‘My maid, Gala, goes and gets her. She’s worked for me for years, and she’s known Manuela since she was a baby.’
He closed his notebook and slipped it into his pocket. ‘I have enough to begin, I think,’ he said and got to his feet. Usually, after an interview, he thanked the person who had given him information, but that seemed inappropriate here.
He bowed and kissed her hand when she extended it, left the room, and found the maid seated on a chair at the end of the corridor. She let him out of the palazzo.
5
Just as Paola was setting a bowl of paccheri con tonno on the table that evening, Chiara said to her father, ‘Can I ask you a question?’ While she waited for him to answer, Chiara took the serving spoon and gave herself a modest portion and then looked at Brunetti.
‘You can’t ask me an answer, can you?’ he replied, a response that had, over the years, become part of family speech ritual, a trap into which the children seemed unable to stop themselves from falling. It was Brunetti’s revenge for the persecution he suffered from his ecologically minded children, who pounded violently on the door of the bathroom the moment he entered the second minute of a shower. They could take care of the environment, and he’d see to the logic, thank you very much.
Chiara rolled her eyes in exasperation, and Brunetti asked, ‘About what?’
‘The law.’
‘Large topic, I’d say,’ Raffi interjected from across the table.
Ignoring her brother, Chiara lowered her head and concentrated on her pasta. Paola gave Raffi an icy stare.
‘What about the law?’ Raffi asked; then, when his sister failed to look at him, he added, ‘Specifically.’ He smiled at Paola to show the purity of his intentions.
Chiara glanced at her mother, who was helping herself to pasta, and then across the table at her brother, as if to test the sincerity of his question. ‘I wondered if it’s against the law to ask people for money on the street.’
Brunetti set his fork down. ‘Depends,’ he answered.
‘On?’ This from Chiara.
‘On who sent you to ask,’ he answered after some consideration
‘Could you give me an example?’ Chiara asked.
‘If you’re working for Médecins Sans Frontières and you have a permit to be there, then you can ask. Or if you’re AVAPO and sell oranges and use the money to give help to cancer patients in their homes, and you have an authorized booth in Campo San Bortolo, then you can, too.’
‘And if you’re not one of these?’ Chiara asked, dinner forgotten.
He had to think about this for a moment. ‘Then I suppose you could be considered a mendicant.’
‘And then?’ Paola broke in to ask, suddenly interested in the subject.
‘Then you’re doing something the law – in simple terms – disapproves of. But you’re not breaking it.’ It was only after he’d spoken that Brunetti realized how absurd this sounded.
‘Is it a real law or just a pretend law?’ Chiara asked.
Though well he knew what she meant, Brunetti felt the obligation to ask, ‘What do you mean by “pretend law”?’
‘Oh, Papà, don’t go all official on me. You know exactly what I mean: a law that’s a law but nobody pays any attention to.’ Chiara shook her head at Paola’s attempt to serve her more pasta.
How children spoke truths, Brunetti reflected, that parents were meant to deny. He and his colleagues had long since adjusted to the fact that some laws were decorative rather than enforced. People arrested for theft or violence: take them down to the Questura and charge them, tell the foreigners among them to leave the country within a certain number of days, and then let them go. Arrest them a week later for the same crime, and start the merry-go-round all over again, the same horses bobbing up and down with each turn.
He saw the moment when Paola gave in to her impulse to cause trouble when she could. ‘Like the law about . . .’
‘As I was saying to Chiara,’ he interrupted her to say, ‘it’s somewhere between legality and illegality. If you stop someone on the street to ask them for money it’s not a crime, though it’s an offence. But if you send minors to beg for money, then it’s a crime.’
Brunetti had said this with the voice he used for professional explanations, hoping it would suffice.
But Chiara was still preoccupied. ‘What happens to you if you ask for money?’
‘It’s a contravvenzione,’ he answered, trying to make the word sound important. Not a crime, but a violation, he told himself. Will she understand the distinction? Did he?
‘Does that mean nothing happens if you do it?’ Chiara asked.
He took time to finish his pasta and looked across at Paola. ‘What’s next?’ he asked, hoping Chiara would be distracted by the thought of more food.
‘Does it, Papà ?’ she asked again.
‘Well,’ he said in his most Solomonic tones, ‘the person who does it gets an administrative sanction.’
‘That’s just a term,’ Chiara said quickly. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’