The door opened again, and a rush of icy wind blew two young girls in before it. They wore ski parkas lined with fur that burst out and surrounded their glowing faces, thick boots, leather gloves, and woollen slacks. From the look of them, they were American, or possibly German; if they were rich enough, it was often hard to tell.
‘Oh, Kimberly, are you sure this is the place?’ the first one said in English, sweeping the place with her emerald eyes.
‘It said so in the book, Alison. Nico’s is, like, famous.’ (She pronounced ‘Nico’ to rhyme with ‘sicko’, a word Brunetti had picked up at his last Interpol convention.) ‘It’s famous for gelato.’
It took a moment for the possibility of what might be about to happen to register on Brunetti. The instant it did, he sipped quickly at his grog, which was still so hot it burned his tongue. Patient, he took his spoon and began vigorously to stir the drink, moving it up high on the sides of the glass in hopes that this would somehow force it to cool more rapidly.
‘Oh there it is, I bet, under those round lid things,’ the first one said, coming to stand next to Brunetti and peering over the bar, down at where Nico’s famous gelato, production severely cut back in acknowledgement of the season, did indeed lie under those round lid things. ‘What flavour do you want?’
‘Do you think they’d have Heath Bar?’
‘Nah, not in Italy.’
‘Yeah, I guess not. I guess we’re gonna have to stick to, like, basics.’
The barman approached, smiling in acknowledgement of their beauty and radiant good health, to make no mention of their courage. ‘Si?’ he asked, smiling.
‘Do you have any gelato?’ one of them asked, pronouncing the last word loudly, if not correctly.
Without a pause, apparently accustomed to this, the barman smiled again and reached behind him to pull two cones from a tall pile on the counter.
‘What flavour?’ he asked in passable English.
‘What flavours have you got?’
‘Vaniglia, cioccolato, fragola, fior di latte, e tiramis ù .’
The girls looked at each other in great perplexity. ‘I guess we better stick with vanilla and chocolate, huh?’ one asked. Brunetti could no longer distinguish between them, so similar was the bored nasality of their voices.
‘Yeah, I guess.’
The first one turned to the barman and said, ‘Due vanilla and chocolatto, please.’
In a moment, the deed was done, the cones made and handed across the counter. Brunetti found the only consolation he could in taking a long drink of his grog, holding the half-full glass under his nose for a long time after he had swallowed.
The girls had to remove their gloves to take the cones, then one of them had to hold both cones while the other dug into her pockets for four thousand lire. The barman handed them napkins, possibly in the hope that this would keep them inside while they ate the ice cream, but the girls were not to be stopped. They took the napkins and wrapped them carefully around the base of the cones, pushed open the door, and disappeared into the increasing gloom of the afternoon. The bar filled with the sad boom of another boat as it crashed against the wharf.
The barman glanced at Brunetti. Brunetti met his eyes. Neither said a word. Brunetti finished the grog, paid, and left.
It was fully dark now, and Brunetti found himself eager to be at home, out of this cold, and away from the wind that still sliced across the open space along the waterside. He crossed in front of the French consulate, then cut back alongside the Giustiniani Hospital, a dumping ground for the old, and headed towards home. Because he walked quickly, it took him only ten minutes to get there. The entrance hall smelled damp, but the pavement was still dry. The sirens for acqua alta had sounded at three that morning, waking them all, but the tide had turned before the waters had seeped up through the chinks in the pavement. The full moon was only a few days away, and it had been raining heavily up north in Friuli, so there was a chance that the night would bring the first real flooding of the year.
At the top of the stairs, inside his home, he found what he wanted: warmth, the scent of a fresh-peeled tangerine, and the certainty that Paola and the children were at home. He hung his coat on one of the pegs beside the door and went into the living room. There he found Chiara, propped on her elbows at the table, holding a book open with one hand and stuffing peeled sections of tangerine into her mouth with the other. She looked up as he came in, smiled broadly, and held out a section of tangerine to him. ‘Ciao, Pap à .’
He came across the room, glad of the warmth, suddenly aware of how cold his feet were. He stood beside her and bent down far enough to allow her to pop a section of tangerine into his mouth. Then another, and another. While he chewed, she finished the peeled sections that lay on a dish beside her.
‘Papà, you hold the match,’ she said, reaching across the table and handing him a book of matches. Obedient, he peeled one off and lit it, holding the flame towards her. From, the pile on the table beside her, she selected a piece of tangerine peel and bent it until the two inner sides touched. As she did, a fine mist of oil shot out from the cracking skin and flared up in a blazing rocket of coloured flames. ‘Che bella’, Chiara said, eyes wide with delight that never seemed to diminish, no matter how many times they did this.
‘Are there any more?’ he asked.
‘No, Papà, that was the last one.’ He shrugged but not before a look of real sorrow flashed across her face. ‘I’m sorry I ate them all, Papà. There are some oranges. Do you want me to peel you one?’
‘No, angel, that’s all right. I’ll wait till dinner.’ He leaned to the right and tried to look into the kitchen. ‘Where’s Mamma?’
‘Oh, she’s in her study,’ Chiara said, turning back to her book. ‘And she’s in a really bad mood, so I don’t know when we’re going to eat.’
‘How do you know she’s in a bad mood?’ he asked.
She looked straight up at him and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, Papà, don’t be silly. You know what she’s like when she’s in one of her moods. Told Raffi she couldn’t help him with his homework, and she yelled at me because I didn’t take the rubbish downstairs this morning.’ She propped her chin on both fists and looked down at her book. ‘I hate it when she’s like that.’
‘Well, she’s been having a lot of trouble at the university, Chiara.’
She turned a page. ‘Oh, you always stick up for her. But she’s no fun when she’s like that.’
‘I’ll go and talk to her. Maybe that will help.’ Both of them knew the unlikelihood of this but, the optimists of the family, they smiled to each other at the possibility.