Anonymous Venetian by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online

walked towards him. ‘Go
see if Chiara has set the table.’
     
    * * * *
     
    Chapter Five
     
     
    He
read through the files that night before going to sleep and found in them
evidence of a world he had perhaps known existed but about which he had known
nothing either detailed or certain. To the best of his knowledge, there were no
transvestites in Venice who worked as prostitutes. There was, however, at least
one transsexual, and Brunetti knew of this person’s existence only because he
had once had to sign a letter attesting that Emilio Marcato had no criminal
record, this before Emilia could have the sex listed on her carta d’identit à changed to accord with the
physical changes already made to her body. He had no idea of what urges or
passions could lead a person to make a choice so absolutely final; he
remembered, though, being disturbed and moved to an emotion he had chosen not
to analyse by that mere alteration of a single letter on an official document:
Emilio - Emilia.
     
    The men in the file had not been
driven to go so far and had chosen to transform only their appearance: face,
clothing, make-up, walk, gesture. The photos attached to some of the files
attested to the skill with which some of them had done this. Half of them were
utterly unrecognizable as men, even though Brunetti knew that was what they
were. There was a general softness of cheek and fineness of bone that had
nothing of the masculine about them; even under the merciless lights and lens
of the police camera, many of them appeared beautiful, and Brunetti searched in
vain for a shadow, a jut of chin, for anything that would mark them as men and
not as women.
     
    Sitting beside him in bed and
reading the pages as he handed them to her, Paola glanced through the photos,
read one of the arrest reports, this one for the sale of drugs, and handed the
pages back to him with no comment.
     
    ‘What do you think?’ Brunetti
asked.
     
    ‘About what?’
     
    ‘All of this.’ He raised the file
in his hand. ‘Don’t you find these men strange?’
     
    Her look was a long one and, he
thought, replete with distaste. ‘I find the men who hire them much stranger.’
     
    ‘Why?’
     
    Pointing to the file, Paola said,
‘At least these men don’t deceive themselves about what they’re doing. Unlike
the men who use them.’
     
    ‘What do you mean?’
     
    ‘Oh, come on, Guido. Think about
it. These men are paid to be fucked or fuck, depending on the taste of the men
paying them. But they have to dress up as women before the other men will pay
them or use them. Just think about that for a minute. Think about the hypocrisy
there, the need for self deceit. So they can say, the next morning, “Oh, Ges ù Bambino, I didn’t know it was a man until
it was too late,” or, “Well, even if it turned out to be a man, I’m still the
one who stuck it in.” So they’re still real men, macho, and they don’t have to
confront the fact that they prefer to fuck other men because to do that would
compromise their masculinity.’ She gave him a long look. ‘I suspect sometimes
that you don’t really bother to think about a lot of things, Guido.’
     
    That, loosely translated,
generally meant that he didn’t think in the same way she did. But this time
Paola was right: this was something he hadn’t ever thought about. Once he had
discovered them, women had conquered Brunetti, and he could never understand
the sexual appeal of any - well, there really was only one - other sex. Growing
up, he had assumed that all men were pretty much like him; when he had learned
that they were not, he was too convinced in his own delight to give anything
other than an intellectual acknowledgement to the existence of the alternative.
     
    He remembered, then, something
Paola had told him soon after they met, something he had never noticed: that
Italian men were constantly touching, fondling, almost caressing their own
genitals. He remembered laughing in disbelief and