‘I think whatever you have to say to me deserves more attention than this whisky, however good it is.’
She sat back in her chair and grasped its arms. Her eyes closed. ‘My granddaughter was . . . damaged fifteen years ago.’ Brunetti heard her breathing grow difficult and wondered if she were going to collapse or faint. What an odd choice of word: ‘damaged’.
Some time passed. Her breathing slowed, and she loosened her grip on the arms of the chair. It was then that he realized they had been speaking in Veneziano, not Italian. He had automatically used the formal ‘Lei ’ with her, but he had addressed her in Veneziano from the beginning and without giving it a thought. It was a greater intimacy than using ‘tu ’.
She opened her eyes and said, ‘She was fifteen, almost sixteen.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘She was pulled from a canal not far from her home, but she had been under the water a long time. No one knows how long, but long enough for it to damage her.’ By force of will, she kept her voice level and dispassionate. Her pain was evident only in her eyes, which could not meet his.
Fifteen-year-old Venetians were fish, or at least part fish, Brunetti believed. They went into the water as children, spent their summers on the beach and in the sea, diving off the rocks at the Alberoni, racing through the laguna in their friends’ boats.
‘Did she fall?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That’s what the police said, but I’m not sure any more,’ she said, then immediately clarified. ‘That it was an accident.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Manuela was terrified of the water.’
Brunetti raised his eyebrows, one Venetian to another. Terrified of the water?
‘She almost drowned when she was a little girl,’ the Contessa continued. ‘My daughter-in-law took her to the beach at the Lido, and she wandered away and into the water. She might have been four, no older. A man on the beach saw her head go under a wave and ran into the water and pulled her out. He gave her artificial respiration and probably saved her life. After that, she was terrified of the water.’
‘That’s difficult if you live here,’ Brunetti said. His voice was rich with concern, no trace of irony.
‘I know. She couldn’t go on a vaporetto alone: someone had to hold her hand, and they had to stand inside, just beside the door. If there was no one to go with her, she’d walk.’
‘Could she manage that?’ he asked, wondering how complicated his life would become if he had to avoid taking boats.
‘Yes. She could walk to school and to her friends’ homes. But she was always careful to avoid walking alongside a canal. So long as she was a few metres from the water, she was all right.’
‘What about bridges?’ he asked.
‘They didn’t seem to bother her,’ she said and noticed his surprise. ‘It sounds strange, I know, but she said she could cross them so long as she kept concentrating on the stairs beneath her feet and didn’t have to see the water on either side. That’s what she was afraid of: the sight of the water. ’
‘Did she have to live here?’
‘No, she didn’t have to: she wanted to. Her parents were divorced, and my son remarried.’ She gave him a level look and added, ‘Men usually do.’ When Brunetti failed to rise to that, she went on. ‘When Manuela fell into the canal, my son had already had two other children, so it would have been difficult for her to live with them.’
‘So she lived with her mother?’
‘Yes. In Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini. Where they still live.’
‘Was that where she was living . . . when this happened?’
‘Yes. It’s better for her to be with her mother,’ she said, sounding not entirely convinced.
Brunetti was at a loss for what to ask her. He found it hard to believe that the girl had so successfully managed to live with her fear. What would it be like, seeing the cause of your terror every day, having it around you whenever you left your house? ‘The fear must affect her life all the time,’ he said.
‘She loves the city,’ the Contessa said, as if playing a trump card. ‘She’s grown up here, all of her friends are here, and . . . I live here.’
‘She went to school here?’
‘Yes,’ the Contessa said and named a school in Santa Croce.
‘Do she and her mother get along?’
Her answer was slow in coming. ‘I’ve always assumed so.’ As answers went, that wasn’t very much, but he left it alone for the moment.
‘I’m not sure what it is you’d like me to do, Contessa,’ he said.
‘I’d like you to see if there was anything that might have happened . . .’ she said with a wave of her hand and covered her eyes.
Brunetti allowed a long time to pass before he asked, ‘Did you know of any trouble she might have been having? Any person she might have wanted to avoid?’