The Golden Egg by Donna Leon

and said, ‘He’d have to know it was bad, wouldn’t he?’
    She turned her head to him sharply, mouth open. But before she could ask him what he meant, Brunetti saw her hear her own question and begin to consider it. Finally she said, ‘Of course. If that’s the only life he knew, then it was just that: life. Something worse would have to have happened, I suppose.’
    They remained silent, each trying to imagine what could be worse than the life they had observed, until Paola said, ‘Or maybe he simply found them and thought they were something else and ate them.’
    â€˜Rizzardi suggested that. It would depend on how much he understood.’ Saying that, Brunetti realized that this was the unfathomable puzzle here: how enter into another’s mind save by words?
    â€˜Only God knows that, I’m afraid,’ Paola said. Then, ‘But it might explain the mother’s behaviour.’
    â€˜Guilt?’
    Paola took another sip, shrugged, and finished the wine. ‘I think I’ll start cooking.’
    â€˜Good idea,’ Brunetti said.
    The meal was quiet: the children sensed the sobriety of their parents’ mood and responded in kind. Chiara spoke of an argument she’d had. A friend had wanted Chiara to call and ask her parents if she could come to dinner at Chiara’s house and stay on to study so that she could see her boyfriend; Chiara had refused, and now the girl wasn’t speaking to her any more.
    â€˜Why’d you refuse?’ Raffi asked, not surprised, just curious.
    Chiara speared a shrimp from her risotto and studied it, as though asking it to supply her with the correct answer. ‘Her parents have always been very nice to me. It didn’t seem right to lie to them.’
    Brunetti waited for Paola to put on her Socrates costume and ask Chiara what she would have done if her friend’s parents had not been nice to her, but she remained silent, finishing her own risotto.
    â€˜Isn’t there any mineral water?’ Raffi asked.
    â€˜No, and there won’t be any more,’ Chiara answered, then added, ‘This house is a mineral-water-free zone.’
    â€˜Declared so by you?’ Raffi asked calmly. After all, he’d known her all her life, and little could surprise him from or about his sister.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Why?’ Raffi asked.
    â€˜Because there’s no guarantee of what’s in it.’
    â€˜Water, presumably,’ Raffi said with his mother’s detached irony.
    â€˜Yes, water. Certainly,’ Chiara said, striving for that same tone but falling short of it. ‘And lots of other things, none of which we know about.’
    â€˜And this?’ Raffi asked, holding up the pitcher he now realized must contain tap water. ‘Aside from too much chlorine, that is?’
    â€˜That’s tested, at least,’ Chiara said. ‘The water we were drinking last week, in case you bothered to read the label on the bottles,’ she told him, ‘is not.’ Here began a dynamic Brunetti had been observing for years. Chiara was gearing herself up for an argument: it was audible in her tone. Raffi was getting ready to beat her argument aside by use of superior age and information.
    Brunetti tuned back in. ‘. . . from Puglia, from a spring that is four kilometres from a chemical factory that was shut down by a court order three weeks ago.’ Raffi tried to speak, but she rammed through whatever it was he started to say and kept going. ‘Because they have been dumping chemicals into the earth for thirty years. Which means – though a lawyer would say it only suggests – that the chemicals are now in the groundwater and thus in the mineral water. And if you want to believe that the list of mineral quantities on the bottle labels even flirts with the truth, you are welcome to do so. I’ll drink tap water.’
    Brunetti realized that, had she been a true