Unto Us a Son Is Given Read online

  Also by Donna Leon

  Death at La Fenice

  Death in a Strange Country

  Dressed for Death

  Death and Judgment

  Acqua Alta

  Quietly in Their Sleep

  A Noble Radiance

  Fatal Remedies

  Friends in High Places

  A Sea of Troubles

  Willful Behavior

  Uniform Justice

  Doctored Evidence

  Blood from a Stone

  Through a Glass, Darkly

  Suffer the Little Children

  The Girl of His Dreams

  About Face

  A Question of Belief

  Drawing Conclusions

  Handel’s Bestiary

  Beastly Things

  Venetian Curiosities

  The Jewels of Paradise

  The Golden Egg

  My Venice and Other Essays

  By its Cover

  Gondola

  Falling in Love

  The Waters of Eternal Youth

  Earthly Remains

  The Temptation of Forgiveness

  Donna Leon

  Unto Us a Son Is Given

  Copyright © 2019 by Donna Leon and Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich

  Cover design by Cindy Hernandez

  Cover photograph © Hayden Verry / Getty Images

  Endpaper Map © Martin Lubikowski, ML Design, London

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

  Simultaneously published in Great Britain in 2019 by William Heinemann.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Grove Atlantic edition: March 2019

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

  ISBN 978-0-8021-2911-6

  eISBN 978-0-8021-4682-3

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  19 20 21 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Maxim Emelyanychev

  The good we wish for, often proves our bane.

  I pray’d for children, and I gain’d a son,

  And such a son, as all men hail’d me happy.

  But who’d be now a father in my stead?

  The blessing drew a scorpion’s tail behind.

  Handel, Samson, Act I, Scene 3

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Donna Leon

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Back Cover

  1

  ‘You know I don’t like to meddle in things,’ Conte Falier told Brunetti. ‘But since, in this case, he’s so close to me, I feel I don’t have a choice, not really.’ Brunetti, seated opposite his father-in-law in one of the overripe armchairs that filled Palazzo Falier, had been listening to the older man for some time, aware of how difficult il Conte was finding it to begin telling the story he obviously wanted Brunetti to hear.

  Il Conte had called him that morning and asked if Brunetti would have time to stop by and have a drink on his way home from work because there was something he’d like to ask him about. Brunetti’s first response, given that it was a warm day in early spring, had been to calculate the easiest way to walk from the Questura to the palazzo without becoming entrapped in the by now normal migration paths of the herds of tourists. Because of the clear sky and benevolent temperature, walking up Riva degli Schiavoni would be impossible, crossing Piazza San Marco an act of madness. The vaporetti coming from the Lido, however, were generally no more than jammed, not too crowded to board, so he had accepted the invitation, tossing to the winds his usual reluctance to use public transportation when he could walk, and had taken the Number One to Ca’ Rezzonico and arrived early.

  ‘I don’t like gossip,’ il Conte insisted, recalling Brunetti’s attention. ‘Never have.’

  ‘Then you’re living in the wrong city,’ Brunetti replied mildly, smiling as he said it to remove the sting. ‘And probably should avoid speaking to other Venetians.’

  The Count’s answering smile was broad and relaxed. ‘The first is not true, as you know,’ he told Brunetti. Then, his smile even warmer now, he continued, ‘The second might well be true, but if it is, there’s nothing I can do about it: it’s too late. I’ve known Venetians all my life.’

  ‘Is one of them the source of this gossip about Gonzalo?’ Brunetti asked, interested that his father-in-law would want to discuss gossip about his best friend and curious to know more.

  ‘Yes. And he’s a lawyer.’ Perhaps thinking that Brunetti would ask him who, il Conte held up a restraining hand and said, ‘It doesn’t matter who told me. It’s the story that’s important.’

  Brunetti nodded in agreement. Like most Venetians, he was accustomed to swimming in the swirling froth of information and misinformation that flowed through so much of daily life; unlike most Venetians, however, he took little pleasure in it: long and tangled experience had shown him how unreliable most of it was. Brunetti the police commissario had heard tales so scabrous they reddened his cheeks, and Brunetti the reader was familiar with Suetonius’ descriptions of the pleasures of Tiberius. Brunetti the thinker, however, knew how prone Venetians were to exaggerate the deeds of those they’d never met, how careless of the consequences of what they blithely repeated, how fundamentally unreliable they were.

  He was certainly interested in what people did, but he seldom believed they had actually done it until he had accumulated sufficient evidence. Thus whatever his father-in-law might have been told was, to Brunetti, a case to be proven, not a truth to be believed.

  While he waited for il Conte to make up his mind about how to tell him, Brunetti’s own thoughts turned to a decision the family had been avoiding and postponing for years: what to do with the family villa near Vittorio Veneto, which il Conte and la Contessa no longer used and where Brunetti’s family had all but stopped going
during the summer. As the family dithered, water had started to seep in under the north-facing windows, and the caretaker had announced he wanted a significant raise in salary.

  As if he’d read Brunetti’s thoughts, il Conte said, ‘It’s not the villa I want to talk about, however much Gonzalo sometimes reminds me of it.’

  Brunetti, surprised by the comparison, said, ‘I didn’t know he had water coming in under his head.’

  Il Conte ignored Brunetti’s lack of seriousness and insisted on explaining his remark. ‘You got to know them both at about the same time, Guido; you had a lot of happy times in their company; and now both of them are showing the effects of time.’

  His parents-in-law’s friend, Paola’s godfather and unofficial uncle, Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejeda had been part of the Falier family for as long as Brunetti could remember. He had come from London for Brunetti and Paola’s tenth anniversary dinner, when he had given them a piece of twelfth-century Kufic pottery, desert-pale, about the size of a salad bowl, decorated with what they had always assumed was a Koranic inscription running up the inner sides. A prescient Gonzalo had had the bowl suspended inside a Plexiglas box that could be hung on the wall and thus help the bowl avoid the assaults and accidents that afflict any house with small children. It still hung on the wall of the living room, between the two windows that gave a distant view to the bell tower of San Marco.

  In recent years, Brunetti and Gonzalo had occasionally met on the street, or in a shop, or a café, and they had always been happy, chatty times spent drinking un’ombra or a coffee. They’d met by chance some months before on the street near Campo Santi Apostoli. When he entered the campo, Brunetti saw Gonzalo coming towards him, a hand raised in salutation, and noticed that the older man’s hair had passed from iron to snow, although as he approached Brunetti, his back was as upright as a drill sergeant’s, and his glance still a piercing blue, perhaps the trace left behind by some Northern invader of Spain.

  They’d embraced, said how glad they were to see one another, the older man adding – speaking in an Italian entirely devoid of accent – that he was late for an appointment and couldn’t stop to talk, but to say hello to Paola and the kids, and kiss them all for him.

  He’d touched Brunetti’s cheek with his hand in a sign of affection he often used, then said he really had to go, turned and walked away quickly towards Fondamenta Nuove and the palazzo where he lived. Brunetti had stood still and watched him go, happy to have seen him, as he was always happy to see Gonzalo. He had resumed walking, and then, for no particular reason, paused and turned to look for the retreating back of the man making his way through the crowds. At first, looking for someone walking quickly, Brunetti had failed to see him, but then he’d noticed a tall form, moving away, but slowly, head bowed, elbow jutting out, one hand placed on his hip, as though to quell some secret pain. Brunetti glanced away immediately, as though he’d come upon the man doing something embarrassing and wanted not to see him do it.

  Pulling himself back from his reverie, Brunetti saw that il Conte was watching him carefully. The older man asked, ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘A couple of months ago, perhaps a bit more,’ Brunetti answered. ‘We met in Santi Apostoli but only for long enough to say hello.’

  ‘How did he seem to you?’

  ‘He seemed like his old self, I’d say,’ Brunetti answered, automatically defending one old man from having to hear that a friend had succumbed to the forces that were lying in wait for both of them.

  Avoiding il Conte’s gaze, Brunetti studied the portrait of a young gentleman hanging on the far wall and felt his gaze returned. Vibrant with youth, muscles screaming to be freed of the stillness demanded by his pose, he stood with his left hand on his hip, the other on the pommel of his sword. No doubt he was an ancestor of Paola, some distant Falier who had died in battle, or of disease, or drink, leaving behind this image of himself to show what he had been when he had been.

  Brunetti saw, perhaps fancifully, some traces of Paola’s face in the young man’s, though hundreds of years had softened the angles in hers, leaving only – at least in times of sudden anger – the hawk’s eye seeking its prey.

  ‘You really had no time to talk?’

  Brunetti shook his head.

  Il Conte lowered his glance, pressed both hands on his thighs and kept his eyes on them. What a handsome man he still was, Brunetti thought. He took the opportunity provided by il Conte’s obvious distraction to have a closer look at him and was surprised to realize that his father-in-law had grown smaller since the last time they’d met. No, since the last time he had paid attention to the older man’s appearance. Though his shoulders were narrower, il Conte’s jacket still held those thinner shoulders in a soft embrace. Perhaps he had had it altered, but then Brunetti noticed that it had that year’s lapels and so was new.

  Il Conte continued to study the back of his hands, as if looking for an answer there, then he glanced across at Brunetti and said, ‘Your situation is always ambiguous, isn’t it, Guido?’

  Was that a question, Brunetti asked himself, or a statement of the Conte’s opinion? Did it refer to the difference in rank between him, the son of a man from the lower classes whose life had been a series of defeats, and his wife, daughter of il Conte Falier and heiress to one of the largest fortunes in the city? Or perhaps between his professional responsibilities and the demands that friendship and love might make upon him? Or was it his situation as a commissario of police married into the family of this man before him, whose business dealings might not bear close examination?

  Unwilling to ask to what part of his life il Conte was referring, Brunetti temporized by saying, ‘I think many of us lead ambiguous lives. The world we live in makes that necessary.’

  The older man nodded and moved his hands to the arms of his chair, where they rested easily. ‘I remember, years ago, Paola came home for a visit while she was at university in England. Most of the time she was here, she was reading a book she had to write a paper about.’ His face softened at the memory of his only child, home from school, doing her homework.

  Brunetti waited, familiar with the Conte’s narrative habits.

  ‘It wasn’t until the third day that she talked about the book and what she wanted to say in her essay.’

  ‘What did she tell you?’ Why, he wondered, are we always so interested in the past experiences of our best beloved?

  ‘That I should read it,’ the Conte revealed. ‘I tried to, but not until she’d gone back to England.’ He shook his head as if confessing something. ‘I’m not drawn to that sort of thing – it was a religious book – and I couldn’t read it.’

  ‘What book was it?’ Brunetti asked, curious about what Paola would have been reading while a student.

  ‘The Cloud of Unknowing,’ the Conte said and paused. ‘I’ve always thought it would be a wonderful title for an autobiography. For anyone.’ His smile widened, and Brunetti smiled in return.

  Brunetti let a few moments pass and then decided that he wanted to know, no matter the consequences. ‘Weren’t we talking about Gonzalo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It sounds as though you’re worried about him.’

  Il Conte nodded.

  The older man’s hands tightened for a second and then slowly loosened. The tension, however, migrated to his face, narrowing his eyes. ‘Gonzalo’s my best friend. We were at boarding school together.’ He looked across at Brunetti and said, unable to restrain his surprise, ‘My God, it was more than sixty years ago.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘In Switzerland,’ the Conte answered. ‘My father said he wanted me to live in another country for a time.’

  ‘For any particular reason?’ Brunetti asked, curious to learn something about his father-in-law’s past, to dip into the black hole that was il Conte’s life.

  ‘He said he wanted me to learn French and German. No one thought of English then,’ he explained. ‘But it was a ruse, I think. He w
anted to remove me from the company I was spending time with.’

  ‘Why?’

  Il Conte raised both hands, palms outward, as though trying to convince an attacker of his innocence. ‘I think he didn’t like the political ideas of some of my friends.’

  Brunetti cast his historical memory back to the years before his birth but could think of no political unrest that might have affected the nobility. The Red Brigades had been in short pants then, and the financial boom was sweeping the country towards the future.

  ‘Did it work?’

  Il Conte smiled and shifted his gaze to the window behind Brunetti. ‘I learned the languages. Other things, as well.’

  ‘You said you met Gonzalo there,’ Brunetti reminded him, curious about the connection.

  Il Conte’s face softened in a smile. ‘He taught me how to ski,’ he said, and Brunetti thought that was all he was going to learn about the young Gonzalo. The smile dimmed a bit, then lit up again at some sudden memory. ‘He also taught me how to cheat at poker.’ Il Conte laughed with childlike delight. Before Brunetti could ask, he went on. ‘He said it was so that I could recognize it if anyone ever tried to do it to me.’

  ‘Did that ever happen?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Not with cards,’ Conte Falier answered and offered no further explanation. ‘But the signs Gonzalo taught me to look for show up in other games, as well.’

  ‘A useful skill,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Far more useful than knowing how to ski,’ Il Conte observed, adding, ‘Especially in my business.’

  Whatever that might be, Brunetti thought, but let it pass through his mind, leaving no trace in his expression. He remembered asking Paola, not too long after he had met her, what it was her father did. He had not known then that she had acquired her sense of humour from an English nanny and from four years of study at Oxford, so it was with some surprise that he heard her say, ‘He sits in his office on the piano nobile of the palazzo and makes phone calls.’ After he realized she was joking, but not joking – telling the truth but telling it slant – Brunetti had thought of his own father, who passed his days at home, sitting and waiting for someone to come by and offer him a day’s work at the docks, loading and unloading boats. Even then, at the beginning, he’d been conscious of the gulf that stood between her family and his own: her father a count, her mother the descendant of Florentine princes; Brunetti’s mother a woman who had left school at twelve, his father a hopeless dreamer ruined by years as a prisoner of war.