Free The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon

more than enough to get the envelope, however slowly, to Italy. There had been a herd of elephants from India, ­near-­fluorescent birds from Indonesia, and a mob of kangaroos from Australia. He still remembered them all, as did the kids.
    Brunetti hadn’t heard from Lolo in more than a year, even though they now communicated by email. No stamps, alas. It delighted him to see Lolo’s name on the list, for it meant that he must be spending time in Venice; only after that did it occur to him to be glad of it for professional reasons. Lolo was not a fool, and Brunetti had always thought him to be an honest person. He made a mental note to contact Lolo.
    He returned to his consideration of the list. One of the nobles on it had years ago rented an apartment to a friend of Brunetti’s, who had discovered only when he moved in that the elevator shaft also served as a conduit of smells from the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor. The smell from the elevator filled the landing in front of their door, but worse came from an exhaust shaft that ran past their bedroom and flooded it with the same odours. Giving in to the landlord’s threats of legal action should they break their contract by leaving, they had, in the end, been forced to pay three thousand euros to be quit of the place, and of him. Seeing this noble name on the ‘Honorary Board’ brought Brunetti a smile and a sense of the rightness of the world.
    Alessandro ­Vittori-­Ricciardi was listed among the members of the ‘Administrative Board’, whatever that was. He was in company with a count and a viscount as well as three lesser mortals.
    It was only after Brunetti finished reading through the list a second time that he noticed that fewer than half of the names were Italian. Then he saw that some appeared on the list twice. He marvelled at the various categories into which they were divided, each group with a title. He recalled being at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, at a particularly tedious performance of something by Verdi; so many years had passed that he couldn’t now remember what the opera had been. During one of the intermissions, he had opened the programme and found the seemingly endless list of patrons: at least the Americans had the courage of their vulgarity and listed them according to how much they gave.
    His ­father-­in-­law had once told Brunetti that he joined only the boards of ­profit-­making enterprises. ‘They don’t fool around and waste your time by inviting you to parties,’ he said, ‘and they don’t expect you to pay to get your name on the list.’
    Contessa ­Lando-­Continui was on the International Board, third in a list that was not in alphabetical order, and that left Brunetti curious about the ranking system and what spats and sulkings must have arisen from it.
    He recalled a remark that Conte Falier’s daughter, his own dear wife, had made, not about boards, but about Brunetti’s response to the people who sat on them. ‘I’d hoped you’d learn to leave your past behind you, Guido, and forget your class prejudices,’ she’d said to him once, years ago, after listening to him criticize the appointment of the new Rector of the University, who bore the surname of two doges. ‘If his name were Scarpa, you wouldn’t think his appointment worthy of comment.’
    Brunetti had burned with embarrassment for a week, a feeling that returned whenever he caught himself taking pot shots at the rich and nobly born. His was hardly the resentment of the son of toiling workers, protesting because they had not been recognized for their efforts. His father had returned from the war a hopeless layabout who saw no reason to work if he could avoid it.
    As though his spirit had been given a thwack on the head with a ­rolled-­up newspaper, Brunetti looked at the list again and told himself that he, and all Venetians, should