Wilful Behaviour Read Online Free PDF

insensitivity. When the class was over, she waited while the other students left the room and then came up to Paola’s desk.
    ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here last week, Professoressa.’
    Paola smiled but before she could say anything Claudia asked, ‘Did you have time to speak to your husband?’
    It occurred to Paola to ask the girl if she thought that perhaps she might not have had occasion to speak to her husband during the last two weeks. Instead, she turned to face Claudia and said, ‘Yes, I asked him about it, and he said that he can’t give you an answer until he has an idea of the seriousness of the crime for which the man was convicted.’
    Paola watched the girl’s face register this information: surprise, suspicion, and then a quick assessing glance at Paola, as if to assure herself that no trick or trap lay in her answer. These expressions flashed by in an instant, after which she said, ‘But in general? I only want to know if he thinks it’s possible or if he knows there’s some sort of process that would allow, well, that would allow a person’s reputation to be restored.’
    Paola did not sigh, but she did speak with a sort of over-patient slowness. ‘That’s what he can’t say, Claudia. Unless he knows what the crime was.’
    The girl considered this, then surprised Paola by asking, ‘Could I speak to your husband myself, do you think?’
    Either the girl was too obsessed with finding an answer to care about the distrust her question showed of Paola or too artless to be aware of it. In either case, Paola’s response was a lesson in equanimity. ‘I see no reason why you couldn’t. If you call the Questura and ask for him, I’m sure he’d tell you when you could go and speak to him.’
    ‘But if they won’t let me speak to him?’
    ‘Then use my name. Tell them you’re calling for me or that I told you to call. That should be enough to make them put you through to him.’
    ‘Thank you, Professoressa,’ Claudia said and turned to leave. As she turned, she bumped her hip against the edge of the desk, and the books she was holding fell to the floor. Bending to pick them up, Paola, with the instinct of every lover of books, had a look at them. She saw a book with a title in German, but because it was upside down she couldn’t make it out. There was Denis Mack Smith’s history of the Italian monarchy as well as his biography of Mussolini, both in English.
    ‘Do you read German, Claudia?’
    ‘Yes, I do. My grandmother spoke it to me when I was growing up. She was German.’
    ‘Your real grandmother, that is?’ Paola said with an encouraging smile.
    Still on one knee, arranging the books, the girl shot her a very suspicious glance but answered calmly, ‘Yes, my mother’s mother.’
    Not wanting to be perceived as prying, Paola contented herself with saying only, ‘How lucky you were to be raised bilingual.’
    ‘You were, too, weren’t you, Professoressa?’
    ‘I learned English as a child, yes,’ Paola said and left it at that. She did not add that it had not been from her family but from a succession of English nannies. The less any student knew about her personal life, the better. With a gesture to the Mack Smith books, Paola asked, ‘What about you?’
    Claudia got to her feet. ‘I’ve spent summers in England.’ That, it seemed, was the only explanation Paola was going to get.
    ‘Lucky you,’ Paola said in English and then added with a smile, ‘Ascot, strawberries, and Wimbledon.’
    ‘It’s more like mucking out the stables at my aunt’s place in Surrey,’ Claudia answered in the same accentless English.
    ‘If your German is as good, it must be quite extraordinary,’ Paola said, not without a trace of envy.
    ‘Oh, I seldom get to speak it, but I still like to read in it. Besides,’ she said, hefting the books on to her hip, ‘it’s not as if there were any Italian accounts of the war that are particularly reliable.’
    ‘I think my husband will be pleased to