The Waters of Eternal Youth (3 page)

Brunetti told no one where he was going and took the Number One to San Stae, then made his way to Palazzo Bonaiuti, where Contessa ­Lando-­Continui lived. A maid opened the door to the street and led him across the ­herringbone-­patterned courtyard, where chrysanthemums still thrived against the east wall.

The outside stairway to the first floor was probably original to the
palazzo
, the lions' heads worn smooth with age and rain and the caresses of centuries of hands. The maid stepped into the enormous entry hall and held the door open for him.

‘The Contessa will join you in the small reading room,' she said and turned down the corridor. She stopped at the third door on the left and entered without bothering to knock. Brunetti followed her.

He had been in similar rooms countless times in the last decades. He saw the ­heavy-­footed mahogany tables covered with books and flowers, portraits grown dark with age, tall bookshelves no doubt left untouched since the time of those ancestors, and deep and threateningly uncomfortable chairs.

Light entered from three windows on the far wall, but Brunetti had no idea which way they faced. Beyond them, at some distance, he saw the wall of a tall
palazzo,
its brick surface glowing in the richness of the setting sun. Instantaneous computation, the same skill with which pigeons are said to be graced, let Brunetti calculate that the windows looked over the courtyard of the Fondaco del Megio. He walked to one of them to make sure and noticed that the trees had started to toss away their leaves. Putting his face as close to the glass as possible, he looked to the left, to what he remembered was an enclosed sports field.

Behind him, a woman's voice said, ‘Commissario?'

He turned quickly and saw Contessa ­Lando-­Continui in the doorway. She was less imposing than she had been the previous evening, today deprived of the evidence of centur­ies of good taste that had stood guard around her in the borrowed room. He looked again: he saw a small old woman in a sober blue dress.

‘Good afternoon, Contessa,' he said. Then, pointing out of the window, ‘I think I used to play soccer in that park down there.' She looked at the window but made no move to approach. ‘A long time ago,' he added with a smile. He walked towards her, and she offered him her hand. Though his easily enveloped hers, her grip was firm.

In a face less tense, her expression would have been friendly and welcoming: what Brunetti saw was a pro forma smile. ‘Thank you for coming to see me,' she said.

‘It's a pleasure,' he answered automatically, then quickly added, perhaps still hearing the echo of the flattery he had listened to the previous evening, ‘I'd like to be of help, if I can.'

‘Donatella was very kind to let me invite my guests to her home: there are few other people in this city who would do that. She was even kinder to bring you and Paola.' When Brunetti started to protest, she raised a hand to silence him. ‘We were both grateful that you came,' she said in understanding of their reluctance. ‘I wanted my other guests, the ­non-­Venetians, to get the chance to meet some of the people whose lives might be improved by their generosity.'

Before he could speak, she waved him to one of the two chairs that afforded a view out of the windows. When they were seated, he asked, ‘Improved how, Contessa?'

‘There will be other Venetian children and grandchildren for yours to go to school with, and perhaps the whole place won't fall down so soon.'

‘That's not an expression of optimism, if I might take the liberty of saying.'

There was a discreet knock at the door. When it opened, the same maid came into the room and asked, ‘Would your guest like tea, Contessa?'

The Contessa looked at Brunetti. ‘I'd prefer coffee.'

The maid nodded and disappeared.

‘There's no liberty in your saying that, Commissario,' she said, returning immediately to their conversation. ‘Mine is not an optimistic view. I think it's the only view possible.'

‘And yet you go to the trouble of providing dinner for wealthy foreigners in hopes that they will contribute to your foundation?' Brunetti asked.

‘Donatella told me you were direct,' she said. ‘I like that. I don't have time to waste.'

‘Was your time wasted last night?' he asked, though it was none of his business.

‘No, not at all. The banker is eager to join and has offered to underwrite a restoration project.'

‘Of the mosaics?' Brunetti asked.

Her mouth opened. ‘How did you learn about that?' she asked.

‘Paying attention to what people say.'

‘Indeed,' she whispered and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘After dinner, when you had coffee, you heard them talking, didn't you?'

‘It would have been difficult not to, Contessa,' Brunetti answered, reluctant to have this woman form the idea that he was a snoop.

She laughed out loud. ‘She also said you were not a fool.'

‘I can't be if I want to survive in my own home.'

‘Paola?'

Brunetti nodded.

‘She was a very clever child,' the Contessa said. ‘And she's become a very clever woman.'

The maid entered, and they stopped talking. She set a loaded tray on a side table and placed a lower table between them, then set the tray on it and left. There was a single cup of coffee, a silver sugar bowl, a spoon, two short glasses of thick cut crystal, and a bottle of whisky whose label made Brunetti stare.

The Contessa leaned forward and pushed his cup, then the sugar bowl, close to Brunetti. Then she took the bottle, broke the paper tax stamp, and opened it. She poured about two centimetres into one of the glasses and silently tilted the bottle towards him.

Brunetti nodded, and she poured the same amount into the second glass.

Brunetti pushed the coffee to one side of the tray and picked up his glass. The liquid was too precious for him to say something as banal as ‘
cin cin',
and so he said, ‘
Alla Sua salute',
and held his glass up to her.

‘And to your health,' she answered and took a sip.

Brunetti did the same and thought he'd sell up everything and move to Scotland. Paola could find a job teaching, and the children would find something to do with themselves. Beg, for example.

‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Contessa?' he asked, leaning forward to place his glass on the tray.

‘You know about my granddaughter?' she asked.

‘I know only that she was involved in an accident some years ago, but I heard that from someone in the Questura, not from anyone in my family.' He decided to omit telling her that someone was continuing to look for more information.

She cradled her glass in both hands. ‘You don't need to defend your family,' she said, ‘but I'm glad you did.' She took a small sip and added, ‘I've known Donatella for more than forty years, and I've trusted her for most of them.'

‘Only most?' Brunetti asked.

‘I think it's rash to give the gift of trust to people we don't know well.'

Brunetti reached for his glass and held it up to the light, admiring the colour. ‘The policeman in me says you're probably right, Contessa,' he said and took a small sip. ‘This is glorious.' He set the glass back on the table. ‘But I assume you are going to trust me. That is, if you want to talk to me.'

‘You drink it very sparingly,' she said, putting her glass beside his to show how much larger her sips had been.

‘I think whatever you have to say to me deserves more attention than this whisky, however good it is.'

She sat back in her chair and grasped its arms. Her eyes closed. ‘My granddaughter was . . . damaged fifteen years ago.' Brunetti heard her breathing grow difficult and wondered if she were going to collapse or faint. What an odd choice of word: ‘damaged'.

Some time passed. Her breathing slowed, and she loosened her grip on the arms of the chair. It was then that he realized they had been speaking in Veneziano, not Italian. He had automatically used the formal ‘
Lei
' with her, but he had addressed her in Veneziano from the beginning and without giving it a thought. It was a greater intimacy than using ‘
tu
'.

She opened her eyes and said, ‘She was fifteen, almost sixteen.'

‘How did it happen?'

‘She was pulled from a canal not far from her home, but she had been under the water a long time. No one knows how long, but long enough for it to damage her.' By force of will, she kept her voice level and dispassionate. Her pain was evident only in her eyes, which could not meet his.

­Fifteen-­year-­old Venetians were fish, or at least part fish, Brunetti believed. They went into the water as children, spent their summers on the beach and in the sea, diving off the rocks at the Alberoni, racing through the
laguna
in their friends' boats.

‘Did she fall?' Brunetti asked.

‘That's what the police said, but I'm not sure any more,' she said, then immediately clarified. ‘That it was an accident.'

‘Why is that?'

‘Manuela was terrified of the water.'

Brunetti raised his eyebrows, one Venetian to another. Terrified of the water?

‘She almost drowned when she was a little girl,' the Contessa continued. ‘My ­daughter-­in-­law took her to the beach at the Lido, and she wandered away and into the water. She might have been four, no older. A man on the beach saw her head go under a wave and ran into the water and pulled her out. He gave her artificial respiration and probably saved her life. After that, she was terrified of the water.'

‘That's difficult if you live here,' Brunetti said. His voice was rich with concern, no trace of irony.

‘I know. She couldn't go on a vaporetto alone: someone had to hold her hand, and they had to stand inside, just beside the door. If there was no one to go with her, she'd walk.'

‘Could she manage that?' he asked, wondering how complicated his life would become if he had to avoid taking boats.

‘Yes. She could walk to school and to her friends' homes. But she was always careful to avoid walking alongside a canal. So long as she was a few metres from the water, she was all right.'

‘What about bridges?' he asked.

‘They didn't seem to bother her,' she said and noticed his surprise. ‘It sounds strange, I know, but she said she could cross them so long as she kept concentrating on the stairs beneath her feet and didn't have to see the water on either side. That's what she was afraid of: the sight of the water. '

‘Did she have to live here?'

‘No, she didn't
have
to: she
wanted
to. Her parents were divorced, and my son remarried.' She gave him a level look and added, ‘Men usually do.' When Brunetti failed to rise to that, she went on. ‘When Manuela fell into the canal, my son had already had two other children, so it would have been difficult for her to live with them.'

‘So she lived with her mother?'

‘Yes. In Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini. Where they still live.'

‘Was that where she was living . . . when this happened?'

‘Yes. It's better for her to be with her mother,' she said, sounding not entirely convinced.

Brunetti was at a loss for what to ask her. He found it hard to believe that the girl had so successfully managed to live with her fear. What would it be like, seeing the cause of your terror every day, having it around you whenever you left your house? ‘The fear must affect her life all the time,' he said.

‘She loves the city,' the Contessa said, as if playing a trump card. ‘She's grown up here, all of her friends are here, and . . . I live here.'

‘She went to school here?'

‘Yes,' the Contessa said and named a school in Santa Croce.

‘Do she and her mother get along?'

Her answer was slow in coming. ‘I've always assumed so.' As answers went, that wasn't very much, but he left it alone for the moment.

‘I'm not sure what it is you'd like me to do, Contessa,' he said.

‘I'd like you to see if there was anything that might have happened . . .' she said with a wave of her hand and covered her eyes.

Brunetti allowed a long time to pass before he asked, ‘Did you know of any trouble she might have been having? Any person she might have wanted to avoid?'

‘No,' she said immediately and fiercely.

Brunetti decided to leave that for the moment. ‘Contessa,' he said, using much the same voice he employed when the children were being evasive with him, ‘fifteen years have passed. I can't go back and try to look at this unless I have a reason or a place to start looking.' He would also need some sort of legal justification for looking, but he decided to tell her nothing about that.

He picked up his glass, too long ignored, and rolled it between his palms. ‘I'm afraid that whatever suspicions you might have aren't enough,' he said – forcing himself to refer to ‘suspicions' instead of ‘vague suspicions' – ‘to justify an investigation.'

‘She didn't fall into that water,' the Contessa insisted with the truculence of age and the sense of certainty peculiar to wealth.

He took a sip and then another and kept his glass in his hand, suspecting he might need it. ‘Contessa, there are possibilities you haven't considered,' he began, voice tentative, as he prepared to suggest to this woman that neither her love nor her wealth had been sufficient to stop her granddaughter from going into the water drunk or drugged. But how say it? What words to use?

‘Manuela didn't try to kill herself, and she didn't drink or use drugs.' Had she read his thoughts?

‘You sound very certain.' He was a man with two children who had recently been of that same volatile age. They were happy kids to whom the idea of suicide was from some other planet and drugs, he hoped, were unlikely, but these were beliefs common to most parents. How well did Manuela's grandmother understand a girl two generations younger than she? Youth and age, and their respective problems, lived in different worlds.