A Question of Belief - By Donna Leon Page 0,33

you can,’ Brunetti requested. He had hesitated before, but if Fontana was a dead end, perhaps she had best take a look at the other name that had appeared on the papers.

‘Luisa?’

‘Yes. Do you know her?’

‘No, but I used to work with her sister. At the bank. She was one of the assistant directors. Nice person.’

‘She ever have anything to say about her sister?’

‘Not that I can remember,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘But I suppose I can ask her. I see her once in a while on the street, and occasionally we have a coffee.’

‘Does she know where you work?’

‘No. I told her I got a job at the Commune: that’s usually enough to kill anyone’s interest.’

‘From what the person I spoke to said, I gather that Fontana is interested in her sister.’

‘And she’s not in him?’

‘No.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ she said and turned to her computer.

‘That’s very much like her,’ Paola said that evening, stretched out on the sofa and listening to him tell her about his conversation with Signorina Elettra and her remarks about dishonesty and deceit: ‘that she thinks it’s more dishonest to deceive a woman. I thought the days of feminine solidarity were over.’

‘It wasn’t exactly feminine solidarity, so far as I could tell,’ Brunetti replied. ‘I think it’s simply that she believes dishonesty is in proportion to how much trust you’re betraying, not to the lie you actually tell. And, from what she said, men are more indiscreet, more prone to boasting, and in those circumstances she thinks she’s got the right to use anything they say.’

‘And women?’

‘She thinks they need to trust people more before they reveal things.’

‘Or perhaps what women reveal is usually weakness, but what men talk about is strength,’ Paola suggested. She looked at her bare feet and wiggled her toes.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Think about the dinners we’ve been to, or conversations you’ve had with groups of men alone. There’s usually some tale of conquest: a woman, a job, a contract, even a swimming race. So it’s more boasting than confession.’ When he looked sceptical, she said, ‘Tell me you’ve never listened to a man boast about how many women he’s had.’

After a moment’s reflection, Brunetti said, ‘Of course I have,’ sitting up a bit straighter as he said it.

‘Women, at least women my age, would not do that in front of women they don’t know.’

‘And in front of the ones they do know?’ asked an astonished Brunetti.

Ignoring him, she said, in a completely different tone, ‘But deceit does have its uses: without it, and without betrayal, there’d be no literature.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti replied, not certain how talk of Signorina Elettra’s reflections on honesty had led them to the point of literature, however familiar that point was and however varied Paola’s wiles in getting them to it.

‘Think of it,’ she said, stretching an expansive arm towards him. ‘Gilgamesh is betrayed, so is Beowulf, so is Otello, someone leads the Persians around behind the Spartans . . .’

‘That’s history,’ Brunetti interrupted.

‘As you will,’ Paola conceded. ‘Then what about Ulysses? What is he if not the grand betrayer? And Billy Budd, and Anna Karenina, and Christ, and Isabel Archer: they’re all betrayed. Even Captain Ahab . . .’

‘By a whale?’

‘No, by his megalomania and his desire for revenge. You could say by his own weaknesses.’

‘Aren’t you stretching things a bit, Paola?’ he asked in a reasonable tone. Tired by a long day, his mind swirled off to the cases that weren’t cases, where he could proceed only unofficially and where he wasn’t even sure there was a crime. He had to consider two cases of what was probably human betrayal, and his wife wanted to talk about a whale.

She sobered instantly and turned to punch at the pillow lying against the arm of the sofa. ‘I was trying it out. To see if it might prove an interesting idea for an article.’

‘It’s wide of the field of Henry James, isn’t it?’ he asked, not absolutely certain that she had mentioned a James character in her list.

She grew even more sober. ‘I’ve been thinking that of late,’ she said.

‘Thinking what?’

‘That the world of Henry James is becoming very small for me.’

Brunetti got to his feet and looked at his watch: it was after eleven. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now,’ he said, too stunned to think of anything else to say.

13

The Ferragosto holiday seemed to expand each year, as people added days to either side of the official two-week period, in the hope of