Chiara looked relieved to be free of her criticism of an African. She came, after all, from the generation that had absorbed the gospel of tolerance and believed in the sinful nature of any criticism of a person less fortunate than herself.
Brunetti thought he knew the people his children were talking about, had seen different groupings of them in the city, always at points of maximum tourist traffic. Of both sexes and indeterminate age, they wore some sort of official tag on a lanyard around their necks, which he assumed gave them the right to occupy public space and ask for money – like the AVAPO people or like Medécins Sans Frontières. Hearing himself class them with those other two groups made Brunetti faintly uncomfortable, as though he’d put salt in with sugar and honey. Although they had brushed his curiosity, they had never attracted his attention: he had always walked by, leaving them to the tourists or, more accurately, the tourists to them.
Paola asked if anyone would like another pepper. When they all declined, she asked, ‘May I ask what this is all about?’ Her voice was level, curious, not a trace of suspicion to be heard.
Chiara and Raffi again exchanged a glance to see who would speak first. Chiara shook her head, and so Raffi said, ‘I see them once in a while in front of the Frari. They stop people and ask them if they want to do something to stop drugs, and when they say they do – it’s only tourists who stop – they ask them to sign a paper, some sort of petition, and when they do, they keep talking to them.’
‘That’s all?’ Brunetti asked from the habit of precision.
Raffi considered his father’s question, then said, ‘My friends say they ask for money.’
‘And do they?’ Brunetti asked.
Raffi’s surprise was evident. ‘Why else would they bother asking them to sign the petition? There’s no use signing anything: no one cares what petitions people sign, so what’s the use of asking people to do it?’
How casually different they were from his own generation, Brunetti thought, not for the first time. They had so little to believe in, so little to hope for. He looked back at the political enthusiasms of his youth and was forced to admit that they had all come to nothing. But at least his generation had tried.
‘So it’s just a pretext to make money?’ Paola asked, using the Venetian expression, ‘ciappar schei ’, probably to allow herself to hiss with contempt at the last word.
‘If they’ve got those ID cards, then they must have permits,’ Raffi said, reminding both his parents that the times when he could be silenced by the mere tone of their voices were gone, gone, gone, and not coming back.
Brunetti turned to Paola: this was her fight, not his.
‘Maybe it’s the only way these people can get money. God knows, the state’s abandoned them,’ she said.
‘The state’s abandoned us all,’ Raffi said with some heat. ‘It’s abandoned me, too.’ He hammered this home, startling Brunetti with the anger in his voice.
‘It doesn’t matter how much time we spend at university or what degrees we get; my friends and I will never get jobs.’ When he saw his mother about to speak, he ignored her, saying, ‘I will because of Nonno and all the businesses he has and the people he knows. But my friends won’t, unless they know people too, or they’ll have to go to England, or France, to get a decent job.’ Then, roughly, after a moment’s thought, ‘Any job.’
Across from him, his sister held up her hands in the ‘T’ that umpires use to call ‘time out’. Raffi stopped, Paola refrained from saying anything to him, and Brunetti gave his daughter his attention.
‘May I remind you that I started this, and I still don’t have an answer,’ Chiara said impatiently, sounding strangely adult. ‘I told you about the African because I want to know what I can do about it. About him.’ Brunetti waited to see if she was going to say she didn’t want to hurt the man’s feelings or frighten him, things he certainly expected her to say.
‘I want him to leave me alone,’ she said, her voice even. Paola got to her feet and started to clear the table. Raffi began to help his mother, leaving Brunetti to speak to Chiara.
Vianello would be the person to ask to deal with it, Brunetti thought, although he had no idea what to ask his friend to do. What was it that British Chief Inspector used to say, the one he’d met at the conference in Birmingham? ‘Put the frighteners on him’? At the time, Brunetti had been amused by the phrase, however unpleasant he’d found the reality. But that was precisely what he wanted Vianello, his thick-necked, ham-fisted friend, to do for him: frighten off the person who was frightening his daughter. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, at which point Paola and Raffi returned, each of them bearing two plates with thick slices of fresh chestnut cake.
6