A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online

same thing, and it
seems that their results are identical to ours. That's one of the reasons I
wanted to go to the conference - Battestini would have gone anyway, but this
way someone else pays for us, and we get to see them and talk to them and
compare results.'
    'Good, I'm happy for
you. How long will you be gone?'
    The conference lasts
six days, from Sunday until Friday, and then I might stay on in Rome for two
days more and not get back until Monday. Wait a minute; let me give you the
dates.' Brunetti heard the flipping of pages, and then Sergio's voice was back.
'From the eighth until the sixteenth. I should be back the morning of the
sixteenth. And, Guido, I'll go the next two Sundays.'
    'Don't be silly,
Sergio. These things happen. I'll go while you're away, and then you go the
Sunday after you get back, and I’ll go the next one. You've done the same for
me’
    ‘I just don't want you to think I don't want to go and see
her, Guido’
    ‘Let's not talk about
that, all right, Sergio?' Brunetti asked, surprised how painful he still found
the thought of his mother. He had tried for the last year, with singular lack
of success, to tell himself that his mother, that bright-spirited woman who had
raised them and loved them with unqualified devotion, had moved off to some
other place, where she waited, still quick-witted and eager to smile, for that
befuddled shell that was her body to come and join her so that they could drift
off together to a final peace.
    1 don't like asking
you, Guido’ his brother repeated, reminding Brunetti as he did of how careful
Sergio had always been not to abuse his position as elder brother or the
authority that position invested him with.
    Brunetti recalled a
term his American colleagues were in the habit of using, and he 'stonewalled'
his brother. 'Tell me about the kids, Sergio.'
    Sergio laughed
outright at the way they'd fallen into the familiar pattern: his need to
justify everything; his younger brother's refusal to find that necessary.
'Marco's almost finished with his military service; he’ll be home for four days
at the end of the month. And Maria Luisa's speaking nothing but English so she’ll
be ready to go to the Courtauld in the autumn. Crazy, isn't it, Guido, that
she's got to go to England to study restoration?'
    Paola, Brunetti's
wife, taught English Literature at the University of Ca Foscari. There was
little his brother could tell him about the insanity of the Italian university
system that Brunetti did not already know.
    'Is her English good
enough?' he asked.
    'Better be, huh? If
it isn't. I’ll send her to you and Paola for the summer.'
    'And what are we
supposed to do, speak English all the time?'
    'Yes.'
    'Sorry, Sergio, we
never use it unless we don't want the kids to know what we're saying. Both of
them have taken so much of it in school that we can't even do that any more.'
    'Try Latin,' Sergio
said with a laugh. 'You were always good at that.'
    ‘I'm afraid that was
a long time ago,' said Brunetti sadly.
    Sergio, ever
sensitive to things he couldn't name, caught his brother's mood. 'I'll call you
before I leave, Guido.'
    'Good, stammi bene’ Brunetti
said.
    'Ciao’ Sergio answered and was gone.
    During his life,
Brunetti had often heard people begin sentences with, 'If it weren't for him .
; .' and he could not hear the words without substituting Sergio's name. When
Brunetti, always the acknowledged scholar of the family, was eighteen, it was
decided that there was not enough money to allow him to go to university and
delay the time when he could begin to contribute to the family's income. He
yearned to study the way some of his friends yearned for women, but he assented
to this family decision and began to look for work. It was Sergio, newly
engaged and newly employed in a medical laboratory as a technician, who agreed
to contribute more to the family if it would mean that his younger brother
would be allowed to study. Even then, Brunetti knew that it was the