been with me for some time now, and I have seen nothing that would explain that opinion. He is a decent and kind man. Perhaps he is too convinced of the lightness of his judgements, but that is something that can be said of most of us, I'm afraid. As we get older, some of us become less certain about what we think we know.'
'Apart from the certainty that we're never good enough to anyone?' Brunetti asked.
'That surely.'
Brunetti took this as the admonition it so clearly was and nodded in agreement. He saw that exhaustion had slipped into the room and taken its place in the old man's eyes and mouth.
'I would like to know how much he is to be trusted ’ Brunetti suddenly said.
The old man shifted his weight to one side of the chair, and then to the other. He was so frail that it was more a matter of shifting bones and the cloth that covered them. ‘I believe he deserves not to be distrusted, my son,' the priest said, and then added, looking secretly gleeful when he said it, 'but at my age that's advice I give about almost everyone, and to almost everyone.'
Brunetti proved incapable of resisting the temptation to ask, 'Unless they come from Rome?'
The old priest's face grew serious and he nodded.
'Then I'll take your advice as given,' Brunetti said, getting to his feet. 'And thank you for giving it to me.'
7
As he continued on the way to the Questura, Brunetti considered what the priest had told him. Decades of exposure, not only to criminality, but to the daily business of life, had worn from Brunetti the capacity for instinctive trust. Perhaps, like the Contessa's faith and in the face of experience, it was something a person had to choose.
Good sense interrupted his reflections to remind him that nothing anyone had told him mentioned any specific action on the part of Antonin that would or could render him suspect in any way. In fact, all Antonin had done was come to give a blessing at the funeral of the mother of an old friend: what prevented Brunetti, then, from viewing this as an act of simple generosity? Decades ago, Antonin had brushed past Brunetti with an abrasive edge, and then he had become a priest.
Despite his mother's fait h, anti-clericalism was part of Brunetti's genetic structure: his father had had only the worst to say about the clergy, an attitude explained by the contempt for power his experience of war had created in him. His mother had never offered opposition to her husband's beliefs just as she had never offered a good word about the clergy, though she was a woman who managed to find something good to say about most people - once even about a politician. These thoughts and memories kept pace with him as he walked back to work.
On his desk at the Questura, as he had feared, Brunetti discovered the fallout from Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta's attendance at the Berlin conference - no doubt transmitted by phone from his room at the Adlon. Their weekly 'crime alert' would next week be dedicated to the Mafia, no doubt with a view to extirpating it root and branch, something the country had been trying to do, with varying degrees of flaccidity, for more than a century.
He read through the copy of Patta's message, probably emailed to the Questura by Signorina Elettra from her own room in Abano Terme.
This is a war situation: we must consider ourselves to be at war with the Mafia, which is to be treated as a separate state existing within other states.
All of our forces to be mobilized.
Inter-agency cooperation to be maximized.
Liaison officer to be named.
Ministry of the Interior, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza contacts to be created and maintained.
Application to be made for special funding under Legge 41 bis.
Inter-Cultural dynamics to be stressed.
Brunetti stopped reading here, perplexed by the precise meaning of 'Inter-Cultural dynamics'. He knew from long experience that the people of the Veneto viewed things differently from those of Sicily, but he did not believe it was a gulf that
'Apart from the certainty that we're never good enough to anyone?' Brunetti asked.
'That surely.'
Brunetti took this as the admonition it so clearly was and nodded in agreement. He saw that exhaustion had slipped into the room and taken its place in the old man's eyes and mouth.
'I would like to know how much he is to be trusted ’ Brunetti suddenly said.
The old man shifted his weight to one side of the chair, and then to the other. He was so frail that it was more a matter of shifting bones and the cloth that covered them. ‘I believe he deserves not to be distrusted, my son,' the priest said, and then added, looking secretly gleeful when he said it, 'but at my age that's advice I give about almost everyone, and to almost everyone.'
Brunetti proved incapable of resisting the temptation to ask, 'Unless they come from Rome?'
The old priest's face grew serious and he nodded.
'Then I'll take your advice as given,' Brunetti said, getting to his feet. 'And thank you for giving it to me.'
7
As he continued on the way to the Questura, Brunetti considered what the priest had told him. Decades of exposure, not only to criminality, but to the daily business of life, had worn from Brunetti the capacity for instinctive trust. Perhaps, like the Contessa's faith and in the face of experience, it was something a person had to choose.
Good sense interrupted his reflections to remind him that nothing anyone had told him mentioned any specific action on the part of Antonin that would or could render him suspect in any way. In fact, all Antonin had done was come to give a blessing at the funeral of the mother of an old friend: what prevented Brunetti, then, from viewing this as an act of simple generosity? Decades ago, Antonin had brushed past Brunetti with an abrasive edge, and then he had become a priest.
Despite his mother's fait h, anti-clericalism was part of Brunetti's genetic structure: his father had had only the worst to say about the clergy, an attitude explained by the contempt for power his experience of war had created in him. His mother had never offered opposition to her husband's beliefs just as she had never offered a good word about the clergy, though she was a woman who managed to find something good to say about most people - once even about a politician. These thoughts and memories kept pace with him as he walked back to work.
On his desk at the Questura, as he had feared, Brunetti discovered the fallout from Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta's attendance at the Berlin conference - no doubt transmitted by phone from his room at the Adlon. Their weekly 'crime alert' would next week be dedicated to the Mafia, no doubt with a view to extirpating it root and branch, something the country had been trying to do, with varying degrees of flaccidity, for more than a century.
He read through the copy of Patta's message, probably emailed to the Questura by Signorina Elettra from her own room in Abano Terme.
This is a war situation: we must consider ourselves to be at war with the Mafia, which is to be treated as a separate state existing within other states.
All of our forces to be mobilized.
Inter-agency cooperation to be maximized.
Liaison officer to be named.
Ministry of the Interior, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza contacts to be created and maintained.
Application to be made for special funding under Legge 41 bis.
Inter-Cultural dynamics to be stressed.
Brunetti stopped reading here, perplexed by the precise meaning of 'Inter-Cultural dynamics'. He knew from long experience that the people of the Veneto viewed things differently from those of Sicily, but he did not believe it was a gulf that
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