Read Online CB14 Blood From A Stone (2005) by Donna Leon - Free Book Online
Authors: Donna Leon
Tags: Donna Leon
Ads: Link
all crazy, the whole thing,’ he said, and left.
7
Brunetti had not read the Iliad – his laboured high school translations could hardly be considered a reading of the text – until his third year at university; the experience had been a strange one. Though he had never read the original, it was so much a part of his world and his culture that he knew even before he read it what each book would bring. He experienced no surprise at the perfidy of Paris and the compliance of Helen, knew that bold Priam was doomed and that no bravery on the part of noble Hector could save Troy from ruin.
Rubini’s files produced much the same sense of literary déjà vu . As he read through the summary of the police’s response to the arrival of the vu cumprà in Italy, he was conscious ofhow familiar he was with so many elements of the plot. He knew that the original street pedlars had been Moroccans and Algerians who sold illegally the handicraft articles they brought into Italy with them. Indeed, he could remember seeing their merchandise, years before: hand-carved wooden animals, glass trading beads, ornamental knives and glitzy fake scimitars. Though the report did not explain it, he assumed that their original name had been given to this wave of French-speaking itinerant salesmen in imitation of their attempts to catch the attention of their new customers with some linguistically bastardized invitation to buy.
As the Arabs were supplanted by Africans from further south, the frequency of crimes lessened: though immigration violations and selling without a licence remained, petty theft and crimes of violence virtually disappeared from the arrest records of the men who had inherited the name of vu cumprà.
The Arabs, he knew, had passed on to more lucrative employment, many of them migrating north to countries with no choice but to accept the residence permits so easily granted by an accommodating Italian bureaucracy. The Senegalesi , with no apparent propensity to crime, had originally been viewed sympathetically by many of the residents of the city, and as Gravini’s story suggested, they had earned the regard, however gruffly stated, of at least some of the officers on the street. In the last years, however, the increasing insistence with whichthey confronted passers-by and their apparently ever expanding numbers had worn away much of the Venetians’ original good will.
He searched, but searched in vain, for any arrests during the last few years for crimes other than violations of visa regulations or selling without a licence. There had been one rape, six years ago, but the attacker turned out to be a Moroccan, not a Senegalese. In the only arrest involving violence, a Senegalese had chased an Albanian pickpocket halfway up Lista di Spagna before bringing him to the ground with a running tackle. The African had sat on the pickpocket’s back until the police responded to the call one of his friends made on his telefonino and arrived to make the arrest. A handwritten note in the margin explained that the Albanian had turned out to be only sixteen, and so, although he had been repeatedly arrested for the same crime, he had been released the same day after being given the usual letter ordering him to leave the country within forty-eight hours.
The last file contained a speculative report on numbers: there had been days during the previous summer when an estimated three to five hundred ambulanti had lined the streets; repeated police round-ups had caused a temporary attrition, but the number was now estimated to have crept back to close to two hundred.
When he finished the report, Brunetti glanced at his watch and reached for the phone. From memory, he dialled the number of Marco Erizzo,who answered on the second ring. ‘What now, Guido?’ he asked with a laugh.
‘I hate those phones,’ Brunetti said. ‘I can’t sneak up on anyone any more.’
‘Very James Bond, I know,’ Erizzo admitted, ‘but it lets me do a lot of
7
Brunetti had not read the Iliad – his laboured high school translations could hardly be considered a reading of the text – until his third year at university; the experience had been a strange one. Though he had never read the original, it was so much a part of his world and his culture that he knew even before he read it what each book would bring. He experienced no surprise at the perfidy of Paris and the compliance of Helen, knew that bold Priam was doomed and that no bravery on the part of noble Hector could save Troy from ruin.
Rubini’s files produced much the same sense of literary déjà vu . As he read through the summary of the police’s response to the arrival of the vu cumprà in Italy, he was conscious ofhow familiar he was with so many elements of the plot. He knew that the original street pedlars had been Moroccans and Algerians who sold illegally the handicraft articles they brought into Italy with them. Indeed, he could remember seeing their merchandise, years before: hand-carved wooden animals, glass trading beads, ornamental knives and glitzy fake scimitars. Though the report did not explain it, he assumed that their original name had been given to this wave of French-speaking itinerant salesmen in imitation of their attempts to catch the attention of their new customers with some linguistically bastardized invitation to buy.
As the Arabs were supplanted by Africans from further south, the frequency of crimes lessened: though immigration violations and selling without a licence remained, petty theft and crimes of violence virtually disappeared from the arrest records of the men who had inherited the name of vu cumprà.
The Arabs, he knew, had passed on to more lucrative employment, many of them migrating north to countries with no choice but to accept the residence permits so easily granted by an accommodating Italian bureaucracy. The Senegalesi , with no apparent propensity to crime, had originally been viewed sympathetically by many of the residents of the city, and as Gravini’s story suggested, they had earned the regard, however gruffly stated, of at least some of the officers on the street. In the last years, however, the increasing insistence with whichthey confronted passers-by and their apparently ever expanding numbers had worn away much of the Venetians’ original good will.
He searched, but searched in vain, for any arrests during the last few years for crimes other than violations of visa regulations or selling without a licence. There had been one rape, six years ago, but the attacker turned out to be a Moroccan, not a Senegalese. In the only arrest involving violence, a Senegalese had chased an Albanian pickpocket halfway up Lista di Spagna before bringing him to the ground with a running tackle. The African had sat on the pickpocket’s back until the police responded to the call one of his friends made on his telefonino and arrived to make the arrest. A handwritten note in the margin explained that the Albanian had turned out to be only sixteen, and so, although he had been repeatedly arrested for the same crime, he had been released the same day after being given the usual letter ordering him to leave the country within forty-eight hours.
The last file contained a speculative report on numbers: there had been days during the previous summer when an estimated three to five hundred ambulanti had lined the streets; repeated police round-ups had caused a temporary attrition, but the number was now estimated to have crept back to close to two hundred.
When he finished the report, Brunetti glanced at his watch and reached for the phone. From memory, he dialled the number of Marco Erizzo,who answered on the second ring. ‘What now, Guido?’ he asked with a laugh.
‘I hate those phones,’ Brunetti said. ‘I can’t sneak up on anyone any more.’
‘Very James Bond, I know,’ Erizzo admitted, ‘but it lets me do a lot of
Similar Books
