Beastly Things

AS HE ENTERED the Questura, Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after one; if he left now, he might still reach home in time to eat something. Again, the events of the day flowed through his mind, this time coloured by too much caffeine and sugar: why had he eaten two pastries when he knew he was supposed to go home? Was he some untutored youth, unable to resist the lure of sweet things?

Turning to Vianello, he said, ‘I’ll be back after lunch. I’ll talk to Foa then.’

‘He’s not on shift until four, anyway. Plenty of time.’

Brunetti, the two brioches rumbling at him from inside, decided to walk all the way home but then immediately changed his mind and walked up the Riva degli Schiavoni to get the vaporetto.

Within five minutes, he had begun to regret his decision. Instead of being able to walk untroubled and uncrowded through Campo Santa Maria Formosa and Campo Santa Marina before confronting the inevitable logjam of Rialto, he had chosen to launch himself directly into the flood of tourists, even here. As he turned right on the riva, he saw the onrushing wave of them, though they moved far more slowly than any wave he had ever encountered.

Like any man of sense, he fled to the vaporetto stop, got on the One, and found a seat inside, to the left. It was a far safer place from which to allow the assault of the beauty of the city. The sun jumped off the still surface of the bacino, forcing him to squint his eyes as they passed the newly restored Dogana and the church of the Salute. He’d been inside the first recently, thrilled to see how well it had been restored, appalled by what was on display inside.

When had they sneaked in and switched the rules? he wondered. When did the garish become artistic, and who had the authority to make that declaration? Why was banality of interest to the viewer, and where, oh where, had simple beauty gone? ‘You’re an old fart, Guido,’ he whispered to himself, causing the man in front of him to turn around and stare. Brunetti ignored him and returned his attention to the buildings on the left.

They passed a palazzo where a friend of his had offered to sell him an apartment six years before, assuring him that he would make a fortune on the deal: ‘Just keep it for three years and resell it to a foreigner. You’ll make a million.’

Brunetti, whose ethical system was monosyllabic in its simplicity, had refused the offer because something about profiting from land speculation made him uncomfortable, as did the idea of being indebted to anyone for having earned an easy million Euros. Or, for that fact, ten Euros.

They passed the university, and Brunetti looked at it with double fondness: his wife worked there, and his son was now a student. Raffi had, to Brunetti’s delight, chosen to study history, not the history of the ancients that so fascinated Brunetti, but the history of modern Italy which, though it also fascinated Brunetti, did so in a manner that led him close to despair.

Their arrival at the San Silvestro stop pulled his mind away from its continuing contemplation of the parallels to be found between the Italy of two thousand years ago and that of today. It was a matter of minutes until he was opening the front door of the building and turning into the first flight of steps. At each landing, Brunetti felt the weight of the brioche fall away from him, and by the time he got to his apartment he was sure he had burned it all off and was prepared to do justice to whatever remained of lunch.

When he entered the kitchen, he saw his children at their places, their untouched lunch in front of them. Paola was just placing a dish of what looked like tagliatelle with scallops in front of his place. Walking back to the stove, she said, ‘I was late today: had to talk to a student. So we decided to wait for you.’ Then, as if to prevent him from forming any idea of her occult powers, she added, ‘I heard you come in.’

He bent to kiss both children on the head, and as he took his place, Raffi asked, ‘Do you know anything about the war in Alto Adige?’ Seeing Brunetti’s surprise at the question, he added, ‘The First World War.’

‘You make it sound as long ago as the war against Carthage,’ Brunetti said with a smile, opening his napkin and spreading it on his lap. ‘Your great-grandfather fought in the war, remember.’

Raffi sat silently with his elbows on the table and chin propped on his folded fingers, a gesture in which his mother was reflected. Brunetti glanced in Chiara’s direction and saw that she was sitting with her hands folded in her lap: how long had it taken to train them?

Paola came back to the table, set down her own dish, and took her place. ‘Buon appetito,’ she said, picking up her fork.

Ordinarily, that injunction served as the starter’s whistle for Raffi, who sprinted through his first course with a velocity that could still astonish both his parents. But today he ignored his food and said, ‘You never told me.’

Brunetti had often repeated his grandfather’s war stories, to the general uninterest of his own children. ‘Well, he was,’ he limited himself to saying and began to twirl up some noodles with his fork.

‘Did he fight up there?’ Raffi asked. ‘In Alto Adige?’

‘Yes. He was there for four years. He fought in most of the campaigns except, I think, once when he was wounded and sent to Vittorio Veneto to recover.’

‘Not sent home?’ Chiara asked, drawn into the conversation.

Brunetti shook the idea away. ‘They didn’t send wounded men home to recover.’

‘Why?’ she asked, fork poised over her plate.

‘Because they knew they wouldn’t go back,’ Brunetti said.

‘Why?’ she repeated.

‘Because they knew they’d die.’ Before she could say that their great-grandfather, because they were there at the table talking about him, hadn’t died, Brunetti explained, ‘Most of them did; well, hundreds of thousands of them did, so they knew that the odds were pretty bad.’

‘How many died?’ Raffi asked.

Brunetti read little modern history, and when he read Italian history, he tended to read translations of books in other languages, so little confidence did he have that the Italian accounts would not be coloured by political or historical allegiance. ‘I’m not sure of the exact number. But it was more than half a million.’ He set his fork down and took a sip of wine, then another.

‘Half a million?’ Chiara repeated, stunned by the number. As if comment or question were useless, she could only repeat, ‘Half a million.’

‘Actually, I think it was more. Maybe six hundred thousand, but it depends on who you read.’ Brunetti took another sip, replaced his glass, and said, ‘That’s not counting civilians, I think.’

‘Jesus on the cross,’ Raffi whispered.

Paola shot him a sharp glance, but it was clear to all of them that astonishment, not blasphemy, had provoked the remark.

‘That’s twelve Venices,’ Raffi said in a small, astonished voice.

Brunetti, in his desire for clarity, even statistical clarity, said, ‘Since it was only young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five or so, it’s far more than that. It would go a long way to depopulating much of the Veneto in the next generation.’ After a moment’s reflection, he added, ‘Which is pretty much what it did.’ He remembered, then, listening as a child as his paternal grandmother chatted with her friends, a recurring topic their good luck in having found a man to marry – a good man or a bad man – when so many of their friends had never been able to find a husband. And he thought of the war memorials he had seen in the North, up near Asiago and above Merano, listing the names of the ‘Heroes of the Nation’, so often long lists of men with the same surname, all dead in the snow and the mud, their lives cast away to gain a metre of barren land or a medal for a general’s chest.

‘Cadorna,’ he said, naming the supreme commander of that benighted campaign.

‘We were told he was a hero,’ Raffi said.

Brunetti closed his eyes for a moment.

‘At least that’s what we were told in liceo, that he held off the attack of the Austrian invader.’

It was with some effort that Brunetti quelled the impulse to ask if the same teachers praised the brave Italian troops who had quelled the invading Ethiopians or the invading Libyans. He contented himself with saying only, ‘Italy declared war on Austria.’

‘Why?’ Raffi demanded, looking as though he could not believe this.

‘Why do countries ever declare war?’ Paola broke in to ask. ‘To get land, to grab natural resources, to maintain their power.’ It came to Brunetti to wonder why there was such fuss when parents explained the mechanism of sex to their children. Wasn’t it far more dangerous for parents to explain to them the mechanism of power?