The House of Serenades

18



SHOCKED BY THE REALITY THAT the man she had loved and had been about to marry was also the man who had threatened her father, almost incapable of associating the man who had kissed her and caressed her and loved her so warmly with the hateful figure who had hung a dead cat on her door, shattered by the realization that she had lost everyone and everything she had ever cared for since the day she had been born, Caterina began a life in many aspects similar to the one she had lived in the convent of the Sorelle Addolorate. She entertained no visitors, she talked to no one. The only people she saw, her only companions, were Viola and Guglielmo, who acted like bastions between her and the outside world. Ivano made all sorts of attempts to breach the bastions, convinced that all he had to do for Caterina to forgive him was to meet with her again, talk to her, and explain once more his reasons. He spoke to Guglielmo and Viola every day, telling them how much he loved their mistress and how much their mistress needed him, and didn’t they remember it was because of his company that Miss Berilli had come out of her state of trance after Madame had committed suicide.

“Please let me in,” he begged. “I know she still loves me. She’s angry at me for something I did, and I want to ask her to forgive me. I know how to talk to her, how to make her feel better. I can help her in her distress. She has no one in this world but me.”

Viola and Guglielmo were puzzled. They didn’t know the reason for their mistress’s anger and couldn’t understand how the feelings of such a beautiful, kind, gentle young lady could go from love to hate in such a short time. They often wondered what the conversation in the blue parlor had been about, but never dared to ask. After many years in their profession, they knew better than to intrude in their employer’s affairs. They believed that Ivano was sincerely in love with Caterina and made therefore several attempts to persuade their mistress to receive him. Caterina, however, was immovable. She refused to see Ivano and had nothing else to say.

Baffled, Ivano turned to Father Camillo. “Please help me,” he begged. “I am so in love with Caterina, and she is ignoring me. Could you talk to her? Convince her that I’m worthy of her love?”

Father Camillo said, “I will intercede with Miss Berilli on your behalf only if you tell me why she’s so angry at you. I must know the whole truth before I become involved in your personal trouble.”

“I’ll tell you, Father,” Ivano said, “but under confession.”

Nodding, Father Camillo showed Ivano to a confessional. Ivano kneeled and began his tale. When he had finished, Father Camillo murmured through the grating, “I hope God in his benevolence will be willing to help you, son. I can’t, because your actions caused a death.”

Having seen all his chances to be admitted to Caterina’s presence fade, one night Ivano picked up his mandolin. He walked uphill to the belvedere and stood on a bench that allowed him a perfect view of the palazzina across the street. He began plucking the strings gently, with feathery touches, letting the intensity gradually increase. Soon, he was sustaining the notes of his songs for long periods of time by executing a perfect rapid tremolando with the heart-shaped plectrum. He sang with his best voice ever, clear, velvety, and flawless.

In her bedroom, Caterina was seated at the dressing table, looking into the mirror and braiding her long hair for the night when the first notes of the mandolin broke the silence that reigned inside the palazzina. She didn’t pay attention to those sounds at first, because she perceived them unconsciously, almost as a natural accompaniment to the precise movements of her fingers on the three strands of hair. It was only after she had threaded the braid’s last loop and tied a satin ribbon around it that she became aware of the mandolin notes and the melodious voice that sang along. At once, she knew it was Ivano playing, and for a short moment her mind drifted back to the past, the afternoons in the oven room, their first encounter. Then she cleared her throat and looked for her nightgown, determined to go to sleep and ignore the music altogether. Her curiosity, however, was aroused. Where was he? Why was he playing? On tiptoe, she left the bedroom, whose windows looked east and didn’t allow her a view of the street. She reached the top of the staircase and walked down. Guglielmo met her in the foyer.

“Mister Bo’s music is wonderful,” Gugliemo said, hoping to convince Caterina to accept the musical homage and let the young man back in her life. “Miss, wouldn’t you go with me to the garden? So we can hear him better. These songs, I’m certain, are for you.”

To Guglielmo’s soothing voice, Caterina approached the front door. For an instant she was moved by the music’s romantic melody and let her heart float with the pitch of the notes. The thoughts of her dead mother and dismembered family, however, brought her back to earth.

“Lock all doors and windows,” she ordered. Then she returned to her bedroom and went to sleep.

Ivano serenaded Caterina through the night. He left Corso Solferino when the silhouettes of the houses began to surface from the darkness under the first light of dawn.

“I’ve gone through worse moments in my quest for Caterina,” he said aloud as he walked downhill towards his home, exhausted from the many hours spent standing and singing. “It’s only a matter of time before she forgives me. My music will melt the cold in her heart, I know.”

From that day on, Ivano spent his days at the bakery and his evenings serenading the woman he loved. He arrived at the belvedere in the fading light of dusk and stood on a bench facing the palazzina. Mandolin held by a neck strap, he played and sang until the church bells rang midnight. Then he went home and slept till dawn, when he awoke and joined his father at the bakery. He worked diligently all day long, alternating between serving customers and baking in the oven room. Finished, he cleaned up, wore his best suit, and returned to the belvedere for another night of playing and singing. Not once did Caterina open her windows. Not once did she acknowledge Ivano’s presence or the beauty of his madrigals. Her days passed in repetitive, joyless occupations: she entertained charity officials, read books in the blue parlor, ate, bathed, undressed, and went to sleep, as if the sounds of Ivano’s mandolin were the fruit of her imagination.

For his part, Ivano wasn’t in the least discouraged by the indifference Caterina showed towards his music. His father’s words continued to echo in his mind: She has no one to love but you … Women can’t live without love …

“She’ll forgive me for what I did, someday,” he told the curious who stopped by the bench to listen to his music. “On that day she’ll open her windows and fly out into the night, dressed like a bride.”

“What did you do that made her so angry?” a passerby asked.

Ivano sighed. “I acted badly in the name of our love.”

Night after night Ivano sang under the windows of the palazzina. By the time a month had passed, his serenades on Corso Solferino had become famous throughout the town and beyond. Their fame climbed the mountains and spread across the plains, reaching as far as Milan, Turin, and even Bologna when the newspapers began reporting on the stubborn man who sang every night for his lost love. The Genoese walked nightly up the hills to the belvedere and sat around him in awe of his warm, passionate voice. Mothers brought their children to be lulled by the notes of the mandolin and turned Ivano’s music into nursery songs and lullabies. Music lovers came to listen to his compositions and learn the art that made his serenades so moving. When the spectators became too numerous to find space on the benches, they brought their own chairs, filling the belvedere with rows of seats, like the floor of an open-air theater. Sometimes rain fell, and with all the umbrellas open, the belvedere resembled a crowded mushroom field. Soon, the Genoese began referring to Ivano as l’uomo innamorato, the enamored man, and the Berillis’ home was given a second nickname: Villa Serenata, the House of Serenades.

One evening a group of professional musicians joined the spectators and had long discussions with each other over the serenades’ style. Some saw in Ivano’s music the influence of Debussy whereas others saw in his melodies the romance of the Notturni by Chopin. In any case, they all marveled at the fact that a young man with no formal musical training could sing with such perfect pitch and have such enticing warmth in his voice. They were so struck by the beauty of the melodies and the lyrics’ poetic structure that they came to consider Ivano’s serenades a musical phenomenon worthy of being transmitted to posterity. They sat at the belvedere night after night, transcribing the music in pages and pages of scores and the lyrics in carefully catalogued libretti, which they would later archive at the Civico Istituto di Musica Nicolo’ Paganini in three thick leather-bound volumes titled Suoni D’Amore, Sounds of Love.

While the musicians scribbled and the children hummed along, Ivano continued to bring nightly his homage to his beloved, rain or shine, careless of the crowd that surrounded him, undisturbed by the fame his performances had achieved. He continued to play his mandolin and sing of love and sorrow with the angelic voice some people remembered from the time of his madness on Piazza della Nunziata.

“She’ll forgive me sooner or later,” he kept telling his listeners, “if she truly loves me.”

Two months had passed since Ivano had started singing, and Corrado was more dumbfounded than ever. His heart shattered from seeing his son’s dream destroyed, he did what he could to help him through his struggle. When the two were at the bakery together, Corrado would talk to his son at length, as he had done in the old days, in the hope that his words would soothe Ivano’s pain and help him move on.

“Let’s go away,” he told him one day. “Let’s sell the bakery and go to America. Everyone says it’s a great country, where it’s easy as counting beans to become rich and famous.”

Ivano shook his head. “You go, father. I must wait for Caterina.”

When night approached and Ivano prepared to leave Piazza della Nunziata to go to the belvedere, Corrado would try to dissuade him, with sweet words at the beginning, with shouts of anger later on. All was pointless.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, father,” was all Ivano had to say. Then he’d leave, mandolin under his arm, and walk up the hill, ready for another night of serenades.

As Corrado watched his son leave, he’d shake his head at that display of stubbornness, realizing that nothing he could do or say would make his son use reason. He remembered the past, Ivano’s long disappearance, the mandolin days on Piazza della Nunziata, and recalled that every single one of those manifestations of unbalance and loss of control had been passing phases and Ivano had, in the end, acted normal again.

“This, too, shall pass,” he’d often say, “as his other follies have.”

Some nights, unable to resist his curiosity, Corrado went to Corso Solferino to listen to his son singing. He had to admit, Ivano had a magnificent voice. He was flattered by the large crowd that stood around Ivano in reverence and admiration. One night, however, Corrado looked closely at his son and saw opaque eyes, wrinkled skin. He examined Ivano’s dark hair, glittering under the moonlight, and noticed for the first time that it was streaked with gray near the temples and in the back of the head, like the hair of an old sailor. At that sight, Corrado was overtaken by worry.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “I’m going into that house. And I’m going to talk to that spoiled rich girl myself. I’m going to tell her to stop acting like a fool and driving my son crazy. And if she doesn’t want to listen, I’m going to scold her until she does, as my father used to do with me when I behaved like a fool.”

Hastily, he crossed the street and the garden and climbed the four steps that led to the Berilli’s front door. He knocked.

As always, it was Guglielmo who opened the door. “How may I help you, sir?”

“I’m here to see Caterina,” Corrado said.

“Who am I talking to, sir?”

“Corrado Bo. I’m the musician’s father.” He pointed to the other side of the street. “The mandolin player.”

“One moment,” Guglielmo said, letting Corrado in the foyer and signaling he should wait there. Then he headed down the hallway in his customary dignified steps.

Standing at the edge the foyer, Corrado looked timidly about. He had heard many tales about that house, seen the stately stone structure from the street, but he had never seen its interior before. He gazed at the majestic staircase with its s-shaped banister that came rolling down towards him like a tossed ribbon; and observed the veins of the marble floor, polished and shiny, reflecting every beam of light. He imagined Giuseppe Berilli lying unconscious on that floor on the night of the dead cat, perhaps there where he was standing or only steps away. With his mind’s eyes, he saw Matilda Pellettieri descending the staircase with the bearing of a queen and meeting guests at the door and leading them through the hallway to dining tables set with the finest china. At a certain point, deep in his dreamy state, he thought he heard voices calling and whispering, and wondered if the palazzina housed the ghosts of its dead inhabitants and didn’t let them go.

The sound of steps pulled him from his reverie. “I’m sorry, Mister Bo,” Guglielmo said softly. “Miss Berilli is not receiving visitors today.”

Corrado looked at the butler in dismay. “No? Why?”

Guglielmo shook his head. “These days,” he said, “she hardly receives any visitors at all.”

“I need to talk to her,” Corrado pleaded. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Guglielmo said. He lowered his voice. “Nothing at all.” He pointed at the door. “You should go now. Goodnight.”

Corrado gazed about the foyer with tired eyes. Suddenly he took a deep breath, pulled his head high, and spoke with a determination that caught even him by surprise.

“No,” he stated. He pointed a finger to his own chest. “My son is dying for Caterina, and I need to talk to her, right now.”

He took a step towards the hallway, and Guglielmo obstructed his way.

Corrado fought back. “Take me to Caterina or I’ll spend the night here.” He raised his voice. “Do you understand? Take me to her!”

“It’s all right, Guglielmo,” said a faint but firm voice. “Good evening, Mister Bo,” Caterina said, approaching.

Guglielmo stepped aside.

Corrado opened his mouth wide. That was Caterina? What happened to the blond, lustrous hair, he wondered, to the sparkling green eyes, the tingling voice, and the contagious smile? Her eyes were dull and framed by deep wrinkles, her face smileless. Her hair was cut below her chin and of a color he couldn’t define. So much sadness emanated from the figure that stood in front of him that for a moment he thought he was going to cry. When he finally spoke, he did so with a shaky voice. “Good evening, Caterina.”

“Please, come this way,” she whispered, leading him to the blue parlor. There, she sat on the loveseat with slow, composed movements that only emphasized to Corrado the anguish that lived inside her. She pointed to an armchair, but Corrado remained standing, partly nervous, partly intimidated by the opulent, elegant surroundings. He looked at the thin figure sunk in the velvet cushions. This, he thought, is someone who has suffered beyond reason. On that note, he changed his mind about what he was going to say.

“Caterina,” he began, “as you are aware, Ivano is out there playing and singing for you every night. I’m unable to persuade him to stop. I’m worried about him. He’s getting sick, you know. His hair has become gray, his body gaunt, like at the time he thought you were dead and played his mandolin all day long on Piazza della Nunziata. I bet you don’t even know about that. Am I right?”

She shook her head.

“Ah, if you had seen him back then,” Corrado continued. “He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat. All he did was play and sing his love for you. He spent days and nights seated on the bakery floor, holding his mandolin in his arms and humming through his nose. Everyone, including me, thought he had gone mad. At some point I thought he was going to die. Now he’s doing it all over again. He survived back then, I don’t know how. This time, I know, he will die.” He paused, looked at her sad eyes.

She returned his look without answering.

“I understand that you don’t want him,” he continued, “and I can see why. So I’m not here to persuade you to forgive him or to return to him. I’m here to ask that you talk to him, that you tell him yourself that he should stop playing because you won’t forgive him for what he did. See, there’s no point in me telling him these things. I have. God knows how many times. But he’s so certain that sooner or later his music will win your heart again … Imagine, he keeps talking of a special song he wrote months ago for your return to him, and he won’t sing it for any other reason. No one ever heard it. The musicians out there begged him many times to play it for them so they can add it to the collection. ‘Only when I will be with Caterina,’ is his reply. I am certain, dear child, that the only one who can make him realize the truth is you. Please, come out there with me, only for a few moments, and tell him to go home.”

The moments Caterina took to make her decision seemed to Corrado an eternity. “I can’t help you, Mister Bo,” she finally told him. “You’ll have to find another way.” She stood up and headed towards the parlor door.

“Fine,” Corrado said in a louder tone of voice. “Go ahead, continue to ignore what’s happening around you. You make so much of your own suffering, and yet you ignore the suffering of others. You are no better than the people who caused all this pain to you. No better than Ivano, no better than your father. You are acting selfishly, just like them.”

She stopped, but said nothing.

His voice softened. “One day, Miss Caterina, you’ll die, as we all will. This is the time for you to decide what it is that you want to leave behind.”

She turned around.

He waited quietly for her to speak.

“You have no idea, Mister Bo,” Caterina murmured, “how difficult it is for me to do what you are asking. I understand your worries, but, please, try to understand my pain. Ivano is responsible for the destruction of my family: the death of my father, that of my mother. I’ve also lost my aunt, for even though she is still alive, it is as if she were dead. And my brothers are gone. I haven’t heard from Umberto since the day he left town, and,” her voice broke down, “Raimondo, I have no idea where he is. I don’t know what I will do, but one thing I know for sure: I will not see or talk to Ivano for as long as I live, and not only because of what he did to my family. I also learned from reliable sources that he frequented regularly Caffe’ del Gambero and its prostitutes, and that while I was locked in the convent he was a burglar and a counterfeiter. He’s dead in my mind and in my heart, for this is the only scenario that allows me to bear my pain. Go home, Mister Bo.” She moved towards the hallway. “I hope you and your son will find peace someday. I’m trying desperately to find mine.”

“Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

“No, Mister Bo.” She paused. “When I was a child, my stubbornness was famous. My mother and my chaperone would go crazy trying to reason with me. Once I made a decision, I kept to it. I’m still that way. It takes me time to come to a conclusion, but when I reach it, it’s final. Stop trying, Mister Bo. Many people tried before you, and none of them succeeded.”