The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon Page B

name.
    â€˜I still don’t understand,’ Paola said.
    Chiara and Raffi exchanged a long glance, as though asking one another if their parents lived in the same city as they did, and then Chiara said, ‘They’ve been around for only the last year or so, the ones I mean. And they’re different.’
    â€˜In what way?’ Paola asked.
    â€˜Aggressive,’ Raffi said, then looked across at Chiara for confirmation. ‘At least the ones I see are.’
    Chiara nodded. ‘The
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have been here a long time. They all speak Italian. And they know a lot of us, too. So we joke with them, and it doesn’t matter if we don’t buy anything: they’re still friendly,’ she said, confirming Brunetti’s impression of the Senegalese street vendors.
    â€˜And the new ones?’ Paola asked, bending to pull a platter from the oven.
    Chiara propped her chin in one hand, something she was forbidden to do at table. Brunetti ignored it and Paola didn’t see. ‘He gives me the creeps,’ she finally said, as if confessing to a crime. ‘I know I’m not supposed to say that about immigrants, but this guy is different. He’s sort of menacing, and sometimes he puts his hand on your arm.’ Her voice grew stronger, as if she were defending herself. ‘The
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would never do that. Never.’
    Brunetti, whose chair faced the stove, exchanged a glance with Paola, who was suddenly motionless and attentive to the conversation. Brunetti didn’t like the idea of any man putting his hand uninvited on his daughter’s arm. He realized how atavistic his response was and didn’t care in the least.
    â€˜While asking for money?’ he asked in his calmest of calm voices.
    â€˜Yes.’
    Brunetti picked up his fork to give himself something to do while he thought about this. Glancing at his place, he was surprised to see that his plate had disappeared. As he looked at the empty place, it was suddenly filled as Paola set a plate of yellow peppers filled with meat and ricotta in front of him.
    When everyone was served and Paola had sat down again, he took an exploratory bite. He ate a little more and was about to speak, when Raffi said, sounding both amused and exasperated, ‘And we’ve got the drug people, but they ignore us. It’s only the tourists they want.’
    â€˜What drug people?’ Paola asked, her own voice rough with badly controlled fear.
    Raffi turned to her and raised a hand. ‘Calm down,
Mamma
. I said it wrong: the ­anti-­drug people.’
    Brunetti glanced at Paola and saw her plaster a look of amiable curiosity on to her face, then mirror it in her voice. ‘Which is it, Raffi, pro or con?’ Surely this calm voice could not be that of the mother of a teenage child she’d just heard speak so casually of drugs.
    â€˜Oh, they say they’re against them,’ Chiara said. ‘But look at them.’
    â€˜At their teeth,’ Raffi added, reminding Brunetti of what he had seen in the grimaces of some of the addicts who had passed through the Questura on their way to prison, and of what was to be seen in the photos taken when they were booked.
    Chiara looked relieved to be free of her criticism of an African. She came, after all, from the generation that had absorbed the gospel of tolerance and believed in the sinful nature of any criticism of a person less fortunate than herself.
    Brunetti thought he knew the people his children were talking about, had seen different groupings of them in the city, always at points of maximum tourist traffic. Of both sexes and indeterminate age, they wore some sort of official tag on a lanyard around their necks, which he assumed gave them the right to occupy public space and ask for money – like the AVAPO people or like Medécins Sans Frontières. Hearing himself class them with those other two groups made Brunetti faintly uncomfortable,