About Face

In moments of great necessity, his late mother was known to call upon a few saints she kept in reserve. There was Saint Gennaro for the protection of orphans; Saint Mauro, who kept a watchful eye on cripples, in which task he was aided by Sant’Egidio; and there was Santa Rosalia, generally invoked for protection against pestilence, and thus invoked by his mother against measles, mumps, and influenza.

Brunetti lay on the sofa, sipping at his grappa, waiting for Paola to come home, and thought about Saint Rita di Cascia, who protected against loneliness. ‘Santa Rita,’ he prayed, ‘aiutaci.’ But whom, he wondered, was he asking her to help? He set his empty glass on the table and closed his eyes.

18

He heard a voice, and for a moment he thought it was his mother’s, praying. He lay still, happy at the thought of listening to her voice, even though he knew that she was gone, and he would never hear her or see her again. He wanted the illusion, knew it would do him good.

The voice continued for another moment, then he felt a kiss on his forehead, where his mother used to kiss him when she put him to bed. But the scent was different.

‘Grappa before dinner?’ she asked. ‘Does this mean you’re going to start beating us and end up in the gutter?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be at some dinner?’ he replied.

‘At the last minute,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t stand the idea. I went as far as the restaurant with them and then said I felt sick — which is certainly true — and came home.’

A warm flush of contentment at her mere physical presence flooded Brunetti. He felt the weight of her body on the edge of the sofa. He opened his eyes and said, ‘I think your father is lonely and afraid of being old.’

In a calm voice, she said, ‘At his age, that’s normal.’

‘But he shouldn’t,’ Brunetti protested.

She laughed out loud. ‘Emotions don’t respond to “should” and “shouldn’t”, Guido. There are enough impulsive murders in the world every year to prove that.’ She saw his response and said, ‘I’m sorry. I should have found a better comparison. Enough impulsive marriages, then?’

‘But do you agree?’ Brunetti asked. ‘You know him better than I do, so you should know what he’s thinking. Or feeling.’

‘Do you really think that?’ she asked, sliding down the sofa to sit at the end, beside his feet, which she patted and tucked behind her hip.

‘Of course. You’re his daughter.’

‘Do you think Chiara understands you better than anyone else?’ she countered.

‘That’s different. She’s still a teenager.’

‘So it’s age that makes the difference?’

‘Oh, stop pretending you’re Socrates,’ he shot back and asked, ‘Do you think it’s true?’

‘That he feels old and lonely?’

‘Yes.’

Paola placed a hand on his shin, flicked away a piece of mud that clung to the cuff of his trousers, and allowed some time to pass before she said, ‘Yes, I think he does.’ She rubbed his leg. ‘But if it’s any consolation to you, I’ve believed he’s felt lonely most of my adult life.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s intelligent and cultured and spends most of his working life in the company of people who aren’t. No,’ she said with two gentle taps on his leg to stop him from protesting, ‘before you contradict me, let me admit that many of them are intelligent, but not in the way he is. He functions at the abstract level, and the people he works with are usually concerned with profit and loss.’

‘And he’s not?’ Brunetti asked, voice clear of any hint of scepticism.

‘Of course he wants to make money. I told you, it runs in the family. But he’s always found it too easy. What he really wants to do is think things out, see big patterns and understand them.’

‘The failed philosopher?’ Brunetti asked.

She gave him a sharp look. ‘Don’t be mean-spirited, Guido. I’m not saying this well, I know. I think what troubles him, now that he can’t deny how old he’s become, is that he thinks his life has been a failure.’

‘But. .’ Brunetti could think of no way to begin the list of his objections: A happy marriage, a wonderful child, two decent grandchildren, wealth, financial success, social position. He wiggled his toes to call her attention. ‘I really don’t understand.’

‘Respect. He wants people to respect him. I think it’s as simple as that.’

‘But everyone does.’

‘You don’t,’ she shot back with such force that Brunetti suddenly suspected she had been waiting years, perhaps decades, to say this.

He pulled his feet out from under her and sat up. ‘I realized today that I love him,’ he offered.

‘That’s not the same thing,’ she said fiercely.

Something in Brunetti snapped. He had stood that day over the body of a man younger than himself who had been shot in the head. And he suspected the man’s murder would be, or was in the process of being, covered up by men like her father: rich, powerful, politically connected. And he had to have respect, too?

In a cool voice, Brunetti said, ‘He told me today, your father, that he is planning to invest in China. I did not ask what sort of investment it was going to be, but during our conversation he mentioned, completely as an aside, that he thinks the Chinese are sending toxic garbage to Tibet and have built that railway in order to do so.’

He stopped and waited, and finally Paola asked, ‘And your point?’

‘That he is going to invest there; that none of that seems to bother him in the least.’

She turned and stared at him as if puzzled to find this strange man sitting next to her. ‘And who, pray tell, employs you, Commissario Brunetti?’

‘The Polizia di Stato.’

‘And who employs them?’

‘The Ministry of the Interior.’

‘And who employs them?’

‘Are we going to go up the food chain until we get to the head of government?’ Brunetti inquired.

‘We are already there, I suspect,’ she answered.

Neither of them said anything for some time: silence percolated towards recrimination. Paola took a step closer to it by saying, ‘You work for this government, and you dare to criticize my father for investing in China?’

Brunetti took a short breath and started to speak, but at that moment Chiara and Raffi burst into the apartment. There was a great deal of noise and enough stomping and banging to force Paola to her feet and out into the corridor, where the children were stamping snow from their shoes and shaking more of it from their coats.

‘The horror movie festival?’ Paola asked.

‘Terr — i — ble,’ Chiara said. ‘They begin with Godzilla, which is about a hundred years old and has the most awful special effects you ever saw in your life.’

Raffi broke in to say, ‘Did we miss dinner?’

‘No,’ Paola said with patent relief, ‘I was just going to start making something. Twenty minutes?’ she asked.

The children nodded, stamped about a bit more, remembered to put their shoes outside the door, and went to their rooms. Paola went down to the kitchen.

It was purely by chance that Paola prepared insalata di polipi for antipasto that evening, but Brunetti could not help seeing the elusive, self-defensive habits of those timid sea creatures reflected in the caution with which his children treated their silent mother once they sat at the table and read the expression on her face. Like the tentative manner in which an octopus stretched out a tendril to touch and examine what it saw, the better to assess its possible menace, the children, significantly more verbal than the