indicating her computer screen, as if that would explain it all.
Brunetti was uncertain how useful this suggestion would be to his mother-in-law; nevertheless, he thanked her and went back to his office.
19
This computer stuff appeared to be catching: Brunetti found Vianello in front of the screen in the squad room, watching a man lay out cards on a table in front of him. Vianello’s chair was pushed back; his arms were folded, his feet propped up on an open drawer. Slightly behind him stood Zucchero, arms similarly folded, no less intent on the screen. Brunetti came in quietly and stood next to Vianello.
The man on the screen continued to stare at the cards on the table in front of him, showing only the top of his head and a pair of thick shoulders and round torso to the camera. He rubbed at his chin like a farmer studying the barometer, unsure of what to make of it. ‘You say this man has promised to marry you?’ he suddenly asked, his attention still on the cards.
A woman’s voice said from somewhere behind or above or below him, ‘Yes, he did. Many times.’
‘But he’s never named a date?’ The man’s voice could not possibly have been more neutral.
After a long hesitation, the woman answered, ‘No.’
The man raised his left hand and, with a delicate motion of a finger, shifted one of the cards a bit to the left. He raised his head and, for the first time, Brunetti saw his face. It was round, almost perfectly so, as though eyes and a nose and a mouth had been painted on a soccer ball, and then hair pasted across the forehead to make it look like a human head. Not only his head but his eyes were round, topped by thick eyebrows that were themselves perfect half-circles: the total effect was one of unvarnished innocence, as though this man had somehow just been born, perhaps just inside the entrance to the television studio, and the only thing he knew in life was how to turn over cards and stare out at his viewers, trying to help them understand what he read there.
Speaking now directly to that woman who was somewhere watching and heeding him, he asked, ‘Has he ever spoken specifically about when he intends to marry you?’
This time she took even longer to answer, and when she did, she began with an ‘Ummmm’ that was prolonged through the space of two normal breaths. Then she said, ‘He has to take care of some things first.’ Brunetti had heard evasion from people he had arrested, had listened to deliberate attempts to derail a line of questioning, had heard such things from masters. The woman was an amateur, her tactic so obvious as to cause laughter, were it not that she sounded so stricken when she spoke, as though she knew no one would believe her but could still not stop herself from trying to hide the obvious.
‘What things?’ the man asked, his gaze straight into the camera and, one felt, straight into the woman’s lying mouth and the man’s lying heart.
‘His separation,’ she said, her voice growing slower and softer with each syllable she pronounced.
‘ “His separation,” ’ the round-faced man repeated, each syllable a slow, heavy footstep towards truth.
‘It’s not final,’ she said. She tried to declare, but she could only implore.
The dialogue had taken place at such a slow pace that the lightning speed with which the man asked, ‘Has he even asked for a separation?’ startled Brunetti as it brought a gasp from the woman.
The sounds of her breathing filled the studio, filled the ears of the round-faced man, filled the airwaves. ‘What do the cards say?’ she asked, her voice close to a whimper.
Until now the man had sat so quietly that when he raised his hand to show the camera, and the woman, the cards that remained in his hand, the movement took Brunetti by surprise. ‘Do you really want to know what the cards have to tell you, Signora?’ he asked, voice far less sympathetic now.
When she finally answered, she said, ‘Yes. Yes. I have to know.’ After that came the continued sound of her pained breathing.
‘All right, Signora, but remember: I asked you if you wanted to know.’ His voice held the solemnity of a doctor asking a patient if they wanted to know the results of the laboratory tests.
‘Yes, yes,’ she repeated, all but pleading.
‘Va bene,’ he said and brought his hands together. Slowly, his