Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online Page A

changed the law. They can now prosecute Germans for things they do in other countries.’
     
    ‘I know. I read the article,’ she said sharply.
     
    ‘And?’
     
    ‘And one man was sentenced to a few years in jail. As the Americans say, “Big fucking deal.” Hundreds of thousands of men go there every year. Putting one of them in jail, in a well-lit German jail where he gets television and visits from his wife every week, is not going to stop men from going to Thailand as sex-tourists.’
     
    ‘And what you want to do, that will?’
     
    ‘If the planes don’t go, if no one’s willing to take the risk of organizing the tours, with hotel rooms and meals and guides to take them to the brothels, well, then fewer of them will go. I know it’s not much, but it’s something.’
     
    ‘They’ll go on their own.’
     
    ‘Fewer of them.’
     
    ‘But still some? But still a lot of them?’
     
    ‘Probably.’
     
    ‘Then why do it?’
     
    She shook her head in annoyance. ‘Maybe all of this is because you’re a man,’ she said.
     
    For the first time since coming into her study Brunetti felt anger. ‘What’s that suppose to mean?’
     
    ‘It means that men and women look at this differently. Always will.’
     
    ‘Why?’ His voice was level, though both of them knew that anger had slipped into the room and between them.
     
    ‘Because, no matter how much you try to imagine what this means, it’s always got to be an exercise in imagination. It can’t happen to you, Guido. You’re big and strong and, from the time you were a little boy, you’ve been accustomed to violence of some sort: soccer, rough-housing with other boys; in your case police training as well.’
     
    She saw his attention drifting away. He’d heard this before and never believed it. She thought he didn’t want to believe it, but she had not told him that. ‘But it’s different for us, for women,’ she went on. ‘We spend our lives being made afraid of violence, made to think always of avoiding it. But still every one of us knows that what happens to those kids in Cambodia or Thailand or the Philippines could just as easily have happened to us, could still happen to us. It’s as simple as that, Guido: you’re big and we’re little.’
     
    He gave no response, and so she went on, ‘Guido, we’ve been talking about this for years and we’ve never really agreed. We don’t now.’ She paused for a moment, then asked, ‘Will you listen to two more things, then I’ll listen to you?’
     
    Brunetti wanted to make his voice sound amiable, open and accepting; he wanted to say ‘Of course’, but the best he could manage was a tight ‘Yes’.
     
    ‘Think of that vile article, the one in the magazine. It’s one of the major sources of information in this country and in it a sociologist - I don’t know where he teaches, but it’s certain to be at some important university, so he’s considered an expert and people will believe what he writes - can say that paedophiles love children. And he can say that because it’s convenient for men to have everyone believe it. And men run the country.’
     
    She stopped for a moment, then added, ‘I’m not sure if this has anything to do with what we’re talking about, but I think another cause of the gulf that separates us on this - not just you and me, Guido, but all men from all women - is the fear that the idea that sex might sometimes be an unpleasant experience is real to all women and unthinkable to most men.’ As she saw him beginning to protest, she said, ‘Guido, the woman doesn’t exist who thinks for an instant that paedophiles love children. They lust after them or want to dominate them, but those things have nothing to do with love.’
     
    He kept his head lowered; she saw that as she looked across the room at him. ‘That’s the second thing I want to say, dear Guido whom I love with all my soul. That’s how we look at it, most women, that love isn’t lust