjust.'

Pedrolli took a short step back; strangely, the distance seemed to increase the difference in height between them: the doctor now loomed above the pharmacist. 'If you'd like to talk about inappropriate and unjust accusations, Dottor Franchi,' the other man began in a reasonable voice, one that spoke of patience, 'perhaps we could talk about Romina Salvi.'

Franchi took some time to prepare his face and his voice. 'Romina Salvi? She's a client of mine, but I don't know what you're talking about’

'Who has been taking lithium for six years, I believe,' Pedrolli said with a small smile, the kind that encouraged confidence in a patient.

‘I'd have to check her records to be sure of that,' Franchi said.

'That she's taking lithium or that it's been six years?'

'Either. Both.' 'I see.'

'I don't understand what all this is about, Dottore,' Franchi said fussily. 'And if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to what I was doing. I don't like to keep my clients waiting.'

'She was going to marry Gino Pivetti, one of the lab technicians at the hospital. But somehow his mother learned about the lithium and about her depression, and she told her son. He didn't know: Romina had never told him. She was afraid he would leave her.'

'I don't see how any of this concerns me,' Franchi interrupted. He reached for another pair of plastic gloves, hoping that his desire to return to work would both impress the other man and suggest that there was no purpose in continuing this conversation, and that it was time for him to leave. But Dottor Franchi could hardly ask a medical doctor to leave, could he?

'And that's what did happen: he left. So there will be no children who might disrupt God's plan of perfection by developing manic depression like their mother.'

Politeness kept Franchi from answering that this was a very good thing: God's creatures should emulate His many perfections, not pass on an illness that distorted the divine plan. He uncapped the empty glass bottle and set the cap carefully upside down so as to eliminate any chance of contamination from the counter, unlikely as that was.

'I've been thinking about this for some time.

Dottor Franchi’ Pedrolli said, his voice more animated now. 'Ever since I learned that my medical file was here and began to think about the information that was in it’

Hoping to demonstrate how close he was to losing his patience, Franchi moved the mixing bowl a few centimetres closer to him, as if he were about to begin preparing the solution, and said, ‘I’m afraid none of this makes any sense to me, Dottore’ He reached up and opened one of the cabinets, took down the bottle of pepsin, the suspension solution that formed the next part of the preparation. He unscrewed the cap and placed it in a separate glass dish.

'And Romina Salvi? Does it make any sense to you that someone made a phone call that destroyed her life?' Pedrolli asked.

'Her life has not been destroyed’ Franchi said, now making no attempt to disguise his exasperation at what Pedrolli was saying. He reached for the syringe and moved it carefully out of the way. He said, 'Her engagement has perhaps been broken off: that has hardly destroyed her life’

'Why not?' Pedrolli asked with sudden anger, 'Because it's only emotions? Because no one's in hospital, and no one's dead?'

Franchi had suddenly had enough of this, enough of this talk of emotions and destroyed lives. A life lived in the shadow of the Lord could not be destroyed.

He turned to Pedrolli. 'I told you some time ago, Dottore, that I don't understand what you're talking about. What I do understand is that Signorina Salvi suffers from a disease that could be transmitted to any children she might have, so it is perhaps better that this engagement has been broken off’

'With your help, Dottore?' Pedrolli asked.

'Why do you say that?' Franchi asked with what sounded almost like indignation.

'According to Gino's mother, someone asked her if she weren't concerned for grandchildren. They live in Campo Manin, don't they? So this must be their pharmacy. And where else was she likely to hear such an expression of concern?'

I do not gossip about my clients,' Franchi said in the absolute tones of a man who would neither lie nor gossip.

Pedrolli looked at him for a long time, studying his face, looked for so long that Franchi, to escape his gaze, turned back to his work. He took out another syringe and ripped open the package, the noise an echo of his anger. He tested the syringe, then inserted the tip into the smaller bottle. Slowly, he began to draw up the liquid.

'You wouldn't, would you?' Pedrolli asked, astonished to have so lately realized this. 'You wouldn't lie and you wouldn't gossip about a client. You really wouldn't, would you?'

This was barely worthy of comment, but Franchi looked aside long enough to say, not without disgust at the other man's opacity, 'Of course not.'

'But you would make a phone call if you thought a client of yours was doing something you judged immoral, wouldn't you?' Pedrolli spoke slowly, working it out word by word as he spoke. ‘You really would, just as you'd warn Gino's mother. You wouldn't actually say anything, would you? But after they heard of your concern and the reasons for it, they'd know just what was going on, wouldn't they?' He stopped, and contemplated the man in front of him, as if seeing him for the first time in all these years.

Franchi shifted his grip on the syringe and wrapped his fingers round it, as though it were the handle of a knife. He pointed it in the general direction of the other man, all patience exhausted. What was all this about, and why was Dottor Pedrolli so concerned about this woman? Surely she wasn't one of his patients. 'Of course I would’ he finally said, forced to speech by anger. 'Don't you think I have a moral obligation to do that? Don't we all, when we see evil and sin and deceit and we can do something that will prevent it?'

If he had slashed at Pedrolli with the syringe, the other man could have been no more stunned. He raised one hand, the palm towards Franchi, and in a tight voice, asked, 'Only prevent it? And if it's too late to prevent it, do you think if s right to punish it?'

'Of course,' Franchi said, as if explaining a matter of exquisite simplicity. 'Sinners should be punished. Sin must be punished.'

'So long as no one's in the hospital and no one's dead?'

'Exactly,' Franchi said with his usual fussi-ness. 'If it's only emotions, it doesn't matter.'

He turned back to his work. He was calm, competent, a man busy with his professional duties.

Who knows what Pedrolli saw then? A little boy in duck-patterned pyjamas touching his Own nose? And who knows what he heard? A small voice saying Papa? What matters is what he did. He stepped forward and with an angry swing of his arm pushed the pharmacist aside. Franchi, concentrating on the syringe and avoiding injuring himself with it, tangled his left foot with his right and fell to one knee, breathing a sigh of relief at having managed'to keep the syringe away from his body.

He looked up at Pedrolli, but what he saw was the large glass bottle in the doctor's hands moving towards him, and then he saw the liquid splash from it, his own outstretched hand, and then darkness and pain.

26

‘Dottore, I'm afraid our conversation this time has to be different from the others’

‘I understand that’

'The first time I spoke to you, I was in the hospital to speak to you as the victim of a crime, and the second time it was to question you about someone I suspected of committing one. But this time I must tell you that you are being questioned in relation to a crime you are accused of committing and that our conversation is being recorded and videotaped. My colleague. Inspector Vianello, is here with me as an observer, and at the end of our conversation, a written record will be presented to you for signature ... Do you understand this, Dottore?... I'm