Lucia called the girls – the daughters of her son Luca – to her and introduced them both – Regina and Cinzia – to ‘Zio Guido’. They put out their tiny hands and shook Brunetti’s. Regina asked him to move his ears again so that Cinzia could see, and when he did, both of them clapped their hands at the sight.
There was little time to talk, but Lucia managed to say she was going home from grocery shopping on Murano, and he managed to tell her where he was going and who he hoped would pick him up at the landing, asking if she knew him.
‘Everyone on Sant’Erasmo knows everyone else on Sant’Erasmo,’ was her answer.
‘And what they had for dinner?’ Brunetti asked.
‘And where they caught it, too,’ she said and laughed out loud. Then, more seriously, she added, ‘If Davide said he’d be there, then he will be.’
‘Well, all he did was grunt when I said I’d arrive at 10.53.’
Lucia laughed again, the same loud noise he remembered from those years of school. ‘With Davide, a grunt’s as good as a yes, and a yes is something you could put in the bank.’
‘Real chatterbox, eh?’ Brunetti prompted.
‘Really good man,’ she corrected him. ‘You couldn’t be in better hands out here. He and his daughter keep that house as if it were their own. The Faliers are lucky to have them.’
Brunetti acknowledged this but went back to the subject of Davide. ‘How old is he?’
‘At least seventy,’ Lucia said, ‘but you’d never know it. Not to look at him or to see him work. Like a man half his age.’ She looked through the window of the boat, searching for the man they were talking about. Then, in that voice people use for passing on sad news, she said, ‘His wife Franca died four years ago, and he hasn’t been the same since then. She took his heart with her.’ Her voice deepened to that used for tragedy as she added, ‘She was a long time dying. It was one of the bad ones.’
He heard the engines slowing and reached down for his suitcase. Beside him, Lucia pushed herself to her feet. ‘We get off here, too,’ she said. The girls rose; Cinzia took her hand; Regina took Brunetti’s.
Hand in hand with the child, Brunetti disembarked. He looked upon the land and found it rich and pleasing. Trees and fields made a green assault upon him, reminding him that not only stone and the world of man could be beautiful. To his left stood rigorously straight files of grapevines, their pendulous triangles pink in the morning light. The fields to the right were a mess: unruly grass beaten down in paths that led to overladen apricot trees, so heavily burdened that even the thieves couldn’t carry away all the fruit. He and his friends had come out here during their school holidays, Brunetti remembered, and made tracks of their own to the ancestors of these trees.
‘Signor Brunetti?’ a man’s voice asked. Brunetti turned and saw a solid trunk of a man dressed in a shirt that had faded and a pair of brown corduroy trousers worn smooth just below the knees. Pale blue eyes stood out in his sun-worn face. Just to the left of his mouth was a Euro-sized patch of smooth, shiny skin. Seeing how cleanly shaved Casati was, Brunetti wondered if the smooth patch gave him trouble.
Still holding Regina’s hand, Brunetti approached the man, set down his suitcase, and extended his right hand. Seeing the telltale rower’s calluses on the tips of the other man’s fingers, Brunetti gave only a mild grasp and quickly released Casati’s hand.
‘Davide Casati,’ he said in the grumbling voice Brunetti had heard on the phone. Turning from Brunetti, Casati went down on one knee and kissed Regina on both cheeks and then did the same when Cinzia ran over to greet him. ‘Zio Davide,’ the elder one implored, ‘when can we go out on the boat again?’
Casati got lightly to his feet. ‘Your grandmother’s the one who decides that, ragazze, not me.’ He, too, spoke in Veneziano, Brunetti was pleased to hear. Casati turned to look at the girls’ grandmother, who had joined them. She nodded in assent.
‘But you’re a man,’ Regina said, pulling the last word out to twice its natural length.
‘I’m not sure that counts much,’ Casati answered. ‘Women are a lot smarter than we are, so I always try to do what they tell me.’
The girls looked at their grandmother, but she said nothing, leaving it to the other man to solve this mystery. Like two tiny owls, they swivelled their heads towards Brunetti, who nodded and said, ‘Your Zio Davide’s right. We’re really not very smart. You’re much better off listening to your nonna.’
Hearing this, Lucia smiled at Brunetti and said, ‘I can’t wait until they ask Giuliano about this at lunch today.’
‘What’s he likely to say?’ Brunetti asked.
‘If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll agree with both of you,’ she answered, then laughed at what she’d said. She looked at her watch, told Brunetti hurriedly that their number was in the phone book, under Sandi, and he should call and come to dinner one night. Then, calling to the girls to come along, she tilted her cart back on to its wheels and started walking directly away from the water, towards the other side of the narrow island.
At no time during their brief conversation had she asked why he had come to the island alone. Perhaps married people didn’t dare to ask that question of other married people.
When Brunetti turned his attention back to Casati, he saw the man walking away from him on the riva, Brunetti’s suitcase in one hand. Brunetti called goodbye to the little girls and Lucia. The girls turned and waved; Lucia raised a hand but did not turn to look.
Brunetti hurried after Casati, who was walking towards a rope tied to one of the bollards. As he reached him, Brunetti looked into the water and saw floating a metre below them a puparìn, the wood glowing in the sun. Closest kin to the gondola, though a bit shorter, the puparìn was Brunetti’s favourite rowing boat, responsive and light in the water; he had never seen a lovelier one than this. Even the thwart glowed in the light, almost as though Casati had given it a quick polish before he left the boat.
Casati set the suitcase on the riva and crouched down at the edge. For a moment, Brunetti thought he was going to jump down into the boat, as if a young man’s stunt would show Brunetti who was the real boatman. Instead, Casati sat on the riva, put one hand, palm flat, on the pavement and hopped down into the boat. He steadied himself before reaching up for the suitcase. Brunetti moved fast and handed it to him, sat on the riva, judged the distance, and stepped down on to the thwart.
Involuntarily, it escaped Brunetti: ‘My God, she’s beautiful.’ He couldn’t stop his right hand from running along the top board of the side, delighting in its cool smoothness. Looking back at Casati, he asked, ‘Who built her?’
‘I did,’ he answered. ‘But that was a long time ago.’