Calamity Town

There was silence then Paola said, "I was thinking about you today, about your work." He waited. "It was when I was washing the windows, and that's what made me think of you." she added, surprising him.

"Why the windows?"

"I was washing them, and then I did the mirror in the bathroom, and that's when I thought of what you do."

He knew she'd continue, even if he said nothing, but he also knew she liked to be encouraged, so he asked, "And?"

"When you clean a window," she said, eyes on his, "you have to open it and pull it toward you, and when you do that, the angle of the light that's coming through it changes." She saw that he was following, so she continued, "So you get it clean. Or you think you do. But when you close the window, the light comes through from the original angle, and then you see that the outside's still dirty, or that you missed a patch on the inside. That means you have to open it and clean it again. But you can never be sure it's really clean until you close it again or until you move so that you see it from a different angle."

"And the mirror?" he asked.

She looked up at him and smiled. "You see a mirror only from one side. No light comes from behind, so when you clean it, it's clean. There's no trick of perception." She looked back down at her work.

"And?"
 
Still looking at the peas, perhaps to hide her disappointment in him, she explained, "That's what your work's like, or how you want it to be. You want to clean mirrors, want everything to be two-dimensional and easy to take care of. But every time you begin to take a look at something, it turns out to be like the windows: if you change perspective or you look at things from a new angle, everything changes."

Brunetti considered this for a long time and then added, hoping to lighten the mood, "But in both cases, I've always got to clean up the dirt."

Paola said, "You said that; I didn't. When Brunetti made no response, she dropped the last peas into the bowl, and got to her feet. She walked to the counter and set the bowl down. "Whichever it is you do, I suppose you'd prefer to do it on a full stomach." she said.