‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, struck by how her choice of reading brought his attention back to her face and the changes it must have undergone.
‘Well, there’s the fact that she reads what she does, but there’s also her face. People immediately think what they want about her because of all the lifting.’
‘And what do you think they think?’ Brunetti asked.
The Conte turned to the portrait of the woman and studied it for some time. ‘We find that face strange,’ he observed, waving a negligent hand at the painting. ‘But in her epoch she was probably perfectly acceptable, perhaps even attractive. Whereas to us, she’s just a fat barrel of a woman with greasy skin.’ Then, unable to resist the temptation, he added, ‘Not unlike the wives of many of my business associates.’
Brunetti saw the similarities but said nothing.
‘In our times,’ the Conte went on, ‘Franca Marinello is not acceptable because of the way she looks. What she has done to her face is too unusual for most people to observe without comment.’ He paused; Brunetti waited. The Conte closed his eyes and sighed. ‘God knows how many of the wives of my friends have done it: the eyes, the chin, then the whole face.’ He opened his eyes and looked at the portrait, not at Brunetti. ‘So she’s doing what they’re doing, only she’s doing it to a degree that makes the whole thing grotesque.’ He looked at Brunetti and said, ‘I wonder, when women talk about her, whether they’re thinking about themselves and whether, by talking about her as though she were some sort of freak, they’re trying to assure themselves that they’d never do anything like that, that they’d stop themselves from going so far.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why she did it, though, does it?’ Brunetti asked, recalling that strange, otherworldly face.
‘God knows,’ the Conte said, then, after a moment, ‘Perhaps she told Donatella.’
‘Told her?’ Brunetti asked, wondering why Marinello should tell such a thing to anyone, let alone the Contessa.
‘Why she did it, of course. They’ve been friends since she was a girl at the university. Donatella has a cousin who’s a priest up there where she comes from, and Franca’s related to him somehow. He gave Donatella her name when she came to Venice and didn’t know anyone. And they became great friends.’ Then, before Brunetti could speak, the Conte said, holding up one hand, ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know how, only that Donatella thinks very highly of her.’ With a grin that was both boyish and mischievous, he asked, ‘Didn’t you wonder why she ended up opposite you?’
Of course he had. Brunetti said, ‘No, not really.’
‘Because Donatella knows how much Franca misses being able to talk about what she reads. You, too. So she agreed when I suggested that you would enjoy talking to her.’
‘I did.’
‘Good. Donatella will be pleased.’
‘Did she?’
‘Who?’
‘Signora Marinello,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Enjoy herself, that is.’
The Conte gave him a strange look, as though surprised by both his formality of address and his question, but said only, ‘I’ve no idea.’ Then, as if tired of this talk of a living woman, the Conte waved toward the painting, saying, ‘But we were talking of beauty. Someone thought this woman beautiful enough to paint her or commission a portrait of her, didn’t they?’
Brunetti considered the suggestion, then the painting, and reluctantly said ‘Yes.’
‘So someone, perhaps Franca herself, is likely to find what she has had done to her face beautiful,’ the Conte said. More soberly, he added, ‘I’ve heard talk that there’s someone else who does. You know what this town is like, Guido: there’s always talk.’
‘You mean there’s talk about another man?’
The Conte nodded. ‘Donatella let drop something the other evening, but when I tried to ask her what she meant, she realized she had said too much and went clam-like.’ He could not resist adding, ‘I imagine you are familiar with this behaviour in Paola.’
‘Am I not,’ Brunetti observed. After a moment’s reflection, he asked, ‘What else have you heard?’
‘Nothing. It isn’t exactly the sort of thing people tell me.’
Suddenly reluctant to prolong talk of Franca Marinello, Brunetti asked abruptly, ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’
Disappointment — and could it be offence? — flashed across the Conte’s face. Brunetti watched him prepare an answer, and eventually the Conte said, ‘There was no precise reason, Guido. I enjoy conversation with you: nothing more than that. And we seldom get to talk, what with one thing and another.’ He flicked a speck from his sleeve, then looked back at Brunetti and said, ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
Brunetti leaned across and placed his hand on the Conte’s forearm. ‘I’m delighted, Orazio,’ he said, unable to explain fully how touched he was by the Conte’s remark. Then he turned his attention back to the portrait of the woman. ‘Paola would probably say it’s the portrait of a woman, not a lady.’
The Conte laughed and said, ‘No, she won’t do, not at all, will she?’ He got to his feet and went over to the portrait of the young man, saying, ‘That, however, is something I’d like to have.’ He went to the back of the gallery to talk to the dealer, leaving Brunetti to contemplate the two paintings, the two faces, the two visions of what was beautiful.
By the time they had walked back to Palazzo Falier, Brunetti carrying the carefully wrapped portrait under one arm, and then discussed where to hang it, it was after nine.
The Contessa was not at home, Brunetti was disappointed to learn. In recent years, he had come to appreciate both her decency and her good sense, and he had half a mind to ask her if she would talk to him about Franca Marinello. Instead, he took his farewell of an unusually silent Conte, still warmed by their conversation and pleased that the older man took such pleasure in something as simple as a new painting.
He walked home slowly, vaguely discomfited, as he was every winter, by the early arrival of the darkness and oppressed by the dampness and cold that had been increasing since the morning. At the bottom of the bridge where he had first seen Franca Marinello and her husband, he paused to lean against the parapet, struck by how much he had learned in the last — how long had it been? — less than a week, he was surprised to realize.
Suddenly Brunetti recalled the Conte’s expression when he had asked why his father-in-law had wanted to speak to him, with its implication that he could be motivated only by self-interest. Brunetti had been concerned at first that his question had offended the Conte, but what he had failed to admit then was the other man’s pain. It was the pain of an old man who feared the rejection of his family, the expression he had seen on the faces of elderly people when they feared they were no longer loved, or had never been. The image of that bleak field in Marghera seeped back into his memory.
‘Sta bene, Signore?’ a young man asked, pausing beside him.
Brunetti looked at him, tried to smile, and nodded. ‘Yes, thank you,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking of something.’
The boy was wearing a bright red ski parka, his face surrounded by the fur that lined the hood. As Brunetti met his gaze, the boy’s face drifted slightly out of focus, and Brunetti wondered if this was what happened before people fainted. He turned to look out over the waters, seeking the other side of the Grand Canal, and saw the same cloudiness there. He placed his other hand on the parapet. He blinked, hoping to clear his sight, blinked again.