Death of Faith by Donna Leon

Author:Donna Leon [Leon, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780330349499
Publisher: Pan Books
Published: 1997-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Eleven

Even though the area of the city around the Giustiniani Hospital was not far from Brunetti’s home geographically, it was an area of the city with which he was not very familiar, no doubt because it did not stand between his home and any of the parts of the city where he would ordinarily have cause to go. He found himself over there only when he had occasion to pass through it on his way out to the Giudecca or occasionally, on a Sunday, when he and Paola went out to the Zattere to sit in the sun at one of the waterside cafes and read the papers.

What he knew of the area was as much legend as fact, as was so much of the information he and his fellow Venetians tended to have about their city. Behind that wall was the garden of the former movie star, married now to the industrialist from Torino. Behind that one was the home of the last of the Contradini family, rumoured not to have left the house in twenty years. And that was the door to the house of the last of the Dona Salvas, who used to be seen only at the opening night of the opera, always in the royal box, and then always dressed in red. He knew these walls and doors as other children could recognize the heroes of cartoons and television, and like those figures, these houses and palazzi spoke to him of youth and a different vision of the world.

Just as children outgrew the antics of Topolino or Braccio di Ferro and came to realize the illusion behind them, Brunetti had, over the course of his years as a police officer, come to learn the often dark realities that lurked behind the walls of his youth. The actress drank, and the industrialist from Torino had twice been arrested for beating her. The last of the Contradinis had indeed been inside for twenty years, kept behind a broad wall into the top of which glass fragments had been embedded and cared for by three servants who did nothing to contradict his belief that Mussolini and Hitler were still in power and the world thus saved from the filthy Jews. And the Dona Salva; few people realized that she had gone to the opera in the belief that she received there vibrations from the spirit of her mother, who had died in the same box sixty-five years before.

The nursing home stood behind yet another high wall. A bronze plaque announced its name and stated that visiting hours were from nine until eleven in the morning, every day of the week. After he rang the bell, Brunetti stepped back a few paces, but he could see no glass embedded into the top of the wall. It wasn’t likely that anyone in a nursing home would have the strength to climb that wall, glass or not, Brunetti admonished himself, and the old and infirm had nothing but their lives that could any longer be stolen from them.

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