‘I said I think I never read it,’ she repeated. ‘By the time Manuela came home from the hospital, it was obvious to me what was wrong with her. So what did I have to learn from the report? That I’d spend the rest of my life taking care of her? I could understand that myself: I didn’t need their medical jargon to tell me.’ Saying that had apparently provided her with momentum, and she continued. ‘You’ve seen her. Do you think there will be a time when I’m not going to have to take care of her?’
Then, seeing his surprise, she added, ‘Her father took her to doctors all over Italy, to specialists, and for tests, and they all said what anyone could see – what I saw when they brought her home.’
Brunetti remained silent. She asked him, ‘Do you have children?’
He nodded, unable to find words. For the first time since entering it, Brunetti took a look around the room. Normal, everything was normal: sofas, chairs, a table, a bookcase, carpets, windows. Nothing out of place, nothing upset or broken, everything normal except for the lives of the people who entered and left this room.
‘I’m concerned about the original report, the one from the hospital here, Signora,’ he said. ‘Do you remember if they gave you a copy of the file?’ he asked, hoping to keep to the past and avoid the present and, please God, the future.
‘I suppose they must have.’
His voice calm, as though this were the most normal thing in the world, he asked, ‘Would you still have it, do you think?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘I’d like to see it,’ Brunetti said.
‘There were so many doctors, so many reports,’ she said.
‘Could you try to find it, do you think?’ he insisted.
She rose to her feet and said, suddenly eager, ‘I’ll have a look,’ then left the room.
Brunetti walked over to the window, which was at the back of the house and thus provided a long view of Marghera and Mestre, a view he’d rather be spared. The laguna wasn’t visible from the top floor, but he could see the chimneys of the Marghera factories, busy with their life’s work: killing him. Over the last years, Brunetti had come to this conclusion about most industries: their desire was not to produce chemicals, refine petroleum, or make plasterboard, or jewellery, or indeed – in the factories of the hinterland – make anything. On the contrary, Big Business wanted nothing more than to take the life of Guido Brunetti and everyone in his family. His children’s concern for the environment had nudged him into reading and that had nudged him into paying attention and reading more widely, and that had led him down the slippery slope of information to arrive at this conclusion, one he had so far spared his children. Off there in the distance sat the daily reminder: a vast petrochemical complex that had spent decades pouring anything it wanted into the waters of the laguna, into the fish he ate, the clams his children loved, the radicchio grown on the farm someone in his wife’s family owned on the island of Sant’Erasmo, not to mention what had also been tossed up, ever so carelessly, within those enormous clouds that had billowed out of their smokestacks all these years.
The sound of the opening door pulled Brunetti from his reflections. He turned to see Manuela entering the room, pushing in front of her a wheeled trolley draped in a white linen cloth, on which sat three cups of coffee, a chocolate cake the size of a pizza, plates and forks, and a large bowl of whipped cream. Manuela’s excited pleasure radiated from her, seeming to bounce around the room, calling out that there was cake and cream for everyone. Behind her came Griffoni and, carrying a manila envelope, Manuela’s mother.
Manuela parked the trolley in front of the sofa and called to her mother, ‘Alina made a chocolate cake, Mamma. Alina made a cake.’
‘Oh, wonderful, Tesoro, and it’s your favourite, too.’
‘And my favourite,’ Griffoni chimed in.
Brunetti did nothing more than smile, but Manuela, who had turned to see what he had to say, seemed pleased that he liked it, too. She waved to them all to take their places, and they responded to the lure of the cake and cream and took seats around the trolley, Brunetti holding chairs for both her mother and Griffoni.
Manuela picked up the cake knife and looked tentatively at her mother, who nodded. Carefully, guiding her right hand with her left, Manuela set the point of the knife in the centre of the cake and cut down through it, then went back and cut an enormous piece, certainly twice as large as a normal piece would be.
‘Oh, good. May I have that one?’ Brunetti asked Manuela, knowing that Griffoni disliked sweet things.
She started to turn to her mother for approval but couldn’t wait and said, ‘Oh, yes, please.’ Manuela tried to lift the slice of cake but had to use the fingers of her left hand to guide it to a plate, which she passed to Brunetti. He thanked her effusively and leaned forward to slather a mound of cream on it. Taking it upon himself to help, he placed cups of coffee in front of Griffoni and Manuela’s mother and, assuming that it must be hers, a glass of what looked like Coca-Cola in front of Manuela’s empty chair.