The Waters of Eternal Youth (15 page)

Griffoni intervened when she heard this. ‘Oh, who cares, anyway, Manuela, so long as we're here and can talk to your mother. She said you'd answer the door and take us to her. Do you think you can do that now?'

Manuela took a step towards Griffoni and latched her arm in hers. Her face cleared and her breathing returned to normal. ‘Oh, yes. She's in the sitting room and told me to bring you there.' She smiled and then lost her smile when she said, ‘But I forgot.'

‘Oh, I forget everything, too,' Griffoni said. Then, to her new best friend, placing her hand on hers the better to anchor their arms together, she said, ‘Let's go and see your mother.'

‘Yes, please,' Manuela said.

Brunetti had watched all of this, marvelling at the woman's beauty. No makeup, hair pulled back and hanging straight, but she'd cause heads to turn on the street. As she walked away, arm in arm with Griffoni, Brunetti noticed that her left foot did not rise as high as the right. She did not drag it, but it was evident that it did not make a matched pair with the other.

He followed them down a corridor that led towards the back of the house. Manuela stopped abruptly outside a door, as though she had walked into something solid. Then she turned to the left and said, ‘In there,' leaving it to Griffoni to open the door. They walked in, still arm in arm, and Brunetti followed fast upon them.

A woman a bit taller than her daughter stood looking out of a window, her pose so studied and artificial that Brunetti had to stop himself from laughing at the sight of her. ‘Signora ­Magello-­Ronchi?' he asked formally, as if uncertain who this woman might be.

She turned slowly to face them but said nothing. Brunetti used her consciously dramatic pause to study her face. In it, he saw the eyes she had passed to her daughter: clear blue and ­almond-­shaped. Human intervention had thinned Barbara's nose: either nature or her father's genes had thinned that of her daughter. Her hair was artfully streaked with blonde, and she was careful to stand straight, shoulders back, as if she had been told she'd be punished if her hair touched her shoulders.

Her mouth, a colour somewhere between strong pink and delicate red, was poised in a ­half-­smile as she formulated the proper greeting. ‘
Buon giorno
,' she said, having found it.

She looked at Brunetti and graced him with a smile, then nodded in Griffoni's direction, leaving it to her to decipher if the nod were meant for her or for her daughter. Griffoni nodded in return, and Manuela said, ‘
Mamma
, these are the policemen, but they don't have to wear uniforms to be policemen and they don't have to be men, either.' She turned to Griffoni for confirmation, and Griffoni smiled, patting Manuela's arm as she did so, as if to praise her for having learned so much, so fast.

Manuela laughed, a bright tinkle that filled the room with delight and caused Brunetti's hands to curl into tight fists. He looked at his shoes until the moment passed and then returned his eyes to the mother.

‘That's very interesting, Manuela,' she said with enough interest to make it sound as though she believed it herself. ‘But aren't you helping Alina in the kitchen?' Before Manuela could answer, her mother went on. ‘Why don't you go and ask her to make coffee for our guests?'

Then, to Brunetti, ‘You'd both like some coffee, wouldn't you?'

‘That would be very nice,' he said.

Griffoni slipped her arm from Manuela's and echoed, ‘Oh, yes, I'd love a coffee.' She looked at her watch and added, ‘I always have one about this time of day.' Then, after a silent exchange with Brunetti, she said, ‘Manuela, why don't we both go and help Alina?' When Manuela was slow to answer, Griffoni said, ‘You'll have to show me where the cups and saucers are, you know. You'll have to help me.'

Manuela's face glowed with delight. She took Griffoni's arm and gave it a gentle pull, saying, ‘All right. Let's go to the kitchen and I'll show you. I'll help.'

Seeing that Manuela's mother was at a loss for how to behave, Brunetti decided to take the initiative and said, ‘Shall we sit down, Signora? I have a number of things I'd like to ask you.'

She walked to a chair that stood in front of the window. The light fell on the chair facing her, so Brunetti pulled it to one side and sat out of the direct light. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see us, Signora.'

Sitting closer to her now, Brunetti saw that she had applied a layer of ­flesh-­coloured makeup to her face but had not succeeded in applying it smoothly under her chin, so the colour simply ended, creating a colour change as evident as that on the fur of a Jack Russell. ‘I don't understand what's going on,' she said.

‘A magistrate has initiated a ­re-­examination of the circumstances surrounding Manuela's accident,' he said, intentionally avoiding any reference to his own interest in the subject. Let her think he was merely a cop sent to do some unimportant job.

‘Ah,' she said, prolonging the sound. When Brunetti made no comment, she said, ‘I didn't know there had been an examination to begin with.' Her tone caused Brunetti to do a sudden reassessment. Perhaps she was not drugged at all, merely leading them on.

Brunetti gave an easy smile. ‘Perhaps it's more correct to say that there was the usual police report of the incident. That's what the magistrate wants us to look at again.'

‘After fifteen years?' she asked, deadpan.

‘Yes,' Brunetti answered but supplied no explanation.

‘Has my ­mother-­in-­law got anything to do with this?' she asked.

Brunetti narrowed his eyes in confusion, as if hearing for the first time that this woman had a ­mother-­in-­law. ‘I'm afraid only the Public Magistrate would know that, Signora. I was asked to speak to you.' Then, with interest obviously aroused by her question, he asked, ‘Is there something your ­mother-­in-­law knows that we should hear about?'

Her answer was immediate. ‘Not that I know of.'

Brunetti indicated his acceptance of her remark. In a more serious voice, he began, ‘Signora, you must excuse me if I ask this, but can you tell me how much . . .' Brunetti broke off, seeking a word less savage than ‘damage' to use. ‘ . . . harm was done to Manuela?'

‘You've seen her,' she said, suddenly fierce with the anger of someone who has nothing to lose. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think she has a very sweet character,' Brunetti said in the girl's defence.

‘Children usually do,' the mother said bitterly, then clapped her hand over her mouth, as if surprised to hear herself say such a thing. She put her palms on her knees and leaned forward to take a few deep breaths. As Brunetti watched, she rocked back and forth a few times, eyes closed. Finally she said, voice calmer but not calm, ‘The doctors say she has a mental age of six or seven, and that's what she's going to be for ever.'

Brunetti thought back to what Chiara had been at that age: sweet, affectionate, able to sound out and read aloud any text given to her and to understand some of what she read, trusting of all adults, in love with the neighbour's dog. What a lovely age; how horrible to have it be prolonged year after year.

He looked at Manuela's mother with new eyes, and she looked back at him with a flash of the intelligence he had chosen not to notice before. ‘I can't tell you how sorry I am, Signora,' he said.

She nodded. ‘Thank you. It doesn't help in the least, but I thank you for your sympathy,' she said sounding like an actress who had stepped out of role.

The moment passed, and he laid all father aside and returned to being only a policeman. ‘Did you learn this from the hospital report, Signora?

She considered that then said, ‘I don't think I ever read it.'

‘I beg your pardon.'

‘I said I think I never read it,' she repeated. ‘By the time Manuela came home from the hospital, it was obvious to me what was wrong with her. So what did I have to learn from the report? That I'd spend the rest of my life taking care of her? I could understand that myself: I didn't need their medical jargon to tell me.' Saying that had apparently provided her with momentum, and she continued. ‘You've seen her. Do you think there will be a time when I'm not going to have to take care of her?'

Then, seeing his surprise, she added, ‘Her father took her to doctors all over Italy, to specialists, and for tests, and they all said what anyone could see – what I saw when they brought her home.'

Brunetti remained silent. She asked him, ‘Do you have children?'

He nodded, unable to find words. For the first time since entering it, Brunetti took a look around the room. Normal, everything was normal: sofas, chairs, a table, a bookcase, carpets, windows. Nothing out of place, nothing upset or broken, everything normal except for the lives of the people who entered and left this room.

‘I'm concerned about the original report, the one from the hospital here, Signora,' he said. ‘Do you remember if they gave you a copy of the file?' he asked, hoping to keep to the past and avoid the present and, please God, the future.

‘I suppose they must have.'

His voice calm, as though this were the most normal thing in the world, he asked, ‘Would you still have it, do you think?'

‘Why do you ask that?'

‘I'd like to see it,' Brunetti said.

‘There were so many doctors, so many reports,' she said.

‘Could you try to find it, do you think?' he insisted.

She rose to her feet and said, suddenly eager, ‘I'll have a look,' then left the room.

Brunetti walked over to the window, which was at the back of the house and thus provided a long view of Marghera and Mestre, a view he'd rather be spared. The
laguna
wasn't visible from the top floor, but he could see the chimneys of the Marghera factories, busy with their life's work: killing him. Over the last years, Brunetti had come to this conclusion about most industries: their desire was not to produce chemicals, refine petroleum, or make plasterboard, or jewellery, or indeed – in the factories of the hinterland – make anything. On the contrary, Big Business wanted nothing more than to take the life of Guido Brunetti and everyone in his family. His children's concern for the environment had nudged him into reading and that had nudged him into paying attention and reading more widely, and that had led him down the slippery slope of information to arrive at this conclusion, one he had so far spared his children. Off there in the distance sat the daily reminder: a vast petrochemical complex that had spent decades pouring anything it wanted into the waters of the
laguna
, into the fish he ate, the clams his children loved, the
radicchio
grown on the farm someone in his wife's family owned on the island of Sant'Erasmo, not to mention what had also been tossed up, ever so carelessly, within those enormous clouds that had billowed out of their smokestacks all these years.

The sound of the opening door pulled Brunetti from his reflections. He turned to see Manuela entering the room, pushing in front of her a wheeled trolley draped in a white linen cloth, on which sat three cups of coffee, a chocolate cake the size of a pizza, plates and forks, and a large bowl of whipped cream. Manuela's excited pleasure radiated from her, seeming to bounce around the room, calling out that there was cake and cream for everyone. Behind her came Griffoni and, carrying a manila envelope, Manuela's mother.

Manuela parked the trolley in front of the sofa and called to her mother, ‘Alina made a chocolate cake,
Mamma.
Alina made a cake.'

‘Oh, wonderful,
Tesoro
, and it's your favourite, too.'

‘And my favourite,' Griffoni chimed in.

Brunetti did nothing more than smile, but Manuela, who had turned to see what he had to say, seemed pleased that he liked it, too. She waved to them all to take their places, and they responded to the lure of the cake and cream and took seats around the trolley, Brunetti holding chairs for both her mother and Griffoni.

Manuela picked up the cake knife and looked tentatively at her mother, who nodded. Carefully, guiding her right hand with her left, Manuela set the point of the knife in the centre of the cake and cut down through it, then went back and cut an enormous piece, certainly twice as large as a normal piece would be.

‘Oh, good. May I have that one?' Brunetti asked Manuela, knowing that Griffoni disliked sweet things.

She started to turn to her mother for approval but couldn't wait and said, ‘Oh, yes, please.' Manuela tried to lift the slice of cake but had to use the fingers of her left hand to guide it to a plate, which she passed to Brunetti. He thanked her effusively and leaned forward to slather a mound of cream on it. Taking it upon himself to help, he placed cups of coffee in front of Griffoni and Manuela's mother and, assuming that it must be hers, a glass of what looked like ­Coca-­Cola in front of Manuela's empty chair.

There were three moments of shared anxiety as Manuela cut the remaining three pieces of cake, but she managed to do it without creating much mess, giving her mother a small piece and cutting one as big as Brunetti's for Griffoni and setting down the knife long enough to pass it to her, smiling.

Last, she cut herself a ­normal-­sized piece and sat down.

Her mother put a drop of cream on her cake and passed the bowl to Griffoni, who heaped three large spoonfuls on hers. Brunetti knew that she'd prefer not to, but also knew that she would eat it all, perhaps even ask for a second slice. In the past, he had watched her eat pies and cakes in order to placate possible witnesses or to win trust from people who should not have trusted her. Here, however, it had nothing to do with her profession: food is love, he believed, and Manuela needed to love.

Griffoni asked her if she'd like cream and at her nod put a large spoonful on top of Manuela's cake.