Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [58]
He turned back; his glance met Brunetti’s, and he asked in a level voice, ‘What is it you want to know?’
Brunetti considered for a moment whether he should perhaps ask what the man meant. But Dottor Grandesso held his glance, and Brunetti saw that this was a man who had no time to waste. The expression, so often used as a cliché, came to him with stunning force. The doctor had an appointment, not with him, and not one that anyone wanted to keep, but there was no avoiding it.
‘I want to know if there is any reason a person might have wanted to do her an injury,’ Brunetti said. Hearing himself say it, he felt a sudden chill, as though he had been asked to put a coin in this man’s mouth to pay for his voyage to the other world or, worse, had given him some heavy burden to take with him.
‘If I were somehow able to call Rizzardi, would he tell me that she died of a heart attack?’ the doctor asked.
‘Yes.’
Grandesso looked away from Brunetti, as if examining the shuttered window across the calle in search of what to say. ‘You’re not a religious man, are you?’
‘No.’
‘But were you raised believing?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti had no choice but to admit.
‘Then you remember the feeling when you came out of confession – when you still believed in it, I mean – and you felt elevated – if that’s the right word – by being rid of your guilt and shame. The priest said the words, you said the prayers, and your soul was somehow clean again.’
Brunetti nodded. Yes, he remembered it and was wise enough to be glad he had had the experience.
The other man must have read Brunetti’s face, for he continued. ‘I know it sounds strange, but she had a capacity that reminded me of that. She’d listen to me. Just sit there and smile at me and sometimes hold my hand, and I’d tell her things I’ve never told anyone since my wife died.’ He disappeared behind closed eyes, and when he came back, he said, ‘And some things I never told my wife, I’m afraid. After that, she’d squeeze my hand, and I felt relieved at having been able, finally, to tell someone.’ The doctor tried to raise a hand to make some sort of gesture but managed to lift it only a few centimetres from the bed before it fell back. ‘She didn’t ask, never seemed curious in any prurient sense: maybe it was the stillness in her that made me want to tell her things. And she was never judgemental, never showed surprise or disapproval. All she did was sit there and listen.’
Brunetti wanted to ask what he had told her but could not do it. He told himself it was respect for the doctor’s situation, but he knew that some sort of religious taboo prevented him from daring to break the seal of that confessional, at least in the presence of one of the speakers. Instead, he asked, ‘Do you think she listened to everyone the same way?’
Something that might have been a smile flashed across the doctor’s face, but his mouth was too thin for it to register on his lips. ‘Do you mean do I think that everyone talked to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know. It would depend on the person. But you know how old people love to talk, and love most to talk about themselves. Ourselves.’
He went on. ‘I’ve seen her with them, and I think most of them would talk to her freely. And if they thought she could actually forgive them, then …’ His voice trailed away.
Brunetti could resist his curiosity no longer. ‘Did you?’
He struggled to move his head, but when he failed to do that, he said, ‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, like you, Signore,’ the doctor said, and this time the smile did reach his lips, ‘I don’t believe in absolution.’
17
It suddenly occurred to Brunetti to wonder how this bedridden man had managed to see Signora Altavilla in the company of other people. ‘Is this something you observed, Dottore?’ he asked.
The doctor was some time in answering him. ‘I haven’t always been like this,’ he replied simply, as if to declare that the time for explanations had run out, and fact was all he had time for now.
Brunetti remained silent