succeeded in communicating to him just what it was these committees were meant to do, nor did she seem ever to attend the meetings.
He had once asked her, years ago, why she bothered to keep the job, and she had explained that, if nothing else, her active participation in classes exposed the students to at least one professor who did something more than stand in front of them and read from a textbook she had herself written some years before. At this accurate description of his own years at university, Brunetti realized how long he had harboured the hope that, at least in the humanities, these days things would somehow be different.
He looked over the papers on his desk, filled to the point of pain with the awareness that all he would do, if he were to remain in the office, would be to add to their quantity. He longed to be away from there: in the mountains, the tropics, some island where he could walk on the beach, ankle deep in warm water. He put out a hand to draw some papers towards him, a phantom hand rejecting the temptation to get up and leave. But after a while he realized how meaningless the words beneath his eyes were and gave in to his desire for freedom. Telling no one what he was doing, he left the Questura and took the first vaporetto to San Silvestro and home.
Biancat was open, so he went in and asked for a dozen irises. While the salesman was selecting them, Brunetti decided to take flowers to Chiara, as well, and asked for a dozen yellow tulips. When he got home, he went into the kitchen and set the tulips on the counter, then went down to Paola’s office, carrying the irises.
She smiled when he came in, refrained from asking why he was home so early, and said, ‘Guido, how sweet.’
Warmed by her smile and hoping for another, he said, ‘I brought some tulips for Chiara, too.’
Her smile disappeared. ‘Bad move,’ she said, getting to her feet. She kissed his cheek, and took the flowers from him.
‘What?’ he asked of her retreating back, following her towards the kitchen.
She started to remove the paper from the bouquet and said, ‘She read an article about the way they’re shipped all over the world.’
‘And?’ he asked, utterly at a loss.
‘And the article talked about how much fuel is consumed just in shipping them, then how much is consumed keeping the greenhouses warm in the winter, and how much fertilizer is used to nourish them and how it leaches into the soil.’ This said, she turned her attention to Chiara’s tulips, removed the paper wrapping, then bent to take out a dark brown vase. She filled it with water.
‘More eco-criminals?’ he asked ironically. ‘It sounds like she believes we’re surrounded by them.’
Paola slipped the tulips one by one into the vase, pausing after every few to see how they looked. She took a step back, the better to examine them, then drew close to the counter and finished arranging them. ‘It’s a valid position, I’d say,’ she answered calmly.
‘Does she seriously mean this?’ Brunetti demanded. ‘Now she’s declared war on flowers?’
Paola turned and placed a calming hand on his arm. ‘Don’t get so excited, Guido. And try to remember that she’s right.’ She pointed to the tulips. ‘These were probably grown in the Netherlands, shipped here by truck. They’ll last four or five days, then they’ll go into a plastic bag and into the garbage, and we’ll use more petroleum to burn them.’
‘That’s a terrible way to look at flowers,’ he insisted.
‘What would make it less terrible?’ she asked. ‘If the product were ugly? Plastic gondolas made in Hong Kong and flown here by air freight? Those dreadful masks?’
‘But they’re flowers, for heaven’s sake,’ he insisted, pointing at the vase as if demanding that the beauty of the flowers confirm his judgement or that they stand up straighter and defend themselves.
‘And we like flowers, and they’re beautiful, but the point I’m trying to make, Guido, is that they are no more necessary than are the plastic gondolas or the masks. We could just as easily live without them, but we choose to live with them, and because we do, we are forced to pay the ecological cost to get them here from wherever it is they come from.’ He thought she had stopped, then she added, ‘But we don’t mind, or we mind less, because they’re beautiful. So we persuade ourselves that it’s somehow different. Only it isn’t.’ Another moment’s pause and then she concluded, ‘Or so Chiara believes.’
Brunetti felt suddenly at sea, as though he had stepped into the shallow waters at the Alberoni and been swept off his feet by an invisible current. ‘She worries about the flowers, but she can still dismiss the death of a
Paola smiled as if to suggest she had already asked herself the same question. ‘I think she’s still too young for us to expect much consistency in her ideas, or in her ideals,’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Exactly what I said: she’s still a child in many ways, so she’s discovering all the fine and noble causes for the first time, and she still sees each one as a discrete unit: she hasn’t seen the connections or contradictions among them; not yet.’
She looked across at him, but he said nothing, merely stood there looking unconvinced, so she went on. ‘I remember when I was her age, Guido, and the causes I thought were good ones. I’m embarrassed by some of them now and positively ashamed of one or two.’
‘For instance?’ he asked, making no attempt to disguise his scepticism.
‘For instance the Red Brigades,’ she answered instantly, suddenly far more serious than she had been. ‘I’m ashamed now to remember what I thought of them, that they were idealists who wanted to bring about a revolution that would lead to social and political justice.’ She closed her eyes at the memory of the person she had been then.
Not without a certain discomfort, Brunetti recalled his own enthusiasm for the slogans and the professed ideals that had been in fashion then. ‘And now?’ he finally asked.
She tilted her head and shrugged, then said, ‘Now I think they were just a bunch of spoiled young people who wanted to attract the world’s attention and didn’t much care who they hurt or killed in the attempt. All suffering from
‘The way we did?’ he asked, following her down the hall.
‘I think so.’
‘Have you said anything to her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘About what she said?’
‘Yes.’
‘No,’ Paola answered, stopping beside the narrow table that held a majolica bowl and a small marble bust of Hermes. ‘That’s not necessary.’ She set the flowers down to the left of the statue, moved the vase a few centimetres forward, then stepped back to admire it.
‘What do you mean, it’s not necessary?’ he asked, making no attempt to disguise his disapproval.
Paola looked at him. ‘She knows what she said was wrong, and she’s been thinking about it since she said it. Or, rather, since I jumped on her for saying it. But she hasn’t finished thinking about it yet, and when she does, she’ll say something.’
Brunetti folded his arms and asked, ‘And you’re not only the earth mother? In your spare time you double as a mind-reader?’
Paola smiled and waved him out of her way. Heading back to the kitchen, she said over her shoulder, ‘Something like that.’
He followed, reluctant to acknowledge his conviction that she was right. He compromised by asking, ‘And what about the flowers?’ nodding with his chin at the irises, which she had begun to slip into the tall blue vase she always used for them.
‘When I’m finished putting them into the vase, I’ll put them in my study, and then anyone who sees them will enjoy looking at them.’
‘And if she says something?’ he asked.
‘I’ll tell her I agree entirely with her principles, but that you brought them to me, so she will have to address
