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‘Have you read it?’ she asked, her voice charged with eager curiosity.
    ‘Some years ago,’ Brunetti answered, then added, ‘I usually don’t read much modern history, but I had a conversation at dinner one night with someone who started telling us all about how much better it would be if only he were here again, how much better it would be for all of us if he could…’
    ‘Instil some discipline into young people,’ she seamlessly completed his phrase, ‘and restore order to society.’ Claudia had somehow managed a perfect echo of the orotund voice of the man who had spoken in favour of Il Duce and the discipline he had managed to instil into the Italian character. Brunetti threw back his head and laughed, delighted and encouraged by the way her imitation dismissed with contempt the man and his claims. ‘I don’t remember seeing you there,’ he said when he stopped laughing, ‘but it certainly sounds like you were at the table and heard him talking.’
    ‘Oh, God, I hear it all the time, even at school,’ she said with exasperation. ‘It’s fine for people to complain about the present. It’s one of the staples of conversation, after all. But once you start to mention the things in the past that made the present the way it is, then people begin to criticize you for having no respect for the country or for tradition. No one wants to go to the trouble of thinking about the past, really thinking about it, and what a terrible man he was.’
    ‘I didn’t know young people even knew who Il Duce was,’ Brunetti said, exaggerating, but not by much, and mindful of the almost total amnesia he had discovered in the minds of anyone, of whatever age, with whom he had attempted to discuss the war or its causes. Or worse, the sort of cock-eyed, retouched history that portrayed the friendly, generously disposed Italians led astray by their wicked Teutonic neighbours to the north.
    The girl’s voice drew him back from these reflections. ‘Most of them don’t. This is old people I’m talking about. You’d think they’d know or remember what things were like then, what he was like.’ She shook her head in another sign of exasperation. ‘But no, all I hear is that nonsense about the trains being on time and no trouble from the Mafia and how happy the Ethiopians were to see our brave soldiers.’ She paused as if assessing just how far to go with this conservatively dressed man with the kind eyes; whatever she saw seemed to reassure her, for she continued, ‘Our brave soldiers come with their poison gas and machine-guns to show them the wonders of Fascism.’
    So young and yet so cynical, he thought, and how tired she must be already of having people point this out to her. ‘I’m surprised you aren’t enrolled in the history faculty,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, I was, for a year. But I couldn’t stand it, all the lies and the dishonest books and the refusal to take a stand about anything that’s happened in the last hundred years.’
    ‘And so?’
    ‘I changed to English Literature. The worst they can do is make us listen to all their idiotic theories about the meaning of literature or whether the text exists or not.’ Hearing her, Brunetti had the strange sensation of listening to Paola in one of her wilder moments. ‘But they can’t change the texts themselves. It’s not like what the people in power do when they remove embarrassing documents from the State Archives. They can’t do that to Dante or Manzoni, can they?’ she asked speculatively, a question that really asked for an answer.
    ‘No,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘But I suspect that’s only because there are standard editions of the basic texts. Otherwise, I’m sure they’d try, if they thought they could get away with it.’ He saw that he had her interest, so he added, ‘I’ve always been afraid of people in possession of what they believe is the truth. They’ll do anything to see that the facts are changed and whipped into shape to agree with