The Golden Egg Read Online Free PDF

to tears of shame. She had gone back the next day and tried to apologize, but the man had turned his back on her and returned to untying a parcel of magazines . Since then, it had fallen to Brunetti to buy the newspapers.
    â€˜Would you ask him? Or someone else in the neighbourhood?’ she asked.
    Before he agreed, Brunetti wanted to know: ‘Is this curiosity or concern?’
    â€˜Concern,’ she answered immediately. ‘He was such a miserable creature. I don’t even know how long I saw him there. Or on the street. Or standing there in the back room, folding clothes or watching them work. And always looking so terribly sad.’
    Brunetti remembered the boy’s awkward gestures, the odd jerking of his head that suggested other problems more serious than the deafness that had cut him off from the world.
    â€˜Was there anything else wrong with him?’ he broke in to ask.
    â€˜What do you mean? Isn’t being a deaf mute enough?’
    â€˜Was he mute, too?’
    â€˜Did you ever hear him speak?’
    â€˜No,’ Brunetti answered, unsure whether this meant he had to be dumb, as well as deaf. ‘I told you; I hardly noticed him.’
    Paola sighed, ‘I’m afraid that’s what most people will say. How awful, eh?’
    â€˜Yes. It is.’
    â€˜Oh my God,’ Paola said. ‘I don’t even know his name if I want to ask about him. He’s just the boy who doesn’t talk. Didn’t talk.’
    â€˜I think people will know who you mean.’
    â€˜That’s not what I’m talking about, Guido,’ she said, words that would usually be spoken angrily but now radiated only sadness. ‘That’s what’s so awful. Think about how old he must have been. Thirty-five? Forty? More? And we all referred to him as a boy.’ Then, after another pause, ‘The boy who doesn’t talk.’
    â€˜I’ll see if they know anything downstairs,’ Brunetti volunteered. ‘And at the hospital.’
    â€˜Thanks, Guido,’ she said. ‘I know it sounds as if I’m being a baby over this, but it’s terrible – to have a life like that, and then die, and people don’t even know your name.’
    â€˜I’ll see what I can find out,’ Brunetti said and replaced the phone.
    He picked it up immediately and dialled the number of the morgue. Identifying himself to Rizzardi’s assistant, he asked if they had had a man brought in from San Polo that morning.
    â€˜He’s with him now,’ the man explained, quite as though Rizzardi were a normal doctor and were in the examining room having a look to see what the problem was.
    â€˜I’m in my office. Would you ask him to call me when he’s finished?’
    â€˜Of course, Dottore.’
    Paola was right, he realized. To have lived a life, even a life cut short in the middle, and not to have a name to be called by, to live among people who did not know your name – Brunetti had no word to describe it. If the man – he would call him a man now, not a boy – had been mute as well as deaf, how had he communicated with the world around him? How had he expressed even the most simple desire, save by pointing at the thing he wanted? But what if he were cold or hot or wanted something to eat: was he reduced to a life of pantomime? Had someone taught him to read? To write? To sign? And if not, then how did he establish contact with the world?
    It daunted Brunetti, the pathos of it.
    The phone rang, and when he answered he heard Rizzardi’s voice. ‘
Ciao
, Guido. Franco said you called about the man from San Polo.’
    â€˜Yes. My wife called me and told me he was dead. We knew him. Sort of.’
    Rizzardi did not ask for clarification, leading Brunetti to wonder whether all any of us ever do is sort of know people. He continued, ‘So I called to ask you to tell me what you can about him.’
    â€˜His name is,’