Dressed for Death (20 page)

‘I’m worried about any group that
assumes its own superiority, in any way, to other people.’

‘The police?’ Brunetti asked with
a smile, trying to lighten the other man’s mood.

‘No, not the police, Guido. No
one believes they’re superior, and I suspect that most of your boys don’t
believe it, either.’ He finished his drink but poured himself no more. Instead,
he put both glass and bottle on the floor beside his chair. ‘I always think of
Savonarola,’ he said. ‘He started by wanting to make things better, but the
only way he could think of to do that was to destroy anything he disapproved of
In the end, I suspect zealots are all like him, even the
ecologisti
and
the
femministi.
They start out wanting a better world, but they end up
wanting to get it by removing anything in the world around them that doesn’t
correspond to their idea of what the world should be. Like Savonarola, they’ll
all end up on the pyre.’

‘And then what?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Oh, I guess the rest of us will
somehow manage to muddle through.’

It wasn’t much in the way of
philosophical affirmation, but Brunetti took it as a sufficiently optimistic
note on which to end the evening. He got to his feet, said the necessary things
to his host, and went home to his solitary bed.

* * * *

Chapter Fifteen

Another
reason Brunetti had been reluctant to go to the mountains was that this was his
Sunday to visit his mother: he and his brother Sergio alternated weekends or
went in the other’s place when necessary. But this weekend, Sergio and his
family were in Sardinia, so there was no one but Brunetti to go. It made no
difference, of course, whether he went or not, but still he went, or Sergio
went. Because she was in Mira, about ten kilometres from Venice, he had to take
a bus and then either a taxi or a long walk to get to the Casa di Riposo.

Knowing that he was to go, he
slept badly, kept awake by memory, heat, and the mosquitoes. He finally woke at
about eight, woke to the same decision that he had to make every second Sunday:
whether to go before or after lunch. Like the visit itself this made no
difference whatsoever and today was influenced only by the heat. If he waited until
the afternoon, it would only be more infernal, so he decided to go immediately.

He left the house before nine,
walked to Piazzale Roma and was lucky to get there only minutes before the bus
for Mira left. Because he was one of the last people to get on, he stood,
rocked from side to side as the bus crossed the bridge and entered on to the
maze of overpasses that carried traffic above or around Mestre.

Some of the faces on the bus were
familiar to him; often some of them would share a taxi from the station in Mira
or, in better weather, walk together from the station, seldom talking about
anything more than the weather. Six people climbed down from the bus at the
main station; two of them were women familiar to him, and the three of them
quickly agreed to share a taxi. Because the taxi was not air-conditioned, they
could talk about the weather, all of them glad of that distraction.

In front of the Casa di Riposo,
each pulled out five thousand lire. The driver used no meter; everyone who made
the trip knew the fare.

They went inside together,
Brunetti and the two women, still expressing hope that the wind would change or
that rain would come, all protesting that they had never known a summer like
this one, and what would happen to the farmers if it didn’t rain soon?

He knew the way, walked to the
third floor, the two women going their separate way on the second floor, where
the men were kept. At the top of the stairs, he saw Suor’Immacolata, his
favourite of the sisters who worked here.

‘Buon giorno,
Dottore,’ she said, smiling and
coming across the corridor towards him.

‘Buon giorno,
Sister,’ he said. ‘You look very
cool, as if the heat doesn’t bother you at all.’

She smiled at this, as she did
every time he joked with her about it. ‘Ah, you Northerners, you don’t know
what real heat is. This is nothing, just a taste of springtime in the air.’
Suor’Immacolata was from the mountains of Sicily, had been transferred here by
her community two years before. In the midst of the agony, madness, and misery
which engulfed her days, the only thing she minded was the cold, but her
remarks about it were always wry and casually dismissive as if to say that,
exposed to real suffering, it was absurd to discuss her own. Seeing her smile,
he saw again how beautiful she was: almond-shaped brown eyes, a soft mouth, and
a thin, elegant nose. It made no sense. Worldly, believing himself to be a man
of the flesh, Brunetti could see only the renunciation and could make nothing
of the desires that might have animated it.

‘How is she?’ he asked.

‘She’s had a good week, Dottore.’
That could, to Brunetti, mean only negative things: she hadn’t attacked anyone,
she hadn’t destroyed anything, she had done no violence to herself.

‘Is she eating?’

‘Yes, Dottore. In fact, on Wednesday,
she went and had lunch with the other ladies.’ He waited to learn what disaster
that might have brought, but Suor’Immacolata said nothing more.

‘Do you think I could see her?’
he asked.

‘Oh, certainly, Dottore. Would
you like me to come with you?’ How beautiful, the grace of women; how soft
their charity.

‘Thank you, Sister. Perhaps she
would be more comfortable if she could see you with me, at least when I first
went in.’

‘Yes, that might take away the
surprise. Once she gets accustomed to another person, she’s usually all right.
And once she senses that it’s you, Dottore, she’s really quite happy.’

This was a lie. Brunetti knew it,
and Suor’Immacolata knew it. Her faith told her it was a sin to lie, and yet
she told this he to Brunetti and his brother each and every week. Later, on her
knees, she prayed to be forgiven for a sin she could not help committing and
knew she would commit again. In the winter, after she prayed and before she
slept, she would open the window of her room and remove from her bed the single
blanket she was allowed. But, each week, she told the same lie.

She turned and led the way, the
well-known way, down towards room 308. On the right side of the corridor, three
women sat in wheelchairs pushed up against the wall. Two of them beat
rhythmically against the arms of their wheelchairs, muttering nonsense, and the
third rocked back and forth, back and forth, a mad human metronome. As he
passed, the one who always smelled of urine reached out and grabbed at
Brunetti. ‘Are you Giulio? Are you Giulio?’ she asked.

‘No, Signora Antonia,’ Suor’Immacolata
said, leaning down and stroking back the old woman’s short white hair. ‘Giulio
was just here to see you. Don’t you remember? He brought you this lovely little
animal?’ she said, taking a small chewed teddy bear from the woman’s lap and
putting it into her hands.

The old woman looked at her with
puzzled, eternally confused eyes, eyes from which only death could remove the
confusion, and asked, ‘Giulio?’

‘That’s right, Signora. Giulio gave
you the little
orsetto.
Isn’t he beautiful?’ She held out the tiny bear
to the old woman, who took it from her and asked Brunetti, ‘Are you Giulio?’

Suor’Immacolata took his arm and
led him away, saying, ‘Your mother took Communion this week. That seemed to
help her a great deal.’

‘I’m sure it did,’ Brunetti said.
When he thought about it, it seemed to Brunetti that what he did when he came
here was similar to what a person who was going to experience physical pain -
an injection, exposure to sharp cold - did with his body: he tensed his muscles
and concentrated, to the exclusion of all other sensation, on resisting that
anticipated pain. But, instead of tightening his muscles, Brunetti found
himself, if such a thing could be said to be, tightening his soul.

They stopped at the door of his
mother’s room, and memories of the past crowded around and beat at him like the
Furies: glorious meals filled with laughter and singing, his mother’s clear
soprano rising up above them all; his mother breaking into angry, hysterical
tears when he told her he wanted to marry Paola, then coming into his room that
same night to give him her gold bracelet, her only remaining gift from Brunetti’s
father, saying that it was for Paola, for the bracelet was always supposed to
belong to the wife of the eldest son.

A twist of his will, and all
memory fled. He saw only the door, the white door, and the white back of Suor’Immacolata’s
habit. She opened the door and went in, leaving the door open.

‘Signora,’ she said, ‘Signora, your
son is here to see you.’ She moved across the room and went to stand near the
bent old woman sitting by the window. ‘Signora, isn’t that nice? Your son’s
come to visit you.’

Brunetti stood by the door. Suor’Immacolata
nodded to him, and he stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him, as he
had learned to do.

‘Good morning, Dottore,’ the nun
said loudly, enunciating clearly. ‘I’m so glad you could come to see your
mother. Isn’t she looking well?’

He came a few more steps into the
room and stopped, holding his hands well away from his body. ‘
Buon di,
Mamma,’
he said. ‘It’s Guido. I’ve come to see you. How are you, Mamma?’ He smiled.

The old woman grabbed at the nun’s
arm and pulled her down, whispered something into her ear, never taking her
eyes off Brunetti.

‘Oh, no, Signora. Don’t say such
things. He’s a good man. It’s your son, Guido. He’s come to see you and see how
you are.’ She stroked the old woman’s hand, knelt down to be closer to her. The
old woman looked at the nun, said something else to her, then looked back at
Brunetti, who hadn’t moved.

‘He’s the man who killed my baby,’
she suddenly shouted. ‘I know him. I know him. He’s the man who killed my baby.’
She pushed herself from side to side in her chair. She raised her voice and
began to shout, ‘Help, help, he’s come back to kill my babies.’

Suor’Immacolata put her arms
around the old woman, held her tight, and whispered in her ear, but nothing
could contain the woman’s fear and wrath. She pushed the nun away with such
force that she fell sprawling on the ground.

Suor’Immacolata quickly pushed
herself to her knees and turned to Brunetti. She shook her head and made a
gesture to the door. Brunetti, keeping his hands clearly visible in front of
him, backed slowly out of the room and closed the door. From inside, he heard
his mother’s voice, screaming wildly for long minutes, then gradually growing
calmer. Under it, in soft counterpoint, he heard the softer, deeper voice of
the young woman as she soothed, calmed, and gradually removed the old woman’s
fear. There were no windows in the corridor, and so Brunetti stood outside the
door and looked at it.

After about ten minutes, Suor’Immacolata
came out of the room and stood beside him. ‘I’m sorry, Dottore. I really
thought she was better this week. She’s been very quiet, ever since she took
the Communion.’

‘That’s all right, Sister. These
things happen. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?’

‘Oh, no. Poor thing, she didn’t
know what she was doing. No, I’m all right.’

‘Is there anything she needs?’ he
asked.

‘No, no, she has everything she
needs.’ To Brunetti, it seemed like his mother had nothing she needed, but
maybe that was only because there was nothing she needed any longer, and never
would again.

‘You’re very kind, Sister.’

‘It’s the Lord who is kind,
Dottore. We merely do His service.’

Brunetti found nothing to say. He
put out his hand and shook hers, kept her hand in his for long seconds, and
then wrapped his other hand around it. ‘Thank you, Sister.’

‘God bless you and give you strength,
Dottore.’

* * * *