The Death of Faith by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online Page A

learned that Paola was not the person to ask about matters of religious faith, though they had just as quickly realized that her knowledge of ecclesiastical history and theological disputation was virtually encyclopaedic. Her clarification of the theological foundations of the Arian heresy was a study in levelheaded objectivity and scholarly attention to detail; her denunciation of the centuries of slaughter that had resulted from that the Church’s different opinion was, to use a temperate word, intemperate.
     
    All of these years, she had kept her word and never spoken openly, at least in the presence of the children, against Christianity or, in fact, against any religion. And so whatever antipathy toward religion or any ideas that might have led Chiara toward ‘disruptive behaviour’ had not come from anything Paola had ever said, at least not openly.
     
    Both turned toward the sound of the opening door, but it was Raffi, not Chiara, who let himself into the apartment. ‘ Ciao, Mamma!’ he called, heading back toward his own room to put down his books. ‘Ciao, Papà! A short time later, he came down the hall and into the kitchen. He bent down and kissed Paola on the cheek, and Brunetti, still seated, saw his son from a different perspective and saw him taller.
     
    Raffi lifted the top on the frying pan and, seeing what was inside, kissed his mother again. ‘I’m dying, Mamma. When are we going to eat?’
     
    ‘As soon as your sister gets here,’ Paola said, turning back to lower the flame under the now-boiling water.
     
    Raffi pushed back his sleeve and checked the time. ‘You know she’s always on time. She’ll walk through the door in seven minutes, so why don’t you put the pasta in now?’ He reached down onto the table and ripped open a cellophane package of bread sticks and pulled out three of the thin grissini. He put the ends between his teeth and, like a rabbit chewing at three longs stalks of grass, nibbled at them until they were gone. He grabbed three more and repeated the process. ‘Come on, Mamma, I’m starved, and I’ve got to go over to Massimo’s this afternoon to work on physics.’
     
    Paola placed a platter of fried aubergine on the table, nodded in sudden agreement, and began to drop the newly made strips of pasta into the boiling water.
     
    Brunetti pulled the pagella from the envelope and handed it to Raffaele. ‘You know anything about this?’ he asked.
     
    It was only in recent years and with the abandonment of what his parents referred to as his ‘Karl Marx Period’ that Raffi’s own report cards had come to take on the repetitive perfection his sister’s had had from her first days in school, but even in the worst academic disasters of that period, Raffi had never felt anything but pride in his sister’s achievements.
     
    He looked up and down the page and handed it back to his father, saying nothing.
     
    ‘Well?’ Brunetti asked.
     
    ‘Disruptive, huh?’ was his only response.
     
    Paola, stirring the pasta, managed to give the side of the pot a few heavy clangs.
     
    ‘You know anything about it?’ Brunetti repeated.
     
    ‘No, not really,’ Raffi said, obviously reluctant to explain whatever it was he knew. When neither of his parents said anything, Raffi said, voice aggrieved, ‘Mamma will just get mad.’
     
    ‘At what?’ Paola asked with false lightness.
     
    ‘At. . .’ Raffi was cut off by the sound of Chiara’s key in the door.
     
    ‘Ah, the guilty one arrives,’ Raffi said and poured himself a glass of mineral water.
     
    All three of them watched Chiara hang her jacket on a hook in the hall, drop her books, then pick them up and set them on a chair. She came down the corridor toward them and stopped at the door. ‘Somebody die?’ she asked with no hint of irony in her voice.
     
    Paola reached down and pulled a colander from a cabinet. She set it in the sink and poured the pasta and boiling water through it. Chiara remained at the