Still Brunetti said nothing. The waiter brought them two fresh cups of coffee and removed the used ones. The door opened and two burly men followed a gust of damp air into the bar. The waiter moved off towards them.
‘I told you then’, Paola resumed, ‘that it was wrong and that they had to be stopped.’
‘Do you think you can stop them?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered and before he could question or contradict, she continued, ‘Not me alone, not here in Venice, breaking a window in a travel agency in Campo Manin. But if all the women in Italy went out at night with stones and broke the windows of every travel agency that organized sex-tours, then, after a very short time, there wouldn’t be any sex-tours organized in Italy, would there?’
‘Is that a rhetorical question or a real question?’ he asked.
‘I think it’s a real one,’ she said. This time, it was Paola who put the sugar into their coffee.
Brunetti drank his before he said anything. ‘You can’t do it, Paola. You can’t go breaking the windows of offices or stores that do things you don’t want them to do or sell things you don’t think they should sell.’ Before she could say anything he asked her, ‘Remember when the Church tried to ban the sale of contraceptives? Remember your reaction to that? Well, if you don’t, I do, and it was the same thing: off on a crusade against what you decided was evil. But that time you were on the other side, against people who were doing what you say now you have the right to do, stopping people from doing what you think is wrong. No, the obligation.’ He felt himself giving in to the anger that had filled him since he had got out of bed, that had walked through the streets with him and that stood beside him now, in this quiet, early-morning bar.