He turned back; his glance met Brunetti’s, and he asked in a level voice, ‘What is it you want to know?’
Brunetti considered for a moment whether he should perhaps ask what the man meant. But Dottor Grandesso held his glance, and Brunetti saw that this was a man who had no time to waste. The expression, so often used as a cliche, came to him with stunning force. The doctor had an appointment, not with him, and not one that anyone wanted to keep, but there was no avoiding it.
‘I want to know if there is any reason a person might have wanted to do her an injury,’ Brunetti said. Hearing himself say it, he felt a sudden chill, as though he had been asked to put a coin in this man’s mouth to pay for his voyage to the other world or, worse, had given him some heavy burden to take with him.
‘If I were somehow able to call Rizzardi, would he tell me that she died of a heart attack?’ the doctor asked.
‘Yes.’
Grandesso looked away from Brunetti, as if examining the shuttered window across the
‘No.’
‘But were you raised believing?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti had no choice but to admit.
‘Then you remember the feeling when you came out of confession – when you still believed in it, I mean – and you felt elevated – if that’s the right word – by being rid of your guilt and shame. The priest said the words, you said the prayers, and your soul was somehow clean again.’
Brunetti nodded. Yes, he remembered it and was wise enough to be glad he had had the experience.
The other man must have read Brunetti’s face, for he continued. ‘I know it sounds strange, but she had a capacity that reminded me of that. She’d listen to me. Just sit there and smile at me and sometimes hold my hand, and I’d tell her things I’ve never told anyone since my wife died.’ He disappeared behind closed eyes, and when he came back, he said, ‘And some things I never told my wife, I’m afraid. After that, she’d squeeze my hand, and I felt relieved at having been able, finally, to tell someone.’ The doctor tried to raise a hand to make some sort of gesture but managed to lift it only a few centimetres from the bed before it fell back. ‘She didn’t ask, never seemed curious in any prurient sense: maybe it was the stillness in her that made me want to tell her things. And she was never judgemental, never showed surprise or disapproval. All she did was sit there and listen.’
Brunetti wanted to ask what he had told her but could not do it. He told himself it was respect for the doctor’s situation, but he knew that some sort of religious taboo prevented him from daring to break the seal of that confessional, at least in the presence of one of the speakers. Instead, he asked, ‘Do you think she listened to everyone the same way?’
Something that might have been a smile flashed across the doctor’s face, but his mouth was too thin for it to register on his lips. ‘Do you mean do I think that everyone talked to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know. It would depend on the person. But you know how old people love to talk, and love most to talk about themselves. Ourselves.’
He went on. ‘I’ve seen her with them, and I think most of them would talk to her freely. And if they thought she could actually forgive them, then…’ His voice trailed away.
Brunetti could resist his curiosity no longer. ‘Did you?’
He struggled to move his head, but when he failed to do that, he said, ‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, like you, Signore,’ the doctor said, and this time the smile did reach his lips, ‘I don’t believe in absolution.’
17
It suddenly occurred to Brunetti to wonder how this bedridden man had managed to see Signora Altavilla in the company of other people. ‘Is this something you observed, Dottore?’ he asked.
The doctor was some time in answering him. ‘I haven’t always been like this,’ he replied simply, as if to declare that the time for explanations had run out, and fact was all he had time for now.
Brunetti remained silent so long that the doctor said, ‘I think you’d be more comfortable if you sat.’ Brunetti pulled a straight-backed chair to the side of the bed and did as he was told.
It was as if Grandesso, not Brunetti, had relaxed. His lids closed once, twice, but then they snapped open and he said, ‘I’ve sat near her when people have told her things they might better have kept to themselves,’ then, even before Brunetti could ask, he added, ‘Doctors are in the business of keeping secrets.’
Smiling, Brunetti said, ‘I’d guess you’re good at that, Doctor.’
Dottor Grandesso started to smile in return, but then his face twisted in a vice of pain; the tendons of his jaw pulsed a few times, and Brunetti thought he could hear his teeth grind, but he wasn’t sure. Tears emerged from the man’s eyes and ran down the sides of his face. Brunetti was pulled halfway out of his chair, uncertain whether to take the Doctor’s hand or to go for help, but then the other man’s face relaxed. His jaws unclenched and his mouth fell open; he gasped a few times, then grew calmer, though he still fought to pull in enough air to breathe.
‘Is there anything I can…’ Brunetti began.
‘No,’ he said between gasps. Then, ‘Don’t tell them. Please.’
Brunetti shook his head, unable to respond.
‘No hospital,’ the doctor gasped. ‘It’s better here.’ His voice came in short spurts, punctuated by long breaths. He closed his eyes again, and this time his face relaxed and the tortured sound of his breathing quieted.
For an instant, Brunetti feared that the man had died before his eyes, he helpless to prevent it; then he heard another of those long breaths, but softer. He sat motionless and watched until he was sure the doctor was asleep. As quietly as he could, Brunetti got to his feet and backed towards the door. He went into the corridor, leaving the door open so that the sleeping man could be seen.
The corridor was empty; the clink of plates and the rushing sound of water came from behind the closed door of the kitchen. Brunetti leaned against the wall. He put his head back until it touched the wall and stood like that for a few minutes.
One of the dark-skinned novices emerged from the kitchen and headed in the other direction. Hearing her footsteps, Brunetti turned towards her. ‘Excuse me,’ he said and pushed himself away from the wall.
She smiled when she saw him. ‘
‘Resting,’ Brunetti answered.
Pleased to hear that, she started to turn away. Brunetti forced himself to ask, ‘Could you tell me where I’d find Signora Sartori?’, still uncertain how to address her. She wore the habit of a novice, so he could not call her ‘Suora’, and she had renounced the chance of being called ‘Signorina’.
‘Ah, I don’t know if she’s supposed to have visitors,’ she said, then added, sounding uneasy, ‘Only her husband visits her now. He says it will upset her to have other people in her room, and he doesn’t want her bothered.’ Brunetti wondered when ‘now’ had begun.
‘Ah,’ he said, giving voice to disappointment. ‘Signora Altavilla’s son asked me to try to speak to the people his mother was closest to and tell them how important they were to her,’ he explained with the easy smile of an old friend of the family. He watched her face for signs of belief or sympathy, and when he saw the first signs, he added, ‘He told me he was sure she would want them to know.’
‘In that case, I suppose it’s all right,’ she said. She allowed herself to smile, revealing gleaming white teeth, their perfection augmented by the contrast to her dark skin. Brunetti wondered how anyone could be ‘bothered’ by Signora Altavilla’s visits or how anyone could see them in this light. He gave no indication of his uncertainty, however, as the young woman asked him to follow her to Signora Sartori’s room.
The door to this room was also open; she walked directly in without announcing either herself or the man who followed her. The woman he had seen eating with such solitary intensity now sat on a simple wooden chair in front of the room’s single window. She was staring at the shuttered window opposite, or perhaps at the wall surrounding it: her face was inert, and again Brunetti saw it in profile. The flash of lipstick was still the same
