By Its Cover (26 page)

Brunetti thought he should call to see if the guard was at the library and was glad he had when he learned that Sartor’s wife had called two days before to say he was very sick and would not be in until he felt better.

So as not to call special attention to their interest in Sartor, Brunetti told the person he thought was the young man who had been at the front desk that they wanted to
ask Piero – Brunetti was careful to use Sartor’s first name and say it in a friendly manner – if he could remember any other conversations he might have had with Nickerson but that it could easily wait until the following week.

When the young man asked if there had been any progress or if they thought there was any hope of getting the books back, Brunetti said, making himself sound sad, that he thought it unlikely. If for any reason the young man were to talk to Sartor, it was best the guard be told the police were pessimistic about finding the books.

When he hung up, Brunetti explained the missing half of the conversation to Griffoni, who had figured it out in any case.

Her voice could not have been more dispassionate when she said, ‘His wife called the day after you talked to him. The day after Franchini died.’

Brunetti called Signorina Elettra and asked her if Sartor’s address was on file. After a moment, she told him the guard lived two
calli
behind the Accademia, gave him the
numero civico,
and told him where to turn left, and then right.

Calle larga Nani. He hadn’t been there for years, perhaps decades. He remembered that there had been a tobacco shop on the corner, but beyond that, he had no memory of the place. They took the Number Two, got off at Accademia, and found the house with no difficulty, four doors down from the
tabaccaio
, who was still there.

Before Brunetti rang the bell, he looked at Griffoni, wondering if they should decide on a strategy for questioning Sartor. ‘We just
do
it,’ she said, and he realized she was right: there was no way to prepare for it. He rang the bell.

Minutes passed and no one answered. He rang again and asked himself why he had not thought of requesting a warrant
from a magistrate to search for other books. He feared the cause was his refusal to abandon his belief in readers.

The door opened. A woman who might have been in her fifties stood there: tall, too thin, haggard, confused to see people at her door. ‘Are you the doctor?’ she asked, staring first at one and then the other. ‘You said you couldn’t come, and now there’s two of you.’ She was puzzled, not angry. The dark circles under her eyes spoke of worry and lack of sleep, as did the way she glanced from one to the other, as if hoping to force one of them to speak.

‘We’ve come to see Signor Sartor,’ Brunetti said.

‘Then you
are
the doctor?’ she asked, in exasperation.

‘No, not a doctor.’ When she seemed to have registered that, he said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that he’s sick. What is it?’

She shook her head and looked more pained, more confused. ‘I don’t know. He came home two nights ago and said he was sick. He hasn’t said much since then.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In bed.’ Then, as if she thought they might be able to help, she said, ‘The Ospedale told me to call Sanitrans to take him there, but I told them we can’t afford that, and besides, he won’t go. That was …’ she looked at her watch and continued, ‘two hours ago. I had to go out to call: I can’t find Piero’s
telefonino
, and we don’t have a phone in the house any more. So I thought maybe they changed their minds and finally sent a doctor.’ She gave a short smile, little more than a grimace, and said, ‘He really won’t go.’

‘If you’d like us to try, Signora,’ Griffoni said in a soft voice. ‘We could call the Guardia Medica.’

A young couple appeared at the far end of the
calle
, and the woman said, ‘Come inside, please.’ She put her hand on Griffoni’s arm and all but pulled her into the house. Brunetti followed, and the woman closed the door behind them and stood with her back against it, looking relieved.

He was surprised to see that they were not standing in an entrance hall but in what must be the living room of the apartment itself. It was on the ground floor, with windows to the
calle
on either side of the door, both of them protected by heavy curtains and, visible in the narrow opening that let in a bit of light, bars. A light fixture hung from the centre of the ceiling and tried to illuminate the room. An enormous old-fashioned television with a rabbit-eared antenna stared at a spavined green sofa. There was nothing else in the room: no chairs, nothing on the walls, no carpets. Nothing. It looked as though human locusts had passed through but had scorned the television and the sofa and had decided to leave the single light bulb to its futile attempt to relieve the gloom. The tile floor glistened with humidity as if to show its eternal resistance to sun or warmth or the arrival of springtime.

The woman stood with one arm across her chest, hand gripping the opposite shoulder, her lips pulled tight, still not certain who they were or why they were there. She blinked a few times to try to get them into clearer focus. She took a step to one side and braced herself on the back of the sofa.

‘Signora?’ Griffoni asked. ‘Have you had anything to eat today?’

The woman’s head swivelled to look at her. ‘What?’

‘Have you had anything to eat today?’

‘No, no, of course not. I’m too busy,’ she said with an agitation of hands.

‘Could I trouble you for a glass of water, do you think?’ Griffoni asked.

Her request seemed to reignite the sense of social obligation that required the neighbours not to know anything about what was going on. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘Come with me. I can offer you a coffee. We still have some.’ She
turned away from the sofa and, now that their eyes had adjusted to the diminished light, Brunetti and Griffoni saw a curtained doorway leading off to the left. The woman started towards it, Griffoni a step behind her. As she reached to pull the curtain aside, she looked back at Brunetti and pointed to a door behind the sofa. ‘My husband’s in there. Maybe he’ll …’ she began, but abandoned the sentence as if she were no longer able to think of what her husband might do.

Brunetti waited until he heard the sound of water running, followed by the clash of metal on metal. He had seen that look of parched desolation on the faces of victims of crime or people who had been involved in accidents. Get sugar and water into them; something to eat if you could. Keep them warm. It was then he realized how cold the room was, the humidity complicit in making it worse.

He walked to the door and opened it without bothering to knock. The smell hit him, the fetid, dank stink of an animal’s cage or the home of an old person who had given up on life and ceased to bathe or eat with any regularity. The fact that the room was warm made it worse. He searched for the source and saw an electric heater in the corner, five red bars glowing in defiance of the cold. Light filtered in through a single curtained window, illuminating little but giving shape to the few objects in the room: a double bed, a small table, and an empty glass. The locusts had passed through here, as well. They had overlooked the man in the bed, lying on his back, eyes closed. A grubby white sheet was folded back over the top of a dark blue blanket.

Sartor’s face was rough with beard; the light from the window hollowed and darkened the cheek it illuminated. The collar of his T-shirt exposed his stubble-covered neck. His breathing was audible.

The room was so small that two steps brought Brunetti close to the side of the bed. A chair stood beside it; he sat. Nestled in the hair on Sartor’s neck, Brunetti saw, was a small coral bull’s horn on a silver chain, worn by many men – though usually in the South – as a totem to ward off bad luck and call down good.

He had left the door of the room open in automatic response to the smell: he decided to leave it: cold was better than this. He heard a ping that might have been a cup or, he hoped, a plate. When he turned his attention back to Sartor, he realized the man’s breathing had quickened. Sudden footsteps approached, and Brunetti got to his feet, reluctant to permit either of the women into the room.

When the footsteps passed away, moving down the
calle
and away from the house, Brunetti was struck by the strangeness of living in a place where you had no idea if people were in the house with you or out on the street. He sat down again and said, careful to speak in a normal voice, ‘Signor Sartor, it’s Brunetti. We met at the library.’

Sartor opened his eyes and looked at him. Brunetti saw recognition in them; Sartor nodded and said, ‘Yes, I remember.’

‘I came because of the books.’

This time Sartor did no more than nod.

Changing the subject, Brunetti said, ‘You’ve been in bed for two days, is that right?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not really.’

‘Then why are you in bed?’ Brunetti asked, posing it as a normal question.

‘There’s nowhere else I can go.’

‘You could go to work. You could go for a walk. You could go to a bar for a coffee.’

Sartor moved his head from side to side on the pillow. ‘No. That’s over.’

‘What is?’ Brunetti asked.

‘My life.’

Brunetti let his surprise show. ‘But you’re talking to me, and your wife is in the kitchen, so your life isn’t over.’

‘Yes it is,’ he said with childlike insistence.

‘Why do you think that?’

Sartor closed his eyes for a moment, opened them and looked at Brunetti. ‘Because I’ll lose my job.’

‘Why is that?’ Brunetti asked innocently.

Sartor stared at him and then closed his eyes. Brunetti sat and waited. After more than a minute, Sartor opened his eyes and said, ‘I stole books.’

‘From the library?’

Sartor nodded.

‘Why did you steal them?’

‘To pay him.’

‘Pay who?’ Brunetti asked, doing his best to sound confused.

‘Tertullian. Franchini.’

‘Pay him what? Why?’ Brunetti asked. He thought there could be only one reason a gambler would have to pay someone.

‘He gave me money. Lent me.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Brunetti said. ‘Why would you borrow money from him?’

‘To pay other debts,’ Sartor said. He closed his eyes and pulled his mouth tight at the thought of those debts.

‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I needed money. Two years ago. So I went to someone who lends it.’

‘Not to a bank?’

Sartor dismissed the idea with a heavy snort. ‘Someone in the city.’

‘Ah, I understand,’ Brunetti said. There were more than a few usurers in Venice: sign your house over as collateral and you can have what you want. Your mother’s gold? Your father’s life insurance? Your furniture? Nothing easier. Sign here and you can have whatever money you need. Only 10 per cent interest. Per month. Everything they did was indecent; nothing could be done to stop them.

‘We had to pay interest every month. We gave him that, but then he wanted the money back.’ Brunetti found it interesting that Sartor borrowed the money, but ‘we’ had to pay it back.

‘When did this start?’

‘I told you: two years ago. We managed for a year, paying the interest, but then it got to be too much.’ One of Sartor’s hands contracted under the covers, bunching and pulling at the sheet and blanket. ‘When he told me he wanted the money back, I said we couldn’t pay it.’ His hand emerged to finger the coral horn for a moment, then slipped back to safety. ‘He came here with a friend and talked to my wife.’ He left it to Brunetti to imagine the tenor of that conversation.

‘So you asked Franchini to lend it to you?’ Brunetti asked.

The question shocked Sartor. ‘No. Of course not. He was one of our readers.’

Brunetti was no less shocked by the answer than by the vehemence with which Sartor gave it.

The rhythm of these conversations changed constantly, Brunetti knew: it was time for even more softness. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘How did it happen, then?’

He watched as Sartor tried to formulate an answer, saw the way he pulled his lips inside his teeth, as if by closing
his mouth like that, he could remain silent for a longer time; perhaps until Brunetti forgot about the question.

Brunetti sat and waited. He imagined that he was a plant, perhaps a lilac bush, and he had just dug his roots into this chair. If he sat here long enough he would become a permanent part of the chair, of the room, of Sartor’s life: the man would never rid himself of the sight of Brunetti, rooted into his life.

‘One day,’ Sartor finally said, ‘when he was leaving the library – we always exchanged a few words when he came in and when he left – he said he thought I looked worried and asked if there was anything he could do to help me.’

‘You knew he had been a priest?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘And we went and had a coffee, and I told him – like you say, he was a priest once – that I was worried about money.’ Brunetti did not see the connection, believing that priests were meant for other things, but he said nothing. ‘He offered to lend it to me. I said I couldn’t take it, and he said if I wanted, we could make it official.’

‘Official?’

‘With a paper that I’d sign.’ A hand emerged from the covers to make a signing gesture in the air.

‘So there was interest?’

‘No,’ Sartor said, sounding almost offended. ‘Just that he had lent me the money.’

‘How much was it?’

He watched Sartor get ready to lie, and then he did. ‘A thousand Euros.’

Brunetti nodded in apparent belief.

There was a long pause, as if Sartor could, by wishing, make all of this be over.

Brunetti was tiring of it, of the lies and delays, and so he asked, to hurry things, ‘And then what happened?’

The look Sartor flashed at him suggested Brunetti had nudged him too hard or insulted him. He turned his head away and stared at the wall. Brunetti waited.

‘After a few months, Franchini told me he needed the money back,’ Sartor muttered, to the wall. ‘But I didn’t have it. When I told him that, he said I could help him, instead.’