The Girl of his Dreams

donkey or a horse. Well, of course we can force them to do some things: we can get children to do their homework, or we can make people give us money and we can give that money to a charity. But what happens when we put the stick away? Do people continue to give money? And do the children continue to do their homework?'

A number of people in front of Brunetti shook their heads or turned aside to whisper. He glanced at Paola and heard her say, 'Clever, isn't he?'

'… only ourselves that we can make do good things, because it's only ourselves that we can persuade to want to do good things. I know this must sound like an insult to the intelligence of all of you here, and I apologize for that. But it is a truth, at least I think it is a truth, so self-evident that it is easy, too easy, to overlook it. We cannot make people want to do things.

'By now, I'm sure most of you are thinking how easy it is for me to talk about doing good. And I agree: it's too easy to sit and tell people that they should do good, but it's not at all easy to decide just what good is. I know, I know, those of you who have studied more than I have – and that's probably most of you, I'm afraid -' he said with a proper note of humility, 'you know that philosophers have been arguing about this for millennia, and they're still arguing about it today.

'Yet while philosophers argue about it and write treatises about it, you and I have an instinctive understanding of what good means. We know, in the instant that we see or hear something, that this is good or that is good, or that that other thing is not good.'

He closed his eyes and when he opened them he seemed to be studying the floor in front of his feet. 'It's not my place to tell you what is good and what is not. But I will tell you that goodness usually leaves people who receive it, and those who do it, better in spirit. Not richer, not more wealthy, not with a bigger house or a better car, but simply aware that the sum of goodness in the world has been increased. They can give or they can receive, but afterwards they are richer in spirit and can live more easily in the world.'

He raised his eyes and gazed out at each of the faces in front of him. 'And at the base of this idea of goodness is nothing more complicated than simple human kindness and generosity of spirit. Because we are united here in the Christian spirit, we most often turn to the Gospels for our examples of human kindness and goodness, to the Beatitudes and to the example set by Jesus Christ in His dealings with the world and with the people around Him. He was a well of forgiveness and patience, and His anger, those few times when it was shown, was always directed at offences that we too would see as wrong: turning religion into a business run for profit, corrupting children’

After some time, he went on, 'People sometimes ask me how they should behave’ He smiled, as though he found the very idea absurd. 'And I have little to tell them, for the example is already there, in the life of Christ and in the examples He has given us. So I think I will do what comes most naturally and most easily to me: I will ask you to speak to my boss’ He laughed, and the others joined him.

'Or perhaps better to say 'our boss', for I assume that all of you here tonight believe that He is the one who can tell us and show us by His example how to do good. He never used a stick, never even thought of using a stick. He simply wanted us to learn to see that the good is there for us to choose, and He wanted us to choose it’

He stopped speaking, raised his hand to the height of his shoulder, and let it fall again.

As the silence lengthened, Brunetti decided that the man had finished, and he turned to Paola, but then the man resumed, though what he said was little different from what had gone before. Citing the Gospels, he gave examples of Christ's charity and goodness and pointed to the spirit of loving kindness that must have animated Him to behave in this fashion. He spoke of Christ's sacrifice, described His suffering, both before and during the Crucifixion, in vivid detail, always explaining that these were things that Christ had chosen to do in order that good would result. Few things, he said, were a greater good than giving mankind the gift of salvation.

He repeated that Christ had not needed to use a stick. The metaphor, so often repeated, could well have sounded hackneyed or absurd if spoken by someone less in harmony with his audience, but it did not. If anything, its clarity and the tone in which he proposed such a ridiculous possibility struck the audience with great force; Brunetti appreciated the rhetorical power of the argument, however absurd he thought it to be.

Another quarter of an hour passed, and Brunetti's attention drifted away from the speaker to what he could see of the audience. He noticed nods and heads turned aside as people whispered; he saw men place their hands on those of the women sitting beside them; one woman reached into her purse and took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. After another five minutes the man lowered his head, then brought his hands, palms pressed together, up to touch his lips.

Brunetti waited for the applause, but there was to be none. Instead, Signora Sambo, who had been sitting in the front row, got to her feet. She took a step forward and then turned to face the others. ‘I think we've all been given a great deal to think about tonight.' She smiled at them, looked briefly down at her shoes then back at them again. Brunetti realized that speaking like this to a group made her nervous.

She gave a very small smile. 'But we all have families to get back to and things that we must do, and so I think it might be time for us to go back into the world' – here she smiled again, even more nervously – 'and continue with our daily attempt to do good for those around us – family, friends, and strangers.'

It was awkwardly said, and she knew it, but no one in the room seemed to mind, if the expressions on their faces were any indication. They got to their feet; a few went over to speak to her, and some went to speak to the man in the chair, who rose as they approached.

Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a glance, gathered up their wives, and were the first to leave the apartment.

10

Downstairs, they filed outside, none of them saying a word. They walked back to San Giacomo dell'Orio and headed across the campo. When they entered the narrow calle that would take them back towards Rialto, Brunetti saw Paola, who was walking in front, glance over her shoulder, as if to check that none of the other people who had been at the meeting were behind them. Seeing no one, she stopped, turned and approached Brunetti. She bent and rested her forehead against his chest. Voice muffled by the fabric of his jacket, she said, ‘I am the only one who can make myself want to do the good of putting alcohol into my body. I will run screaming mad if I do not have that goodness. I will perish, I will die, if I do not have a drink’

A deadpan Nadia put her hand on Paola's shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘I, too, want that goodness’ she said, and then to Brunetti, 'and you can do one

good thing by saving this woman's life, and mine, by finding us a drink.'

'Prosecco?' he suggested.

'Heaven will surely be yours,' Nadia agreed.

Brunetti, not to put too fine a point on it, was astonished. He had known Nadia for years, for almost as long as he had known Vianello. But it had been a formal sort of knowing: telephone calls when he was looking for her husband; requests for information about people she might know. But he had never seen her as a person, a separate entity with a spirit and a mind and, it seemed, a sense of humour. She had always been, in a way he was embarrassed to admit even to himself, an appendage to Vianello.

Paola, he knew, spoke to her occasionally, met her now and again for a coffee or a walk, but she never told him what they talked about. Or he had never asked. And so here she was, after all these years, a stranger.

Rather than reflect upon this, Brunetti led them into a bar on the left and asked the barman for four proseccos. When the wine came, they did not bother with toasts or the business of clicking their glasses together: they drank it down and set the glasses back on the counter with relieved sighs.

'Well?' Vianello asked. None of them believed this was a question about the quality of the wine.

'It was all very slick,' Paola said, 'all very 'touchy-feely', as the Americans would say.'

'All very positive and heart-warming,' Nadia added. 'He never criticized anyone, never talked about sin or its consequences. All very uplifting.'

'There's a preacher in Dickens,' Paola said. 'Bleak House, I think.' She closed her eyes in a way long familiar to Brunetti, who could all but see her leafing through the thousands of pages that lay