'There's a chapter here’ she said, pointing at the page she had been reading, 'on the Seven Deadly Sins.'
Brunetti had often thought that it was convenient that there should be one for each day of the week, but he kept this thought to himself for the moment. 'And?' he asked.
'And I started thinking about the way our society has ceased to think of them as sins or, if not all of them, has managed at least to remove most of the scent of sin that was once attached to them.'
He pulled out a chair and sat opposite her, not really interested in this latest observation but willing to listen. He raised his glass in her direction and took a sip. It was as good as he remembered its being. Thank God, then, for good wine and good friends, and thank God even for a wife who could find reason for polemic in a middle school textbook of religious doctrine.
'Think of lust,' she continued.
'I often do,' he said and leered.
Ignoring him, she went on. 'When we grew up, it was, if not a sin, at least a semi-sin, or at least something that one did not discuss or present in public. Now you can't look at a film or television or a magazine without seeing it.'
'Do you think that's bad?' he asked.
'Not necessarily. Just different. Maybe a better case is gluttony’
Ah, that was to strike a blow close to home, Brunetti thought, and pulled in his stomach a little.
'We're encouraged to it all the time. Every time we open a magazine or a newspaper.'
'Gluttony?' he asked, puzzled.
'Not gluttony for food, necessarily’ she said, 'but the taking in or consumption of more than we need. After all, what is owning more than one television or one car or one house but a form of gluttony?'
'I'd never thought of it that way’ he temporized and went back to the refrigerator for more wine.
'No, neither did I, not until I started to read this book. They define gluttony as eating too much and leave it at that, but I started thinking about what it would or could mean in larger terms.'
That, it seemed to Brunetti, was the essence of Paola, this woman he still loved to the point of distraction, that she was always thinking about things – everything, it sometimes seemed to him – in larger terms.
'Do you think you could start thinking about dinner in larger terms?' he asked.
She looked across at him, then at her watch, and saw that it was well after eight. 'Ah,' she said, as if surprised at being called back to such mundane things. 'Of course. I heard the kids come in.' Then, it seemed, she took her first look at him and asked, 'What did you do to your shirt? Wipe your hands on it?'
'Yes,' he said, and at her surprise added, 'I'll tell you after dinner.'
Both Chiara and Raffi were there, a rare enough event during the summer, when one or both of them was often away with friends for dinner, sometimes to spend the night. Raffi had reached an age when his puppy love for Sara Paganuzzi had taken on a far more adult tone, so much so that Brunetti had taken him aside one afternoon some months before and tried to talk to him about sex, only to be told that they'd learned all about that sort of thing at school. It was Paola who had made it clear, declaring the following night that, regardless of what his friends did or thought, she'd spoken to Sara's parents and they were all in agreement that he would not, under any circumstances, be allowed to spend the night at Sara's home, and Sara would not stay at theirs.
'But that's medieval’ Raffi had whined.
'It's also final’ Paola had said, putting an end to argument.
Whatever arrangement Raffi had worked out with Sara seemed to satisfy them both, for whenever she came to dinner she was polite and friendly to them all, and even Raffi seemed to bear his parents no ill-will for a policy most of his friends would certainly concur was 'medieval'.
Raffi and Chiara had both spent the day at the Alberoni, though with different groups of friends, and after a day of swimming and playing on the beach, they ate like field hands. It seemed, from the size of the platter Paola had covered with fish and shrimp, that she'd bought an entire swordfish. 'Are you going to eat a third portion?' Brunetti asked Raffi when he saw his son eyeing the almost empty platter.
'He's a growing boy,
Brunetti glanced at Paola, but she was busy helping herself to more spinach and missed the chance to appreciate the greatness of soul he displayed by failing to ask her if their son were guilty of gluttony. Turning back her attention, Paola said, 'Finish it, Raffi. Nobody likes cold fish.'
'If we were speaking English, would that be a pun,
By the time the ice-cream was finished, Chiara was almost asleep, so Paola sent both children to bed and started to gather the dishes. Brunetti carried the empty ice-cream bowl into the kitchen and stood at the counter, licking the serving spoon, then running it around the bottom of the bowl to pick up the last bits of peach. When there was no hopeful prospect of more, he set the bowl to the side of the sink and went back to the table to get the glasses.
When the dishes were soaking, Paola said, 'Do you think we should remain with the fruit theme and have a drop of Williams out on the terrace?'
'I'd probably starve to death without you to protect me,' Brunetti said.
'Guido, my dove,' she said, ‘I worry a great deal about the things that could happen to you because of your job, but, believe me, starving to death is not one of them.' She went out on to the terrace to wait for him.
He decided to bring only two glasses and leave the bottle behind. Besides, he could go back and get more if he chose. Outside, he found her in a chair, her feet propped up on the lowest rung of the railing, her eyes closed. As he drew near, she stretched out her hand, and he put the glass into it. She sipped, sighed, sipped again.
'God's in His heaven, all's right with the world,' she said in English.
'Perhaps you've already had enough to drink, Paola,' he observed.
'Tell me about the shirt,' she said, and he did.
'And you believe this woman, this Signora Gismondi?' she asked when Brunetti had finished telling her about the events of the day.
‘I think I do,' he said. 'There's no reason for her not to be telling the truth. Nothing she said suggested that she was anything but the old woman's neighbour.'
'With a grudge,' Paola suggested.
'Because of the television?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'You don't kill people because of the noise of a television,' he insisted.
She reached out and put her hand on his arm. 'I've been listening to you talk about your work, Guido, for decades, and it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are ready to kill for a lot less than the noise of a television.'
'For example?' he asked.
'Remember that man, was it in Mestre, who went outside to tell the guy in the car in front of his house to turn the radio down? When was it, about four years ago? He got killed, didn't he?'
'But that was a man,' Brunetti said. 'And he had a history of violence.'
'And your Signora Gismondi doesn't?'
That made Brunetti remember that he had not bothered to ask Signorina Elettra to see what she could find out about Signora Gismondi. ‘I hardly think that's likely’ he said.
'You probably wouldn't find anything, anyway,' Paola said.
'Then why doubt her?'
She sighed silently, then said, 'It's disappointing at times mat after all these years you still don't understand the way my mind works.'
‘I doubt I'll ever understand that’ Brunetti admitted with no attempt at irony. Then, 'What is it I don't understand now?'
'That I believe you're right about Signora Gismondi. There'd be no sense in it: a person who is embarrassed when someone tries to kiss their hand in public.' It might be an inexact description of Signora Gismondi's remarks, and it seemed he might have few occasions to apply it, but this seemed as good a rule about human behaviour as Brunetti had ever heard.
