It was easy to fall into a routine: Brunetti made himself coffee a little after dawn, read for a time, showered, then ate the breakfast Federica had left for him. Some mornings, he persuaded her to at least have a coffee with him while he ate. She was in her early thirties, tall and slender, an attractive, dark-haired woman, with a soft voice and very like her father in the way she moved her hands when she spoke. She had a ten-year-old son who wanted to be a fisherman when he grew up and a seven-year-old daughter who wanted to learn to row a boat. Federica was shamelessly proud of both of them. She smiled and shook her head in wonder at what life could bring a person.
She had lived on Sant’Erasmo since she was a child, had married a fisherman, Massimo, who had lived four houses away, and had known happiness until her mother’s sickness and death. During their conversations, which sometimes continued when she brought him half an apricot cake in the afternoon, Brunetti learned that her father had still not fully recovered from her mother’s death and probably never would.
‘I think he feels guilty about it,’ she’d said towards the end of the first week, trying to explain this to a curious Brunetti.
‘People always want to save the people they love, don’t they?’ was the only thing Brunetti could think of to say.
‘It’s more than that. I told you: he blames himself for her death.’ She had taken a few breaths, then asked, ‘But how could he save her?’
Uncomfortable at hearing this and having no answer, Brunetti had reached for another piece of cake and changed the subject.
He and Casati set out early each morning and rowed in the laguna for much of the early part of the day. If they were going to be out longer, Casati told him the night before and brought an abundant lunch with him the next morning. Sometimes they’d meet friends of Casati’s and then often didn’t get back until late afternoon. Everyone they met insisted on giving them fresh fish.
When Brunetti remarked on the generosity of the fishermen they met, Casati said fishermen were always generous, far more so than farmers. To Brunetti’s question, he explained that fishermen knew their catch would last no more than a day, so it was easy for them to give it away: give it away or watch it rot. Farmers, however, could store what they reaped and so had a tendency to keep it or even hoard it.
When they returned to the villa in the afternoon, they stored the oars, fórcole and grating and then Brunetti went to the villa and sometimes read for an hour or so. Or else he walked down to the more inhabited parts of the island, where he was perfectly happy to say hello to the people he passed on the street, and nothing more. He did not phone Lucia Zanotto; not for any reason he could think of, but only because he was out there to be alone, and alone he wanted to be. Somehow, Casati didn’t count.
Casati had told him there was a bicycle in the shed and suggested he ride down to the trattoria at the other end of the island, where he could eat fish that was fresh and vegetables from the island. He called Paola every night and told her where they had been in the laguna – even though he usually didn’t have even the name of a location to give her – and what he had eaten for lunch and dinner. When she asked him about books, he confessed that he had little time to read during the day and at night was so tired he turned out his light after ten minutes and had no memory in the morning of what he had read. He invited her to come out for the weekend, even offered to come in the puparìn and get her at the boat stop, but she said she wanted him to do his full two weeks of solitude and reflection.
After she said this, they spoke for a few minutes, and when he hung up, Brunetti realized his feelings were hurt. It did not occur to him that it had been his decision to come out here and to live separated from his family because he suddenly didn’t like his job, nor did he consider the fact that his decision was the result of his own heedless behaviour. No, it was his feelings that were hurt when his wife said she did not want to come out to an isolated house at the end of an island to spend her weekend either being rowed around the laguna under a fierce July sun or, if she chose not to go with him, sitting alone in a house that was not her own, waiting for her husband to come home.
On the second Friday, ten days into Brunetti’s stay, when they docked in front of the house in the late afternoon, Casati said that he would not be going out on Saturday or Sunday because he had remembered something he had to do. He seemed embarrassed to be telling Brunetti this, so Brunetti did not remind him that he had said the day before that they’d go out both days. Making the best of it and aware of how much he owed Casati for the days he had spent with him, Brunetti said he wouldn’t mind two days of resting and then remarked awkwardly that they had the advantage of deciding when they wanted a weekend off.
Casati smiled and said he’d see him at the usual time on Monday. They’d had a relatively easy day and had stopped on Burano for a long lunch, and Brunetti was restless when he got back. After Casati was gone, he took the bicycle from the shed and rode around the island for a long time, stopped at the bar for a coffee and a glass of water, and then went back to the villa to lie on the sofa and read. Later, as the light was fading, he rode back to the trattoria to have salmon trout with butter and almonds, then went slowly back to the house in the darkness, glad of the lights at the front and back of the bike. How he wished Paola could see the red sky fade to pink and then transform itself into this strange darkness, so different from the over-lit streets of the city.
Saturday passed quietly. Instead of rowing, Brunetti contented himself with going into the water just in front of the house, although he chose to walk in from the steps rather than dive. Once in the water, he did dive down and look around. He saw countless small fish he thought were baby rombo, and an unsettling number of what looked like jellyfish. He swam for an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon, and by dinnertime he was exhausted. When Federica came by in the late afternoon to ask if he’d like her to prepare dinner for him, he told her there was no need; he’d take care of himself. That meant he made himself pasta and salad and read while eating.