The Golden Egg

8





Clouds gathered as they were having lunch, so before leaving to go to the dry cleaner’s, Brunetti took a grey pullover from his drawer and slipped it on under his jacket. As he kissed Paola goodbye, she asked, ‘Is this the first sign of winter?’

‘A bit early for that, I’d say,’ Brunetti answered. ‘But I think it’s the hardening up of autumn.’

‘Nice phrase,’ she said, stepping back from him and studying his face. ‘Did you make it up?’

Puzzled, Brunetti had to think about that. ‘I must have,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember having heard anyone say it.’

‘Not bad,’ she commended him and moved towards her study.

As he opened the door to the calle, Brunetti felt that autumn had grown even harder while they were at lunch. He was glad of the sweater and wished he had thought to take a scarf, as well. He didn’t have to think about

how to get to the dry cleaner’s but followed what he thought of as his own GPS – Guido’s Personal System – and was there in ten minutes.

When he entered, he was enveloped in the familiar smell: slightly sharp, vaguely chemical, but so familiar as not to cause alarm. Two women clients stood in front of the counter, the owner behind it, making change from the cash register. A paper-wrapped parcel lay flat on the counter between them. Half visible behind the curtain that separated the back room stood the tall woman he had seen ironing there for years. Her short hair was as well coloured as it was cut, the same blonde it might once have been. Surely more than sixty, her body had remained thin and agile, perhaps due to the bending and lifting her job required of her.

‘God knows what his mother’s suffering,’ he heard the woman who was paying say just as he walked in.

The woman to her left made a puffing noise, as if lifting a heavy weight, but said no more. The first woman turned towards her, and Brunetti watched her decide to say no more. She took her change, thanked the woman behind the counter, and picked up her parcel.

As she reached the door, the owner said, ‘Next Tuesday, Signora.’

Her parcel rustled as she opened the door, and then she was gone.

When the door was closed, the second client said, ‘God knows if the mother’s suffering, I’d say.’ She was full-bodied and round-faced, with plump red cheeks: in a fairy tale, she’d be the good grandmother.

As if she had not heard the remark, the owner said, ‘It was a green silk suit, wasn’t it? And your husband’s brown jacket?’

The woman accepted the change of subject and asked, ‘How do you do it, Signora? How do you remember everything? I brought them here in April.’

‘I like the suit,’ she answered. ‘And your husband’s

had that jacket for a long time.’ Before her client could interpret that as a criticism, she added, ‘You never see quality like that any more: it’ll last another ten years.’ She went to take the clothing from the racks at the back of the shop.

The client smiled, placed a pink receipt on the counter, and opened her purse.

The owner came back, folded the suit and the jacket, wrapped them in light blue paper, and taped the parcel neatly closed. She took the money from the woman and after a polite exchange of goodbyes, the woman left.

Her comment remained in the space left by her departure. Before Brunetti could speak, the curtain was pulled fully open and Renata, whose name Brunetti had learned only some hours before, emerged.

She nodded to him but spoke to her colleague. ‘I heard her. How could she say something like that? The poor boy isn’t buried yet, and she’s talking like that about his mother. She doesn’t deserve that.’

‘People have always talked about her like that,’ her colleague answered with heavy resignation. ‘But with her son dead, you’d think they could stop it.’

As though only mildly curious, Brunetti asked, ‘Like what?’

The women exchanged a long look; in it Brunetti read the struggle between the desire to remain silent out of some sort of female solidarity and the urge to gossip.

Renata opted for gossip by leaning forward and grasping the edges of the narrow counter. Bracing her weight on stiff arms, she settled in for the long haul.

He saw the glance the owner gave her. Nothing at all was to be gained in getting involved in the affairs of other people. Authority existed only to cause trouble, to impale you on the thorns of bureaucracy, to make you lose time at work, and in the end to force you to hire a lawyer and spend years freeing yourself of the consequences of any revelation of information. The State was your Enemy.

As if unaware of all of this, Brunetti addressed the owner directly. ‘Signora, at the moment all we know is that he died in his sleep. It looks as if it was an accidental death. I tried to speak to his mother, but she didn’t – or perhaps she couldn’t – answer me.’ When it seemed they had no questions, he shook his head to suggest confusion, or resignation in the face of things we could not understand. ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he began, ignoring the look they exchanged and hoping to pull the conversation temporarily away from the mother, ‘but it’s always been our assumption – my wife’s and mine, that is – that you let him stay here out of what I suppose I can only call the goodness of your hearts.’ He smiled his approval of their action. ‘I think that was very generous of you. No, it was more than that.’

‘He was just a poor creature,’ Renata said, then looked at her employer as if to ask belated permission for her comment. At the other woman’s nod, she went on. ‘It was Maria Pia’s idea to let him help.’ The other woman made a gesture, as if to dismiss the remark, but Renata went on. ‘It wasn’t easy,’ she continued, then turned to Maria Pia and asked, ‘Was it?’

‘No, I suppose it wasn’t. But he needed something to do.’ She glanced quickly at Brunetti, at the other woman, then back at Brunetti. Keeping her eyes on his, she asked, ‘It wasn’t against the law, was it, letting him stay here?’

Believing there probably was a law that made it illegal to allow someone to pretend to work in your place of business, Brunetti said, ‘Of course not, Signora.’ He smiled at the absurdity of the idea, waved it away negligently. ‘It was a kind thing for you to do.’ To establish his position as a sympathetic supporter of her behaviour and to dispel any question of legal peril, he added, ‘Any decent person would approve. Any decent person would have done the same thing.’

She smiled in evident relief: if a commissario of police said it was not illegal, then it could not be, could it?

‘How did he . . .’ Brunetti began, wondering how to phrase it. ‘How did he begin here?’

Maria Pia smiled. ‘He used to come in with his mother sometimes. And stand there and watch the things going around in the machines,’ she said, pointing to the round glass window of the cleaning machine that had been in motion every time Brunetti came here.

‘And then Pupo saw him,’ Renata said. The women exchanged a smile that conveyed nothing but sadness.

‘Pupo?’ Brunetti inquired.

‘The cat,’ Maria Pia said. ‘Didn’t you ever see him here?’

Brunetti shook his head.

She pulled out a telefonino and switched it on, pressed buttons, summoning up memories and the images that captured them. Finding what she wanted, she came around the counter and stood beside him. ‘Here,’ she said, flicking photos across the screen as though she had done this all her life. He looked at the small rectangle and saw a photo of her holding an enormous cat in her arms, the largest cat he had ever seen. Its ears made it look like a lynx.

‘What’s that?’

‘They’re called Maine Coon Cats,’ Maria Pia said, pronouncing the name in Italian, smoothing her hand across the surface of the phone and showing him more photos of the same enormous animal. He stood on the counter, slept on the ironing board, stood with his paws on either side of the window of the machine, intent on the spinning clothing. Then he appeared in the arms of Davide Cavanella.

‘Pupo,’ Brunetti said.

‘Davide was the only person he really liked. Other than us,’ she said.

‘Not our husbands and not our children,’ Renata added. ‘Only Davide.’

‘It was one of the reasons we let him stay here,’ Maria Pia said, abandoning the pretence that he’d worked there.

‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Pupo was already ten when Davide came. Then last year he got sick with an ugly disease. Davide was his doctor: Pupo let him give him the shots.’ Brunetti raised his eyebrows and Maria Pia went on: ‘We showed him how to do it, and Pupo didn’t seem to mind when he did it.’

‘And then?’

‘And then we had to take him to the vet and have him . . .’ Unable to name the disease that killed Pupo, neither could she name what they had had to do.

Looking at the photo of the two of them together, Maria Pia finished the story. ‘Davide never came back after that.’ She switched off the phone and put it in her pocket.

‘I think some of our clients didn’t approve of his being here, anyway,’ Renata said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Before her employer could speak, she went ahead: ‘Like that Signora Callegaro. With her green suit and her husband’s jacket he’s too cheap to get cleaned more than once a year.’ She pushed herself away from the counter, to stand up straight while making her denunciation. ‘The stuff’s been here all summer, and she comes in now. To sniff around.’ And then, almost spitting, ‘Spy.’

She turned to Brunetti. ‘She complained about him once.’ She stopped speaking, but a quick glance showed Brunetti that her employer’s face was calm.

‘About what, Signora?’ he asked.

‘She came in here, must have been two years ago, straight from the market, and she had two big bags with her. She came to pick up her cleaning, but when Maria Pia put it on the counter and started to wrap it, she said it was too much to carry and she’d come back for it.’

‘What did you do?’ Brunetti asked, addressing the question to the space between them so that either of them could answer him.

Maria Pia chose to interrupt here to explain what had happened. ‘I know where she lives; over by Ponte dei Pugni, so I told her that Davide could carry the bags for her, and she could take the cleaning.’

‘And she complained about that?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, no,’ Renata said and grabbed the story back. ‘She said it would be all right, so Maria Pia went to the back and got Davide and told him to go with her, and they left.’ Though curious about how she could have ‘told’ him anything, Brunetti said nothing.

‘He came back, just the same as ever, so we forgot about it. Then, the next time she came in, she said he had frightened her.’

‘How?’ Brunetti asked.

As with any old couple, the story passed between them and now Maria Pia continued. ‘She told me he carried the bags back to her house and up the stairs. They live on the fourth floor. She opened the door and pointed to the floor to tell him he could leave them there, but he pushed past her and found the kitchen and put them on the table. And then he took all of the things out of the bags and lined them up on the table. She came in and told him he could leave, that she’d do it herself, but she said he ignored her.’ She looked at Maria Pia, as if to ask whether a deaf person could do anything other than that.

‘When he was done, he folded the bags and put them on the counter, and when she tried to give him some money – this is what she told me, though I doubt she’d give anyone anything: it’s no accident those two are married – he ignored her and left.’

When it seemed she had nothing more to add, Brunetti said, ‘But what did she complain about?’

Renata made a huffing noise. ‘She said she was frightened when he went into the house, that she didn’t know what he’d do. I suppose she meant to her.’ She rolled her eyes to suggest the lunacy of this possibility or the woman’s fear.

Brunetti limited himself to shaking his head in sage acknowledgement of humanity’s weaknesses. Turning to the proprietor, he said, making himself sound puzzled and not really curious, ‘I’m not sure I understand, Signora. If he was deaf, how did you make him understand that he was supposed to carry the bags home for her?’

Maria Pia shrugged and answered, ‘I picked up the bags and handed them to him, and then I pointed to the woman and made walking movements with my fingers.’ She then did just that, walking her first two fingers halfway across the counter.

‘I’d done it before. Or he’d done it with other clients, so he understood. He took the bags and went and stood by the door, the way he always did.’

‘And then?’ prodded Brunetti.

‘He went out with her and came back, and I thought everything was all right. I should have known better. With her.’ Another huffing noise from Renata.

‘And what did you do, Signora?’ Brunetti asked, wondering if Signora Callegaro’s complaint had been enough to frighten her.

‘What could I do? I apologized to her and said he was perfectly harmless. She’d seen him here for years: she should have known that,’ she said with mounting anger.

‘Did you think about telling him not to work here any more?’ Brunetti asked before he realized how habitual it was to use that word: ‘tell’.

‘No, of course not,’ she said, the anger now veering in his direction. ‘He’d been here a long time, and he was a good boy. He tried to help; he wanted to help.’ Brunetti saw Renata nod in agreement. ‘I couldn’t just toss him away because someone didn’t like the way he behaved. Let her take her husband’s jacket somewhere else to have it cleaned.’

Brunetti smiled. ‘Good for you, Signora,’ he said without thinking.

They both smiled: Renata’s nod of approval pleased him.

‘Did she ever come in again when he was here?’ he asked, again directing the question to both of them.

‘Only once,’ Maria Pia answered.

‘What happened?’

Renata interrupted. ‘I saw her come in: I can see a lot from back there,’ she said, waving towards the curtain. ‘So when she came in, I grabbed Davide’s arm and told him to move back, out of sight.’ She raised her hands, palms inward, and made brushing motions that would cause anyone to move back from her.

‘Did he understand?’

‘Of course,’ she said, surprised. ‘He understood a lot of things.’

About sleeping pills? Brunetti wondered.

He decided to risk a question about the mother. ‘That woman, Signora Callegaro, said something about Davide’s mother. It sounded like she knew her. And had a bad opinion of her.’

‘She has a bad opinion of everyone,’ Renata said angrily.

Brunetti turned towards Maria Pia. This was enough to encourage her to say, ‘The mother, Ana, doesn’t have a very good reputation.’ Neither, it seemed, did Signora Callegaro, though Brunetti chose not to say this. His silence induced her to add, ‘Most of us around here have known her a long time, and once you know a little about her . . . well, then you have some sympathy for her.’

‘Why is that, Signora?’ Brunetti asked, unable to disguise his real curiosity.

Maria Pia looked at her colleague, as if to ask her how it happened that she had already said this much.

The opening of the door distracted them all and turned their attention to the new arrival. It was a young girl, no more than thirteen, pink slip in hand. ‘Ciao, Graziella,’ Maria Pia said, and turned to the long row of clothing. In a moment she was back with two silk dresses far too mature in style to be for the girl and a pair of black silk slacks equally unsuitable in size. The girl stood, looking around at the three adults, silent.

When the parcel was wrapped, she handed the pink slip and a fifty Euro note to Maria Pia, took the change, nodded her thanks, picked up the parcel, and left.

‘What were you saying about the mother, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.

The look Maria Pia gave him told Brunetti that time had run out, even before she said, ‘It’s just gossip, Commissario, and I don’t think it’s right to repeat it.’ She turned to Renata and asked, ‘Isn’t that right?’

Renata looked at her employer, at Brunetti, and nodded. ‘Yes. People are saying he choked on something: that’s how he died. So she’s had enough, I’d say.’

‘Was he her only child?’ Brunetti managed to inject sufficient pathos into the question for Maria Pia to answer, ‘Yes.’ But nothing more.

Brunetti accepted the futility of trying to learn anything else from the women: to continue to ask questions would only irritate them. ‘Thank you for your help, Signore,’ he said. Then, in a lighter tone, ‘I’m not going home now. I’ll ask my wife to send one of the kids over.’

‘Good,’ Renata said. ‘It’s always good to see them. Is your son still with that nice girl?’

‘Sara?’

‘Yes.’

‘Years, it’s been,’ Renata said. ‘Good family. Good girl.’

‘I think so, too,’ Brunetti said, thanked them both again, and left.