‘And if we like that, then Sunday, too,’ Lolo said without hesitation.
Late on Saturday afternoon, Brunetti returned home to show Paola the four bandages on his hands and the blister on his left heel where his tennis shoe had rubbed repeatedly against the skin as he concentrated on relearning the shift and balance, thrust and dig that the single oar forced upon each of them. After dinner, he collapsed in front of the television and slept intermittently during the local news: fire in an apartment in Santa Croce, wildcat strike of the ticket sellers for the vaporetti, and a brief interview on the local channel with Sandro Vittori-Ricciardi, the man he’d seen at the Contessa Lando-Continui’s dinner, talking about his new project. Brunetti, however, was so exhausted by the late-autumn sun, cold wind off the water, and the hours spent rowing that the only thing he registered from these three segments was that the man had shaved off his beard and looked years younger as a result.
When Paola switched to a rerun of the first series of Downton Abbey, Brunetti pushed himself to his feet and made it as far as their bed before collapsing in a heap of exhausted muscle. He barely moved until he got up at eight to creak off and meet Lolo and climb back into the sàndolo.
There had been a freak acqua alta the night before, but the only remaining sign was the damp pavement next to the canale where Lolo tied up his boat. They spoke little as they headed out into the laguna, aware that words were an intrusion. Occasionally Brunetti called a warning about a log floating in the water, and they adjusted course. Brunetti saw two long-beaked birds sunning themselves, wings extended, on a tuft of grassy mud. He no longer remembered their name. ‘Isn’t it time they headed south?’ he called to Lolo, rowing at the back of the boat. They slipped past the birds, which ignored them.
‘They winter here now,’ Lolo said.
Stroke, cutting deep, then tilt and lift the oar from the water and slide it to the front, then dig it in again. Time after time, silently, with very little conscious effort; the endless flat expanse all around them, the sky gunmetal grey, the wind much too cold to justify being so playful with their sweating bodies.
At two, they decided to rest for a while and rowed to a stop at the side of the small canal that cut through a series of grass-covered semi-islands. From where he stood at the front, Brunetti turned in a half-circle to one side, then to the other. Spread out around them was the emptiness of the laguna : grass, water, tufts of reeds; no sound save their breathing, still heavy, and the far-off cawing of a bird. The day had lightened, but still the sun hid itself from them, though it managed to warm them now, out of the wind.
‘Guido,’ Lolo called from behind him. When he turned, Lolo tossed him a paper-wrapped sandwich. Brunetti was suddenly so hungry that he didn’t bother to look to see what was in the sandwich. He ate it in six bites, still standing, looked back at Lolo and said, ‘I’ve never eaten anything so good in my life. And I have no idea what it was.’
15
Monday morning brought paralysis, or something very near to it. Brunetti had gone to bed a happy man, one who had proved his stamina by six hours of rowing, come home bursting with pride in his prowess, eaten two plates of polpette with potatoes and porcini, four pieces of merluzzo with spinach, and then found room for a large slice of torta della provvidenza before retreating to his bed with the Argonautica and falling asleep before he’d finished two pages.
He woke a different person, a crippled old man who could barely push himself to the edge of his bed and whose body, as he walked towards the shower, made strong protests from a different place with every step. He was unable to step out of his pyjama bottoms, so he let them fall to the floor and left them there, gingerly removed the top, and reached into the shower to turn on the hot water. It finally arrived from five floors below, and he stepped into its healing warmth. He turned the nozzle to the right and moved to stand with his forehead pressed against the tiles, letting the water pound, splash, course, and flow across and down his back.