Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [105]
Morandi opened the door and stepped back to let his guest enter first. Knowing that this old man had been living alone in the apartment for three years, Brunetti had prepared himself to find disorder, if not worse, but nothing could have prepared him for what he found. The late afternoon sun flowed down the corridor from a room at the end. The light glistened up from the high-polished cotto Veneziano. It looked like the original surface, rarely seen in the higher floors of palazzi and today all but impossible to imitate and difficult to repair. Though the ceiling was not particularly high, the entrance hall was large, and the corridor was unusually broad.
‘You can see the Basilica from this room,’ Morandi said, starting down the corridor and leaving Brunetti to follow. There was no furniture against the walls, and there were no doors to the rooms on either side. Brunetti glanced into one room and saw that it was entirely empty, though the windows glistened and the floor gleamed up at him. After a moment, Brunetti realized how very cold it was, how the cold seeped up from the floor and through the walls.
In the last room, the view was, indeed, splendid, but there was so little furniture – a table and two chairs – that it had the feel of a house that was no longer lived in and was open only for inspection by prospective buyers. Off in the distance the domes bubbled up, their crosses poking the tiny balls that topped them at the sky, and beyond them Brunetti saw the back of the wings of the angel that looked out over the bacino. Behind him, Morandi said, ‘Maria used to stand there for hours, looking at it. It made her happy to see this. In the beginning.’ He came and stood next to Brunetti, and together they looked at the signs of the power of God and the power of the state, and Brunetti was struck by the majesty those things had once had, and had no longer.
‘Signor Morandi,’ he said, speaking in the formal ‘Lei’ and making no grammatical concession to the things the old man had told him, ‘were you telling me the truth when you said that, about wanting to lead a better life?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he answered instantly, sounding just like Brunetti’s children, years ago, doing their drills for catechism class.
‘No more lies?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No.’
Brunetti thought of those mind-twisters they had been given when they were in school. There was one about getting a hen and a fox and a cabbage across a river, and one about nine pearls on a scale, and one about the man who always lied. He had vague memories of the puzzles, but the answers had all fled. If Morandi always lied, then he would have to lie about not lying, wouldn’t he?
‘Would you swear on the heart of Maria Sartori that all you did was put your hands on Signora Altavilla’s shoulders and that you did not hurt her in any way?’
Beside him, the old man stood quietly. Then, like someone beginning their t’ai chi exercise, he let his arms go limp beside him, then raised his hands slowly, hands cupped towards the earth, to shoulder height. But instead of pulling them back to prepare to push against an invisible force, Morandi rested them on some invisibility in front of him. And then Brunetti watched his fingers tighten, and Morandi saw that Brunetti saw the motion.
The old man lowered his hands and said, ‘That’s all I did. But I didn’t hurt her.’
‘What was she wearing? And where were you?’
Morandi closed his eyes, this time putting his memory through the same routine. ‘We were in the hallway. Just in front of the door. I told you that. She never let me into the apartment, well, not more than a few steps from the door.’ He paused and lowered his head. ‘I don’t know what