Commissario Brunetti Mystery, book 32 : So Shall You Reap

Il l’ouvrit et glissa soigneusement les Prousts à l’intérieur, puis revint vers l’étagère, en prenant le sac avec lui. Il le posa derrière lui, s’agenouilla à nouveau, et considéra attentivement les livres restants, portant des jugements viscéraux, ajoutant les livres dans le sac sans leur laisser la possibilité de plaider leur cause, depuis le refuge temporaire du bureau de Paola. Moby Dick ; L’Homme du sentiment ; I promessi Sposi, qu’il avait été forcé de lire quand il était élève au liceo et qu’il avait détesté.

The used book-store at Campo Santa Maria Nova would gladly have them all.
Brunetti studied the empty spaces on the shelf, wondering how he could fill them. Before an answer came, his phone rang.
He started to give his name, but a voice he recognized as Vianello’s spoke over his, asking, ‘Guido, can you meet me at Piazzale Roma?’
‘It’s Saturday, Lorenzo,’ he told his friend and colleague. ‘And it’s raining and it’s cold.’
‘And it’s important,’ Vianello added.

He went to the kitchen and returned with one of the paper bags the city distributed to hold paper for collection. He opened it and lowered the Prousts carefully inside, then returned to the shelf, carrying the bag, then returned to the shelf, carrying the bag. He set it beside him, knelt again, and glanced more carefully at the remaining books, making a series of visceral judgements, adding the books to the bag without bothering to give them the opportunity to plead for their lives from the temporary safety of Paola’s desk. Moby Dick; The Man of Feeling ; I promessi Sposi, which he’d been forced to read as a student in liceo and had hated. It had survived because, until now, he‘d lacked the courage to believe a ‘classic’ could be such a bore, but into the bag, it went. (…)

He decided to begin with the books at the bottom. He knelt on one knee and studied the spines. Halfway along, he saw the familiar face of Proust, and the face of Proust, and the face of Proust. Slipping his hands into the space before the first books and after the last, he said aloud, ‘Now’, and extracted them in one block. (…)

On a Saturday in early November, Guido Brunetti, reluctant to go outside, was at home, trying to decide which of his books to remove from the shelves in Paola’s study. Years ago, some months before the birth of their daughter, he had renounced claim to what had been his study so that their second child could have her own bedroom. Paola had offered his books sanctuary on four shelves. At the time, Brunetti ad suspected this would not suffice, and eventually it had not: the time had come of The Cull. He was faced with the decision of what to eliminate from the shelves.  The first shelves held books he knew he would read again; the second, at eye level, held books he wanted to read for the first time; the third, books he’d not finished but believed he would; and the bottom shelf held books he had known, sometimes even as he was buying them, that he would never read.

Theft had displeased him then as much as it did now. About deceit, however, Brunetti had a far more elastic opinion. It was bad when used against him, a useful weapon when it was his turn to use it. To some it might be evidence of a moral failure. Brunetti had persuaded himself that it was merely a pragmatic survival skill.