Part 19 (1/2)

'There's a compet.i.tion. Papa, and if you win it, you get a free subscription.'

'But don't you already have a subscription?' he asked, having given it to her for Christmas.

'That's not the point, Papa.'

'What is the point, then?' he asked, making his way down the hallway towards the kitchen. He flipped on the light and went over to the refrigerator.

The point is winning,' she said, following him down the hall and making Brunetti wonder if the magazine might be a bit too American for his daughter.

He found a bottle of Orvieto, checked the label, put it back, and pulled out the bottle of Soave they had begun with dinner the night before. He took down a gla.s.s, filled it, and took a sip. 'All right, Chiara, what's the contest?'

'You have to name a penguin.'

'Name a penguin?' Brunetti repeated stupidly.

'Yes, look here,' she said, holding the magazine out towards him with one hand and pointing down towards a photo with the other. As she did, he saw a picture of what looked to be the fuzzy ma.s.s that Paola sometimes emptied from the vacuum cleaner. 'What's that?' he asked, taking the magazine and turning it towards the light its the baby penguin. Papa. It was born last month at the Rome Zoo, and it doesn't have a name yet So they're offering a prize to whoever comes up with the best name for it'

Brunetti pulled open the magazine and looked more closely at the photo. Sure enough, he saw a beak and two round black eyes. Two yellow flippers. On the opposite page was a full-grown penguin, but Brunetti looked in vain for some familial resemblance between the two.

'What name?' he asked, flipping through the magazine and watching hyenas, ibis, and elephants stream past him.

'Spot,' she said.

'What?'

'Spot' she repeated.

'For a penguin?' he asked, flipping back to the original article and staring at the photos of the adult birds. Spot?

'Sure. Everyone else is going to call him ”Flipper'' or ' 'Waiter''.' No one else will think of calling him Spot'

That, Brunetti allowed, was probably true. 'You could always save the name,' he suggested, putting the bottle back in the refrigerator.

'What for?' she asked and took the magazine back.

'In case there's a contest for a zebra,' he said.

'Oh, Papa, you're so silly sometimes,' she said and went back towards her room, little aware of how much her judgement pleased him.

In the living room, he picked up his book, left ace down when he went to bed the night before. While waiting for Paola, he might as well fight the Peloponnesian War again.

She came home an hour later, let herself into the apartment, and came into the living room. She tossed her coat over the back of the sofa and flopped down next to him, her scarf still around her neck. 'Guido, you ever consider the possibility that I'm insane?'

'Often,' he said and turned a page.

'No, really. I've got to be, working for those cretins.'

'Which cretins?' he asked, still not bothering to look up from the book.

The ones who run the university.'

'What now?'

'They asked me, three months ago, to give a lecture in Padua, to the English Faculty. They said it would be on the British novel Why do you think I was reading all those books for the last two months?'

'Because you like them. That's why you've read them for the last twenty yean.'

'Oh, stop it, Guido,' she said, digging a gentle elbow into his ribs.

'So what happened?'

'I went into the office today to pick up my mail, and they told me that they'd got it all wrong, that I was supposed to be lecturing on American poetry, but no one thought to tell me about the change.'

'And so, which is it?'

'I won't know until tomorrow. They'll go ahead and tell Padua about the new topic if Il Magnifico approves it' Both of them had always taken delight in this most wonderful of holdovers from the academic Stone Age, the fact that the Rector of the university was addressed as 'Il Magnifico Rettore', the only thing Brunetti had learned in twenty years on the fringes of the university that had managed to make academic life sound interesting to him.

'What's he likely to do?' Brunetti asked.

Toss a coin, probably.'

'Good luck,' Brunetti said, putting down his book. 'You don't like the American stuff, do you?'

'Holy heavens, no,' she explained, burying her face in her hands. 'Puritans, cowboys, and strident women. I'd rather teach the Silver Fork Novel,' she said, using the English words.

The what?' Brunetti asked.

'Silver Fork Novel,' she repeated. 'Books with simple plots written to explain to people who made a lot of money how to behave in polite company.'

'For yuppies?' Brunetti asked, honesdy interested.

Paola erupted in laughter. 'No, Guido, not for yuppies. They were written in the eighteenth century, when all the money poured into England from the colonies, and the fat wives of Yorks.h.i.+re weavers had to be taught which fork to use.' She was quiet for a few minutes, considering what he said. 'But if I think about it for a minute, with a little updating, there's no reason the same couldn't be said of Bret Easton Ellis.' She put her face in his shoulder and gave herself up to giggles, laughing herself weak at a joke Brunetti didn't understand.

When she stopped laughing, she took the scarf from her neck and tossed it on the table. 'And you?' she asked.

He put his book face down on his knees and faced her. 'I talked to the wh.o.r.e and her pimp and then to Signora Trevisan and her lawyer.' Slowly, attentive to his story and careful to get the details right, he told her everything that had happened that day, finis.h.i.+ng with Signora Trevisan's reaction to his question about the prost.i.tutes.

'Did her brother have anything to do with prost.i.tutes?' Paola repeated, careful to duplicate Brunetti's exact phrasing. 'And you think she understood what you meant?'

Brunetti nodded.

'But the lawyer misunderstood?'

'Yes, but I don't think it was deliberate. He just didn't get it, that the question was ambiguous and didn't mean that he had s.e.x with them.'

'She did, though?'