‘Where’s the boat?’ Dantone asked.
Penna turned around and looked back towards the piles of rubble visible at the edge of the island. It was obvious that construction was under way: boards and stones and the ripped shells of paper sacks that had once held cement were all heaped together, some held in place by crossed boards and wooden building panels.
‘Over there,’ Penna answered, pointing in front of the mound of refuse.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Dantone said.
‘The piles of junk hide it,’ Penna said. ‘You have to be closer.’
‘Can we get there?’ Dantone asked.
‘Not with this,’ Penna said, bending to give the side of the larger boat an affectionate pat, as if he were a polo pony giving a nuzzle to the neck of a Clydesdale.
‘Can you take us over?’ Dantone asked him.
‘Of course, Capitano,’ the young man said and moved to the back of the boat to clear a space for them.
Dantone turned to Brunetti, said, ‘Come on,’ climbed over the railing and lowered himself to stand at the centre of the boat. Brunetti moved along the deck and lowered himself just behind him.
Penna put his oar back into the water, and they started towards the cemetery.
14
Brunetti tried to fight the sense that this was going to turn out badly. Where else would Casati have gone than to the cemetery to talk to his wife? Who else could he tell about the death of his bees, his girls? Brunetti said nothing.
Arrow-straight, they headed towards the largest pile of soil and stones. Ten metres before it, Brunetti felt the boat slide across something that resisted its progress. Penna instantly turned them back towards the deeper water, but after only a few strokes he curved to the right and moved them forward again. Four more strokes and he stopped, turned his oar sideways in the water and drew the small boat to a halt.
Ahead of them Brunetti saw, capsized in the water, the bottom of a small boat.
From behind him, Dantone asked, ‘His boat is a puparìn, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Penna,’ Dantone asked. ‘Can you get us any closer?’
‘I’d like to,’ the young man said eagerly, ‘but a lot of rubbish has been dumped into the water around here, and I don’t know what we’d run into.’ Then, in a voice he tried to make encouraging, Penna added, ‘It’s really not very deep here, sir, not much more than a metre.’ He hesitated for a moment and then continued, ‘But there’s been some dredging.’
Brunetti had turned to face the back of the boat, the better to follow their conversation. Dantone acknowledged the news with a shrug, looked at Brunetti and asked, ‘You coming?’
‘Yes.’
Dantone set his hat upside down next to Penna’s feet, slipped off his watch, removed his telefonino from his jacket pocket, and put them inside the hat. Then he removed his jacket with what Brunetti thought was a sigh and placed it beside the hat. As casually as if he were just going to take a dip in the pool, he sat on the side of the boat, lifted his still-shod feet over the side, and lowered himself, fully clothed, into the water. It came, as Penna had predicted, only a bit above his waist.
By the time Dantone turned back towards the boat, Brunetti was leaning forward to place his own watch and phone inside the capsized hat and then just as quickly swung his feet over the side and lowered himself into the water. When he felt the mud shift and squiggle under his feet, Brunetti was glad of his tennis shoes.
The Captain moved off in the direction of the stationary boat floating about ten metres from them.
Brunetti followed, his feet sinking into the mud and resisting his efforts to pull them free, occasionally stepping on hard or – worse – soft objects. All of a sudden, Dantone gasped a loud ‘Oh’ and disappeared. Brunetti lunged and grabbed, but all he found was the Captain’s hair. He pulled and managed to bring the Captain’s head above the water, but his body refused to rise. Dantone’s arms shot up and waved in the air, his body thrashing from side to side in panic.
To try for a better purchase on him, Brunetti stepped forward and stepped into nothing. Instinctively, he released Dantone and hurled himself backwards in the water. His feet scrambled about below him, and again one foot descended into nothingness. He pulled it back until both feet were firm in the soft mud, then leaned forward and grabbed at Dantone again, this time finding an arm. He stepped back, locked both hands on the arm, and shuffled backwards, dragging the Captain with him.
The Captain continued to resist him, rising and then falling as though pulled under by some other force. Finally, in a grotesque imitation of birth, Dantone pulled free and slipped forward into Brunetti’s hands.
Dantone coughed, vomited up water, and coughed some more. When he stopped coughing, he leaned forward, hands on his hips, and breathed in deeply for a long time. ‘A hole,’ he finally said. ‘There’s a hole down there. My feet kept slipping on the sides.’ He took more deep breaths and waited until both their hearts were beating normally. By common consent they locked arms and started moving gingerly, testing every step, towards the boat.
Thus joined, they came near to the upturned shell of a rowing boat, algae and barnacles clinging to the exposed bottom, floating there about three metres from the land. Brunetti’s foot stepped into nothingness and he plunged into a hole, slipping free of Dantone’s arm. He did not think; reason was lost to him. He sank and thought of death. His feet hit the bottom and sank into muck. Panic straightened his body, his head rose above the surface of the water, and he could breathe again.
Dantone had his shoulders in his grip, and yanked Brunetti towards him. He floated free of the hole, he knew not how; Dantone pulled him back and upright. Terror – though Brunetti would later call it instinct – stopped him from moving, filling him with the sensation that he was about to experience something strange and unpleasant and dangerous. But then Dantone pulled him to the left, and they started off again, more carefully, more slowly, this time circling the boat and drawing no closer. Brunetti shook his terror away as they continued around the boat. He stopped and put a restraining hand on Dantone’s shoulder. ‘It’s a puparìn,’ Brunetti said.
‘What do we do?’ Dantone asked. ‘Turn it over?’