priest stood up and moved to the other side of the aisle, where he embraced Nava’s widow, then bent and kissed Teo’s upraised face. As if summoned by the boy’s evident need, the Great Dane walked across the aisle and leaned against Teo, who wrapped one arm around the dog’s shoulder and rested his head on his black neck.
The priest embraced a few more people and ruffled a few more ears and then returned to the altar to begin the Mass. It was a dignified affair, with only the voice of the priest and the response of the congregation to be heard: no music and no singing. The green parrot sat on the shoulder of his owner as the man approached the altar to take communion, and the priest seemed not to mind in the least. Brunetti joined in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and was happy to shake the hand of the old woman and of Vianello, on his other side.
There was no singing until the Mass was finished and the priest had circled the coffin, swinging the censer and sprinkling holy water from the aspergillum. Having returned to the altar, he raised his head and looked at the choir loft, then lifted one hand. At that sign, the organ softly began to play a tune Brunetti neither recognized nor found in any way lugubrious. The organist had not played more than a few notes when, from the front of the church, an agonized sound broke out, a howl of such pain and grief as almost to be unbearable. It rose higher than the notes of the organ, as if to remind the organist just why they were all there: not to listen to pretty music but to express the agony of bereavement.
From the same place came the sound of a man’s voice saying, quite sharply, ‘Artu, stop that,’ and then Brunetti, tall enough to see over the people’s heads, saw a handsome man in a dark suit bend down and rise up, his arms clasped around an even more handsome golden brown dachshund, who had had the courage and the love to express the grief felt by so many of those assembled there at the loss of their good and gentle friend.
The organist stopped playing, as if accepting that the dog had given clearer voice to the sentiments of the congregation. The priest, as though the interruption had been to his liking, came down from the altar again and walked around to the front of the coffin. The six dark-suited men returned from their places at the back of the church and lifted the coffin to their shoulders. Following the priest in solemn silence, they carried their dearly beloved brother Andrea from his last visit to the patients who had loved him. Behind him they came: old ladies carrying their cats in cages, the young man from the veterinarian clinic with the one-eared rabbit in his arms, the Great Dane, Teo walking beside him with his arm over his shoulder, the dog Brunetti now recognized as Artu.
Outside, people clustered on the steps, animals held by arm or leash, as the men carried the coffin down the steps and slid it into the back of a waiting hearse. Signora Doni and Teo paused at the door of the car idling behind it while a tall man came and attached a leash to the collar of the Great Dane.
Teo kissed the dog’s head and got into the car. His mother followed him inside. Other people stepped into cars that Brunetti, in his hurry to get into the church, had not noticed parked there. The beagle emerged from the church and, at the bottom of the steps, came to stand directly in front of Artu: they confronted one another, tails erect and bodies tensed. But then, as if conscious of the situation in which they found themselves, neither barked; they contented themselves with giving one other a thorough sniffing and then sat down side by side in quiet amiability.
The back doors of the hearse closed: not a slam, but certainly not a quiet sound. The engine started, followed by the firing into life of the engines of the cars behind it. Slowly it pulled away from the kerb, followed by the cars of Dr Nava’s family and patients. Brunetti saw that the cars were almost all light-coloured: grey and white and red. Not a single one was black. Though Brunetti found that fact somehow comforting, it was the sight of the green parrot disappearing down the street on the shoulder of his owner, the man arm in arm with a woman, that lifted his heart and wiped it clean of any funereal gloom.
About the Author
Donna Leon has lived in Venice for thirty years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; including
