Not more than a minute later, Paola glanced at her watch and said, ‘Oddio, I’ve got a student coming to my office at nine, and I haven’t even read his paper yet.’ She leaned forward and said down the table to her mother, ‘It seems I spend my life either doing my homework or having to read someone else’s.’
‘And never getting it done on time,’ the Conte added, but with affection and resignation, making it clear that he was not speaking in reproach.
‘Perhaps we should think about going home, as well, caro?’ Cataldo’s wife said, smiling at him.
Cataldo nodded and got to his feet. He moved behind his wife and pulled her chair back as she rose. He turned to the Conte. ‘Thank you, Signor Conte,’ he said with a small inclination of his head. ‘It was very kind of you and your wife to invite us. And doubly so because we had a chance to meet your family.’ He smiled in Paola’s direction.
Napkins were dropped on to the table, and Avvocato Rocchetto said something about needing to stretch his legs. When the Conte asked Franca Marinello if they would like him to have them taken home in his boat, Cataldo explained that his own would be waiting at the porta d’acqua. ‘I don’t mind walking one way, but in this cold, and late at night, I prefer going home in the launch,’ he said.
In staggered pairs, they made their way back through the salone, from which had already vanished all sign of the drinks that had been served there, and towards the front hall, where two of the evening’s servants helped them into their coats. Brunetti glanced aside and said softly to Paola, ‘And people say it’s hard to find good staff these days.’ She grinned but someone on his other side let out an involuntary snort of laughter. When he turned, he saw only Franca Marinello’s impassive face.
In the courtyard, the group exchanged polite farewells: Cataldo and his wife were led towards the porta d’ acqua and their boat; Rocchetto and his wife lived only three doors away; and the other couple turned in the direction of the Accademia, having laughed off Paola’s suggestion that she and Brunetti walk them to their home.
Arm in arm, Brunetti and Paola turned towards home. As they passed the entrance to the university, Brunetti asked, ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’
Paola stopped and looked him in the eye. Instead of answering, she asked, coolly, ‘And what, pray tell, was that all about?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti answered, stalling.
‘You beg my pardon because you don’t understand my question, or you beg my pardon because you spent the evening talking to Franca Marinello and ignoring everyone else?’
The vehemence of her question surprised Brunetti into bleating out, ‘But she reads Cicero.’
‘Cicero?’ asked an equally astonished Paola.
‘On Government, and the letters, and the accusation against Verres. Even the poetry,’ he said. Suddenly struck by the cold, Brunetti took her arm and started up the bridge, but her steps lagged and slowed him to a halt at the top.
Paola moved back to get perspective on his face, but kept hold of his hand. ‘You realize, I hope, that you are married to the only woman in this city who would find that an entirely satisfactory explanation?’
Her answer forced a sudden laugh from Brunetti. She added, ‘Besides, it was interesting to watch so many people at work.’
‘Work?’
‘Work,’ she repeated, and started down the other side of the bridge.
When Brunetti caught up with her, she continued unasked, ‘Franca Marinello was working to impress you with her intelligence. You were working to find out how someone who looks like her could have read Cicero. Cataldo was working to convince my father to invest with him, and my father was working to try to decide whether he should do it or not.’
‘Invest in what?’ Brunetti asked, all thought of Cicero banished.
‘In China,’ she said.
‘Oddio,’ was the only thing Brunetti could think of to say.
‘Why in God’s name would he want to invest in China?’ Brunetti demanded.
That stopped her. She came to a halt in front of the firemen’s dining hall, windows dark at this hour and no scent of food spilling into the calle. He was honestly puzzled. ‘Why China?’ he repeated.
She shook her head in a conscious imitation of complete befuddlement and looked around, as if seeking sympathetic ears. ‘Please, would someone tell me who this man is? I think I see him in the morning sometimes, beside me in bed, but this can’t be my husband.’
‘Oh, stop it, Paola, and tell me,’ he said, suddenly tired and in no mood for this.
‘How can you read two newspapers every day and not have any idea of why a person would want to invest in China?’
He took her arm and turned her towards home. He saw no sense in standing on a public street and discussing this, not when they could do it while heading for home, or in their bed. ‘Of course, I know all that,’ he said. ‘Soaring economy, fortunes to be made, stock market gone wild, no end in sight. But why would your father want any part of it?’
He felt her pace grow slower; fearing a pause for further rhetorical flourishes, he kept moving, forcing her to keep up with him. ‘Because my father has the ichor of capitalism flowing in his veins, Guido. Because, for hundreds of years, to be a Falier has been to be a merchant, and to be a merchant is to make money.’
‘This,’ Brunetti observed, ‘from a professor of literature who maintains she has no interest in money.’
‘That’s because I’m the end of the line, Guido. I’m the last person in our family who will carry the name: our children have yours.’ Her steps slowed, as did her voice, but she did not stop. ‘My father has made money all his life, thus permitting me, and our children, the luxury of not having to take an interest in making it.’
Brunetti, who had played what must have been thousands of games of Monopoly with his children, was sure that the capitalist gene had run true to form in them and that they already had the interest, perhaps even the ichor itself.
‘And he thinks there’s money to be made there?’ Brunetti asked, and then quickly added, if only to prevent her from again demanding how he could ask such a question, ‘Safe money?’
She turned to him again. ‘Safe?’
‘Well,’ he said, hearing himself how silly that had sounded, ‘Clean money?’
‘At least you accept that there’s a difference,’ she said with the bite of her years of voting Communist.
He said nothing for a while. Suddenly he stopped and asked, ‘What was all that about, what did your mother call it, “dietary peculiarities”? And all that nonsense about what the kids wouldn’t eat?’
‘Cataldo’s wife is a vegetarian,’ Paola said. ‘And my mother didn’t want to call attention to her, so I decided that I should be the one to — as you police people say — “take the fall”.’ She squeezed his arm.
‘And thus the fiction of my appetite?’ he could not prevent himself from asking.
Did she hesitate an instant? Regardless, she repeated, tugging his arm and smiling at him, ‘Yes. Thus the fiction of your appetite.’