‘Then he’d have to send it somewhere else. How do you send something from Sant’Erasmo?’
‘The post office, I suppose.’
Without a word, Paola got up and went towards the back of the apartment and her study. A few minutes later, she came back, saying, ‘There’s no post office on Sant’Erasmo.’
‘Then what do they do?’
‘Go to Burano, I suppose. That’s the nearest one.’
Before giving it conscious thought, Brunetti said, ‘Then I’ll try the post office. I can stop on my way back to Sant’Erasmo.’
‘You’re going back?’ Paola asked, unable to hide her surprise.
‘All anyone there knows is that I’m a relative of Emilio’s who’s spending a few weeks in the house.’
Paola gave him a long look and waved her fingers in front of his face. ‘Earth to Commissario Brunetti. Earth to Commissario Brunetti. Can you hear me? Can you read me, Commissario?’ she asked in an otherworldly voice.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked, though he knew.
‘It means that, by now, everyone on the island has heard about what happened. They know you went out on the boat from the Capitaneria, know you’re a commissario di polizia – probably know the serial number on your warrant card – and know that you took his body to the hospital.’
‘I’m still going to go back,’ Brunetti insisted.
‘Do you think people will talk to you?’
‘If they think there’s no risk if they do, and if I express the proper sentiments.’
‘Which are?’ she asked.
Brunetti had to think for a while about this but finally said, ‘I spent almost two weeks with him, five, six hours a day. We talked about a lot of things while we were out there, though I never had the sense that I knew much about him except that he was a decent, honourable man, and now it pains me that he’s dead.’
‘I see,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry if that doesn’t sound like much,’ Brunetti said.
Paola leaned forward and put her hand on his knee. ‘I’m glad you feel that way about him.’ She sat back and gave him time to speak, but Brunetti could think of nothing more to say.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
He slid down in the sofa and crossed his ankles. ‘Go back and listen to what people say about him. See if he talked to anyone about his bees. Try to find this woman. And try to find out if he sent anything from the post office on Burano.’
‘And what will all that tell you?’ she asked with real interest.
‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘But I hope it will help me understand his death.’
17
The next morning, Brunetti was at the hospital at nine-forty-five. He waited a moment at the main entrance, but then it occurred to him that Federica and her husband, if they arrived on the 13 from Sant’Erasmo, would get off at Fondamente Nove, in which case they’d enter the hospital from the back or even from the entrance near the church. After what her husband had said about her reaction to the news, Brunetti was reluctant to phone Federica, so he sent a text message, saying that he would meet them outside the office of Dottor Rizzardi on the ground floor, in Area D. This spared his having to write ‘Morgue,’ a word he hated and that most people feared.
He had not bought a newspaper, thinking it would be disrespectful if they came upon him reading it, so he stood at the entrance to the corridor that led to Rizzardi’s office and watched the people passing.
Brunetti thought of the rope around Casati’s leg, and that turned his thoughts to the living Casati. He remembered the older man and his delight in pointing out the wading and nesting birds in the laguna, and in the sheer explosion of life that was to be seen at every moment. He remembered the fledgling black-winged stilts Casati had shown him, perfectly camouflaged to blend in with the reeds and stalks of dry grass. Casati knew the names and habits of all the birds they saw and had had endless patience when pointing them out to the city slicker.
He remembered asking Casati, on one of the first days they went rowing, why his bees were so important to him. They had been up at the top of Canale Bussolaro at the time. The last words of his question had been dulled by the wind-borne thunder of a plane taking off from the airport behind them. Casati hadn’t answered until it was quiet enough for them to speak again. ‘They’re the only thing that gives me hope, the bees.’
He’d stopped rowing then, and Brunetti’d pulled up his own oar and turned to look at the older man. ‘Look at that,’ Casati had said, pointing his chin to the left, and when that failed to encompass his meaning, he’d waved his left hand in a wide arc towards the mainland. ‘Everywhere, we’ve built and dug and torn up and done what we wanted with nature. And look at this,’ he’d said, turning to his right and waving out over the laguna, ‘we’ve poisoned this, too.’ His face had grown rough with anger.
Tight-voiced, he’d gone on. ‘They’ve done what they wanted with nature, and our children will pay the price.’ Immediately, Brunetti had thought of the MOSE, the tidal barrier that many people believed could not work, and realized that Casati’s prophecy included Brunetti’s own children. ‘We’ve poisoned it all, killed it all,’ Casati had said, turning back to Brunetti.
Then, in the midst of this catalogue, Casati’s expression had softened, and when he spoke, his voice had grown calm. ‘But the bees have had fifty million years, maybe more, to become what they are. My Queens lay two thousand eggs a day, Guido, each one of them, in every hive. More than their own body weight – just think of it – every day. So, hard as we try, we’ll never manage to kill them all. They’ll survive us and what we’ve done to them.’ His smile had drifted away and he’d added in a softer voice Brunetti suspected he was not meant to hear, ‘And what I did to them.’
When Brunetti realized Casati was finished, he’d asked, ‘And they give you hope?’
The question wiped away the last remnants of Casati’s smile. Sounding like the worst sort of Old Testament prophet, the older man had answered, ‘Only the good deserve to hope.’ Then, to show that the conversation was over, Casati had put his oar into the fórcola and started to row again.
For no reason, Brunetti’s thoughts veered from this memory to the man in the bar trying to silence his friend when he mentioned the ‘woman on Burano’ that Casati had gone to see. Brunetti recalled as well his own masculine satisfaction that Casati might have found a woman, but now, satisfaction long fled, all Brunetti wanted was to find her.