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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Through a
Glass Darkly by Donna Leon |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Inferno Through a
Glass Darkly is Donna Leon’s 15th novel featuring detective Commissario
Guido Brunetti. As fans have come to expect, the descriptions of The three
of them emerged from the main entrance of the Mestre Questura and started
down the steps. Vianello put an arm around Ribetti’s shoulder and said, ‘Come
on, Marco, the least we can do is give you a ride back to Piazzale Roma.’
Ribetti smiled and thanked him. He wiped a hand over his eyes and drew it
down one side of his face, and Brunetti could almost feel it graze across his
unshaven cheek. As they continued down the steps towards the waiting car, a
taxi pulled up and a short, squat man with white hair got out. He leaned in
to hand money to the driver and turned to look up at the building. And saw
them. He gave a savage shove to the door of the taxi, slamming
it shut behind him. ‘You stupid bastard!’ he shouted, starting across the
pavement. The taxi drove off. The old man stopped, one hand raised, waving it
at them. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he shouted again and started up the steps
towards them. Brunetti and the others stopped halfway down, frozen with
astonishment. The man’s face was distorted with anger and livid with
years of drink. So short he would not reach Brunetti’s shoulder, he was
almost twice as broad, with a thick torso that was moving downward as muscle
turned to paunch. ‘You and your animals and your trees and your nature,
nature, nature. Go out there and cause trouble and get arrested and get your
name in the paper. Stupid bastard. You never had any sense. Now those
bastards at the Gazzettino are
calling me.’ Brunetti
placed himself between the old man and Ribetti. ‘I’m afraid there’s been some
misunderstanding, Signore. Signor Ribetti has not been arrested. Quite the
contrary: he’s here to help the police with their inquiries.’ Brunetti had no
idea why he lied. There would be no investigation, so there was no way
Ribetti could help with it, but the old man needed to be stopped, and usually
people of his age were most easily stopped by mention of the forces of order. ‘And who
the hell do you think you are?’ the old man demanded, tilting his head back
to stare up at Brunetti. Without waiting for an answer, he tried to step
around Brunetti, who moved to the left and then to the right to stand in his
way. The old
man stood still and raised a finger to the height of his own shoulder and
poked Brunetti in the chest, saying, ‘Look, you bastard, get out of my way. I
don’t want any interference from strangers.’ He took a half-step to the
left, but Branetti blocked him again. ‘I said get out of my way!’ the old man
shouted, this time putting his hand on Brunetti’s arm. It could not be said
that the old man grabbed Brunetti’s arm, nor that he pulled at it, but it was
certainly not the casual contact of a man trying to get his friend’s
attention to make a point. Vianello
came down two steps and stood to the old man’s left. ‘I think you’d better
take your hand off the Commissario, Signore.’ The old
man, however, had been carried beyond hearing by his fury. He tore his hand
from Brunetti’s arm and pointed at Vianello. ‘And don’t you think you can get
in my way, either, you bastard.’ His face had grown puce, and Brunetti
wondered if he would have some sort of seizure: he had seldom seen a man so
easily catapult himself into rage. Sweat stood on the old man’s forehead, and
Brunetti saw his hands tremble. Spittle had collected at the corners of his
mouth, and his eyes, small and dark, appeared to have grown even smaller. From
behind him, Brunetti heard Ribetti say, ‘Please, Commissario; he won’t cause
any trouble.’ Vianello
could not hide his surprise, and Brunetti’s was apparent to the old man.
‘That’s right, Signor Commissario whoever you are: I won’t cause any trouble.
He’s the one who causes trouble. Stupid bastard.’ He turned his glance from
Brunetti to Ribetti, who now stood to Brunetti’s left. ‘He knows me because
he married that fool, my daughter. Went right where he knew the money was and
married her. And then filled her with his shitty ideas.’ The old man made as
if to spit at Ribetti but changed his mind. ‘And gets himself arrested,’ he
added, looking at Brunetti to make it clear that he did not believe what he
had been told. Ribetti
caught Brunetti’s attention by placing his hand on his arm. ‘Thank you,
Commissario,’ he said, and then to Vianello, ‘And you, too, Lorenzo.’
Ignoring the old man completely, he moved off to the left and started down
the steps. When he reached the sidewalk, Brunetti saw him look at the parked
police car, but he continued past it, walked to the next corner, and
disappeared around it. ‘Coward,’
the old man shouted after him. ‘You’re brave enough when you try to save your
goddamn animals or your goddamn trees. But when you have to face a real man . . .‘ Suddenly
the old man ran out of abuse. He looked at Vianello and Brunetti as if he
wanted to commit their faces to memory, then pushed past them and went up the
steps and into the Questura. ‘Well?’ Brunetti
asked. ‘I’ll tell you about
it on the way back,’ Vianello said. The story that
Vianello told Brunetti on the way back to Reader, she married
him. Worse was in store when the young man’s principles and politics, his
concern for the environment and suspicion of the current governments came
into conflict with his father-in-law’s philosophy: it’s a dog-eat-dog world,
and workers are meant to work, not to lie around collecting money from their
employers for doing nothing; growth and progress are always good, and more is
better. Even worse, from the
old man’s point of view, were the young man’s education and profession. Not
only was he a university graduate and thus one of those useless ‘dottori’
who had studied everything and yet knew nothing; he compounded the fault
by working as an engineer for the French company that had won the contract to
build garbage dumps in the Veneto, for which he conducted site analyses of
location, proximity to rivers and ground water, and soil composition. He
wrote reports that obstructed the building of garbage dumps, wrote further
reports that made their construction more expensive, and all paid for by
money taken from the pockets of people like factory owners, who paid taxes so
that the lazy and weak could suck off the public tit and engineers could
force cities to spend money just so that some fish and animals wouldn’t get
dirty or sick. Ribetti
and his wife, Assunta De Cal, lived in a house on Murano that had been left
to her by her mother. Caught between father and husband, she tried to keep
both peace and house: because she worked in her father’s factory all day,
neither task was easy. Vianello
paused at this point in the story and said, ‘You know, hearing myself tell
you all this, I’m not sure why I know this much about them. It’s not as if
Pietro told me all this while he was working there. I mean, even though Marco
and I went to school together, we lost touch until about three years ago, so
it doesn’t make any sense that I know all this. It’s not like we’re close
friends or anything, and he’s never talked about the old man.’ Vianello was
sitting in the back seat of the car taking them across the Ponte della
Libertà, so as he spoke, he saw Brunetti’s head framed by the smokestacks of
Marghera. It
occurred to Brunetti that Vianello might still, after all this time, not
realize the full extent of his ability to draw people into conversation and
then into confidence with him. Perhaps it was a natural gift, like perfect pitch
or the ability to dance, and those who had it were incapable of seeing it as
in any way unusual. Vianello
recaptured Brunetti’s attention by waving at the Marghera factories and
saying, ‘You know I agree with him, don’t you?’ ‘About the
protests?’ ‘Yes,’
Vianello answered. ‘I can’t join them, not with this job, but that doesn’t
stop me from thinking they should protest and hoping that they continue to do
it.’ ‘What
about De Cal?’ Brunetti asked, realizing that they would reach Piazzale Roma
in a few minutes and eager to prevent Vianello from launching into another
discussion about the fate of the planet. ‘Oh, he’s
a bastard,’ Vianello said, ‘as you saw. He’s fought with everyone on Murano:
over houses, over salaries, over well, over
anything people can fight about.’ ‘How does
he manage to keep his workmen?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Well, he
does and he doesn’t,’ Vianello said. ‘At least that’s what I’ve heard.’ ‘From
Ribetti?’ ‘No, not
from him,’ Vianello answered. ‘I told you he doesn’t talk about the old man, and
he doesn’t have anything to do with the fornace.
But I’ve got relatives on Murano, and a couple of them work in the fornaci. And everyone knows
everybody’s business.’ ‘What do
they say?’ ‘He’s kept
the same two maestri for the last
couple of years,’ Vianello said, then added, ‘That’s something of a record
for him, even if they’re not very good. Not that it matters so much, I
suppose.’ ‘Why not?’
Behind Vianello’s head Brunetti saw the side of the Panorama bus: they would
soon be there. ‘All they
make is that tourist crap. You know, the porpoises leaping up out of the
waves. And toreadors.’ ‘With the
capes and the black pants?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Yes, can
you believe it, like we had toreadors here. Or porpoises, for that matter.’ ‘I thought
they were all made in China or Bohemia by now,’ Brunetti said, repeating
something he had heard frequently, and from people who should know. ‘Lots of
it is,’ Vianello said, ‘but they still can’t do the big pieces, at least not
yet. Wait five years and it’ll all be coming from China.’ ‘And your
relatives?’ Vianello
turned his palms up in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Either they’ll learn how
to do something else, or everyone will end up like your wife says we will:
dressing in seventeenth-century costumes and walking around, speaking
Veneziano, to amuse the tourists.’ ‘Even us?’
Brunetti asked. ‘The police?’ ‘Yes,’
Vianello answered. ‘Can you imagine Alvise with a crossbow?’ Laughter
put an end to their conversation, and the matter lapsed, merging into the
stream of gossip that flowed through Venice, much of it no cleaner than the
water that flowed in the canals. Readers who
enjoy finely written mysteries can pack a copy of Through a
Glass Darkly on any journey this summer and find good reading pleasure. Steve Hopkins,
June 26, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the July 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Through
a Glass Darkly.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park,
IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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