The House of Serenades

5



IN HIS MODEST APARTMENT at the outskirt of downtown, Damiano Sciaccaluga was seated on his bed, legs dangling off the side, holding in hand a stack of banknotes. He was a short man in his fifties with an aquiline nose and the eyes of a ferret. Despite his thin constitution, he had a double chin and a fat neck that always kept his shirt collar tight. He winced when the doorbell rang. He hated being called after hours, especially while he was busy with personal matters, so he decided to ignore the bell and continue what he had set about: counting money. He concentrated, for he didn’t want to lose count. When the bell rang again, he sighed, “What now?” He hid the banknotes under the pillow, walked to the door, and whispered, “Who’s there?”

“Umberto Berilli,” a voice answered. “Open up.”

The moment he heard the name Berilli, Damiano opened the door wide. He knew right away something must be the matter: Umberto’s face was pale, his eyes fearful.

“Hurry up, doctor!” Umberto exclaimed. “My father fainted in the foyer. With a hand pressed against his heart!”

At that, Damiano knew he should prepare for the worst. Hat in one hand, bag in the other, he rushed out of the apartment, following Umberto across the street, where the Berillis’ roofless automobile was parked with the engine running. Umberto sat at the wheel, Damiano on the passenger’s side. The doctor grabbed the edge of his seat. “Quickly, my boy,” he said, “before it’s too late.”

Soon the two men were heading up steep roads. Umberto kept silent as he drove, concentrating on the streets’ twists and turns, for which Doctor Sciaccaluga was most grateful as he was in no mood for conversation and in great need of calming his nerves and regain his composure. The last thing he had needed that night was an emergency call, but the call had come from the Berillis, and how could he have said no? He cared for the Berillis more than for the rest of his patients. Giuseppe, in particular, was a very special client.

In April of 1908, one short week after Caterina’s death, Giuseppe, who had never had a personal friend in his life, had surprised everyone by inviting Damiano Sciaccaluga, his doctor, a middle-class man without wealth, to dine at the palazzina. In attendance were the Mayor and his wife, the owner of a shipping company with his elderly mother, and a Parisian Countess vacationing on Genoa’s Riviera. They had all looked upon Damiano’s presence at the table as a curiosity, an extravagance very much at odd with the conventional life their hosts were known for leading. Damiano played along as gracefully as his social extraction allowed him, smiling right and left but in reality feeling like a fish out of water. The conversation topics before, during, and after dinner—the Countess’s horses, the Mayor’s wife’s Tuscan estate, the shipowner’s latest trip to a spa in Baden Baden, and the difficulty getting good house help—were far out of his league. His fear of being inadequate was sculpted in the clumsiness of his movements and the awkwardness of his colloquial exchanges. All along, he said very little of his own, limiting his contribution to nodding or murmuring ahs and ohs. No one but Giuseppe ever addressed him directly in any way. After such a miserable performance, Matilda and the guests thought for sure the doctor would never be invited to the palazzina again. Instead, to everyone’s dismay, from that day forward Damiano graced every single social function in the Berillis’ home and accompanied Giuseppe to a number of events reserved for the high society.

Giuseppe’s relatives and many of his peers had disapproved of that friendship from the very start, yet no one dared say more than a few words to Giuseppe, surmising that his daughter’s sudden death was blinding him with pain; that such pain was to blame for Giuseppe’s unprecedented need for a personal friend; and that in his confusion Giuseppe had not realized that by befriending Damiano Sciaccaluga of all people he had cracked open the class boundaries and undermined the power of the upper class in its entirety.

Matilda couldn’t get herself to look at Doctor Sciaccaluga, let alone socialize with him. Over the years he had been at the palazzina many times in his function of family doctor, and as such he had only been admitted to the foyer, the patients’ bedrooms, and occasionally the reading room when the call was about Giuseppe’s heart condition. Never in all that time had he been admitted to the social areas, such as the living and dining rooms, and he had always addressed the lady of the house as Madame and Giuseppe as Mister Berilli or Sir—as was expected of a man of an inferior class. But on the day following his very first dinner invitation Damiano returned to the palazzina with a newly-forged look of superiority on his face. Matilda ran into him in the foyer, and her first thought was that he had come for the weekly check on Giuseppe. He approached her with a beaming smile.

“Matilda,” he said cheerfully, taking her hand and bowing to kiss it, “it’s so wonderful to see you again. You look radiant.”

Matilda stiffened and retracted her hand. “I don’t recall having given you permission to address me by my first name,” she said with a stinging voice. Her eyes had turned glacial.

“Matilda, dear, I don’t understand,” Doctor Sciaccaluga said. “We should be friends.”

“I think not,” Matilda said, giving him a look half of pity, half of disdain.

Doctor Sciaccaluga directed his astute ferret eyes at her. “Perhaps I should see Giuseppe about this. Is he at home?”

“In the reading room,” Matilda said sharply. “I assume you know your way.”

The comradeship between Giuseppe and Damiano was no temporary whim, Matilda and her social acquaintances soon found out. The two became inseparable, like brothers. They met often for lunch on workdays, they played bocce together on Sundays after church, and when Matilda and Giuseppe went to dinner parties or to the theater or to any public function Damiano relentlessly tagged along, driving Matilda crazy. Her insistence that Giuseppe get rid of him had no effect whatsoever.

In the car, a few turns from the palazzina, Umberto broke the silence. “I fear for my father’s life, doctor. I’ve never seen him faint like this before.”

“There are many reasons for fainting, dear Umberto,” Damiano pointed out in a shaky voice. “We’ll know soon enough what the causes are.” He cleared his throat twice, hoping Umberto would stop talking. He had no intention of sharing with him what was going through his mind: should Giuseppe die, the secret he, and only he, knew would lose its power. Everything he had worked so hard for would be destroyed. His friendship with Giuseppe had turned his life around, and he had no intention of letting anything or anyone, not even death, interfere with it.

“Here we are, doctor,” Umberto said, stopping the car in front of the palazzina.

Doctor Sciaccaluga gathered his strength and dashed out of the automobile. He stopped open-mouthed in front of the dead cat that hung from the knocker. He stared at the puddle of blood.

“Please, doctor, please,” Umberto exhorted him from behind.

Damiano straddled the puddle and entered the foyer, where he saw Giuseppe lying, eyes closed, on the floor. Next to him, on her knees, crying softly, was Matilda. Eugenia was rigidly seated on a corner chair, with Viola waving an open bottle of cordiale under her nose. Next to Eugenia, stood a silent Raimondo. As for Costanza, she was in the far corner of the room, an expression of bewilderment painted on her pearly face. Doctor Sciaccaluga leaned over Giuseppe’s body and searched for the pulse at the wrist and base of the neck. He pulled a stethoscope from his bag and brought it to Giuseppe’s heart. Next he took out a modern blood-pressure measuring kit composed of an inflatable cuff and a mechanical manometer. He placed the cuff snugly around Giuseppe’s upper arm and inflated it with a small hand pump.

“His blood pressure is high,” he said after a few moments, “and his heart may be suffering. I believe he should be brought to the hospital.”

Eugenia stood up. “To the hospital? Poor people go to the hospital. We Berillis have always been treated in our own homes—”

“Stop it, you and your superior attitudes!” Matilda snapped at her with a scowl. “Where Giuseppe will sleep tonight is not for you to decide! We’ll do whatever Doctor Sciaccaluga says we should do. If he says that Giuseppe should be brought to the hospital, we’ll bring him to the hospital. And that is that!”

“Look,” Costanza murmured.

Everyone turned their eyes to the floor, where Giuseppe was opening and closing his lips, like a fish searching for water. He let out two rasping sighs.

Matilda spoke in her husband’s ear. “Giuseppe …”

Giuseppe opened his eyes.

“Please step back, Matilda,” Damiano ordered, as he leaned over the patient. “Giuseppe? Can you hear me?”

Giuseppe nodded.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Damiano …” Giuseppe murmured.

Frowning, Damiano took Giuseppe’s pulse again and listened to his heart. Noticing that it was beating steadily and at the correct rate and that the blood pressure was edging lower, he concluded that there was no need to transfer the patient to the hospital after all, as Giuseppe had not suffered a heart attack but simply fainted at the sight of the dead cat.

“Matilda,” he said, “Giuseppe can be moved upstairs, to his room, where he should rest comfortably for several hours.”

Eugenia looked at Matilda and dipped her chin. “Good.”

Cautiously, Umberto and Damiano helped the lawyer to a seated position. “What happened …” Giuseppe moaned.

“Don’t talk,” Damiano said. “You need rest. Can you stand? We want to take you upstairs, to your bed.”

Giuseppe nodded as his son and the doctor slipped their hands under his armpits. Slowly, he stood up. Supported by the two men, he began to walk in small steps in the direction of the staircase.

They were half way up when Antonio Sobrero, who had been fetched by Guglielmo, entered the foyer from the street. He gaped at the cat, the blood, and Giuseppe being carried up the stairs. He exclaimed, “What in the world happened here?”

On the staircase, Damiano froze in his tracks; a wave of sweat dampened his forehead. He took an extra-long breath then slowly continued his ascent.

It was Matilda who rushed to welcome the Chief of Police. “Antonio! Thank you for coming. Please, do come in. We’ll tell you everything.”

“We are cursed,” Raimondo whispered. “I have no doubt.”

Matilda gave Raimondo an angry look. “I love you,” she said, “but please try to help instead of saying things that have no ground.”

Raimondo lowered his head.

In the blue parlor, Antonio sat down with Matilda, Eugenia, and Costanza. In a quivering voice, Matilda gave him a detailed account of the evening events.

At the end of the story, Antonio frowned. “Gruesome,” he said. He looked at Eugenia. “I assume that when Miss Berilli arrived at eight-fifteen nothing was hanging from the knocker,” he said.

“Of course not,” Eugenia replied.

“It’s a fortunate coincidence, Miss Berilli, that you decided to visit tonight,” Antonio said, “because now we know that whoever carried out this sadistic act must have placed the cat on the door between eight-fifteen and eight-twenty-five.” He turned to Matilda. “Did your husband make you aware of the reason for my visit earlier today?”

The three women nodded.

“The missing jewelry,” Eugenia said.

Matilda looked at Antonio, her eyes begging for his complicity. She coughed.

Antonio understood the situation, but didn’t play along. “I’m afraid, Madame,” he said, “that Miss Berilli should be made aware of the real reason I came to see your husband this afternoon. Being the sister of the primary target of these threats, she may be in danger.”

Eugenia gasped. “So you lied to me, all of you! I knew it, I knew it—”

“Please,” Matilda said, rolling her eyes away from her sister-in-law. “Antonio, would you be kind enough to explain Miss Berilli what happened? I’ll go upstairs, to see that my husband rests.”

In small steps, Costanza followed Matilda out of the room. Then, with carefully-chosen words, Antonio told Eugenia the story of the threatening letters, purposefully omitting the names of the individuals Giuseppe had singled out as suspects. Eugenia listened in silence and with her lips tight. At the end of Antonio’s report, she stood up and walked away without a word, blood vessels bulging on the sides of her neck.

Later, when everyone reconvened in the living room, Antonio said he had leads, which he’d investigate at once, without waiting for morning. He told the astonished family members that Giuseppe himself had provided him with such leads during their meeting earlier that day, but it was safer for everyone if he didn’t share that information for the moment in order to avoid endangering the family further and making false accusations. He asked that the cat not be removed from the knocker and the door and the foyer not be washed until his men arrived and performed their routine work in accordance with police procedures. He repeated that thanks to Miss Berilli’s arrival at eight-fifteen, it’d be relatively easy to check the suspects’ alibis for that night, as the time of the crime could be narrowed down to a ten-minute window. Then he suggested that everyone retire. Doctor Sciaccaluga seconded.

“I administered Giuseppe digitalis and other appropriate medications to protect his heart,” the doctor said. “He should rest as long and peacefully as possible.” Then he offered the women sedatives and promised he’d come back in the morning to check on everyone’s condition.

“Costanza and I will sleep at the palazzina,” Umberto said, “to keep mother company. He turned to Eugenia and Doctor Sciaccaluga. “I’ll be happy to drive you both home. Unless you wish to sleep here, Aunt Eugenia.”

“I don’t think so,” Matilda replied before Eugenia could open her mouth. “I’m sure Eugenia wishes to sleep comfortably in her bed tonight.”

Umberto rose from the sofa. “Very well, then. Let’s go.” He stopped in his tracks. “Where’s Raimondo?”

“He left half an hour ago,” Matilda said.

Umberto shook his head. He asked, “Why does he always act like he’s not part of this family?” No one replied.

Suddenly, Costanza, who had remained at Giuseppe’s bedside, called from the top of the staircase. “Mister Sobrero!”

Everyone turned around.

“Mister Berilli wishes to see you now.”

Doctor Sciaccaluga shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Mister Berilli deems it very important that he speaks to the Chief of Police tonight,” Costanza said in a soft but unusually determined voice.

Recalling the afternoon conversation and the lawyer’s reticence to talk about Ivano Bo, Antonio turned to Doctor Sciaccaluga. “It may be crucial that I see Mister Berilli now,” he said. “I’ll keep the conversation to a minimum, I promise.”

“All right then,” Damiano agreed. “I trust your good judgment, Antonio. Remember. Mister Berilli must rest.”

“Understood,” Antonio said, taking the staircase. On the second step, he let out a moan. He was starting to dislike this family. First, that odd call in the middle of the day, while he was tending to important matters at the police headquarters; then a second call when he was about to finish dinner and move on to his smoking room to try a new pipe. And if the untimely calls weren’t enough, he had a feeling that what he had heard so far might not be the whole truth.

Upstairs, he stopped past the bedroom door. “Mister Berilli? You wanted to see me, I understand.”

“Oh, yes, Antonio,” Giuseppe whispered. “Come closer.”

Antonio tiptoed in the somberness of the large room, the sound of his steps deadened by the thick Oriental rug that hid most of the hardwood floor. Only a small lamp was lit, shedding dim light in a far corner. Yet, when he arrived at the canopy bed he saw that the lawyer was pale like the moon at dawn.

Giuseppe spoke faintly. “Will you put another pillow under my head? I can’t talk well lying down like this. Help me lift my chest a bit. Yes, like this. Thank you, Antonio. Thank you.”

“How are you feeling, Mister Berilli? That cat must have been a very unpleasant sight.”

“It was horrible, Antonio. A vision from hell.”

“Doctor Sciaccaluga wants you to rest,” Antonio said. “I’ll stay only a few moments.”

Giuseppe coughed. “Sit down, Antonio. This will take longer than a few moments.”

Antonio pulled up a chair. “I’m listening.”

Giuseppe breathed deeply. He ran his tongue on his lips twice. “Do you remember what I told you this afternoon about Ivano Bo?”

“I remember.”

“I’ll now tell you the rest of the story.” He paused then spoke with vehemence. “I want you to find him and put him in jail. I’m sure this was his idea—”

“Calm down, Mister Berilli,” Antonio urged him, “or we’ll have to postpone this conversation.”

“No, it must be tonight,” Giuseppe wheezed, “because he’ll try again. He’ll keep trying to kill me until he succeeds. He wants to see me in a coffin, Antonio. You must stop him before it’s too late. I want you to know everything about him, so you can put him away for good. He’s a dangerous individual. Dangerous and mad.”

“Mad? How?”

“Very, very mad. See, Antonio, this afternoon I told you about a woman Ivano Bo claimed to love and who died.”

“Yes,” said Antonio.

Giuseppe spoke faltering. “That woman … was my daughter. Caterina.”

“Your daughter?” Antonio marveled. “I don’t understand. Didn’t she die of tuberculosis? You told me this afternoon that Ivano Bo deemed you responsible for the woman’s death. It doesn’t make any sense!”

Giuseppe waited several seconds before uttering his reply. “I’ll tell you what happened,” he said, “but, please, I’m asking you from the bottom of my heart, keep what I’m about to tell you a secret.”

Antonio thought a moment then decided to give Giuseppe the answer he wanted to hear. “All right. I’ll keep it a secret.”

“Good,” Giuseppe murmured. His voice was barely audible when he began his tale. “Yes, my daughter died of tuberculosis. Mister Bo, however, thinks that Caterina became ill because I prevented her from marrying him. See, approximately three months before Caterina’s death, Caterina told me and Matilda that she had fallen in love with some Ivano and that Ivano’s father was a baker. Caterina was only seventeen, and what she said made no sense at all. No reasonable person of her class would fall in love with the son a baker. Matilda and I couldn’t even figure out how those two had met, let alone come to like each other. We thought he must have seduced her and enslaved her to his will. So I did what any concerned father would have done: I forbade my daughter to see her beau again and kept her under tight surveillance. You understand, Antonio. Caterina was a desirable young woman. Young, beautiful, and rich. I had wedding plans for her already laid out in my mind. I couldn’t let her be involved with such a low-class individual. And I couldn’t let the story of their friendship reach the ears of the public. Our name would have been disgraced.”

Antonio held back a wry smile. “I understand, Mister Berilli. Please, go on. What happened then?”

Giuseppe sighed. “Caterina spent days crying and talking nonsense. Imagine, she kept saying that she was deeply in love with this Ivano and wanted to marry him. Matilda and I were horrified and told Caterina she’d better get over her love because she wouldn’t see that scoundrel again.” He paused, caught his breath. “One day, Caterina stopped crying. She became silent. She became pale. She coughed often, and when she started coughing she kept at it for hours. We realized that she was sick and asked Doctor Sciaccaluga to visit her. At the end of his visit, he told us that Caterina had likely contracted pneumonia. Based on her overall condition, however, he couldn’t rule out tuberculosis. He told us it’d be best for Caterina to go to a private clinic specializing in lung diseases. He knew one such place in the eastern Alps where doctors had been successful in curing many cases of respiratory illnesses. ‘There,’ he said, ‘the air is clearer than ice and the scenery magnificent. It’s the perfect place for a young girl to heal.’ After evaluating the pros and cons of Damiano’s suggestion, Matilda and I decided to send our daughter to the clinic. Unfortunately, shortly after her admission, we received news from the clinic director: Caterina had indeed contracted tuberculosis, and a strong form of it, which left little hope for recovery. Two months later she was dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Antonio said softly, remembering the family’s sorrow and the crowd’s sadness during Caterina’s funeral twenty-four months earlier. He could still see the white casket, the flowers, and the long faces of the people who had attended the burial in tears. “It must have been hard on you. And on your wife.”

“Very hard. We were devastated.”

“Mister Berilli, I know all about your daughter’s death. I attended the funeral. How does all this relate to Ivano Bo and the threatening letters?”

Giuseppe gazed at his surroundings, slowly turning his head right and left. “On the day I forbade Caterina to see Ivano, he came to our house and told our butler he wanted to see me, as he intended to ask for Caterina’s hand. I told Guglielmo to send him away, but Mister Bo didn’t desist. He kept knocking, all day long and for several days afterwards. Of course I never spoke to him. And at some point I ordered Guglielmo not to open the door, period. Then, when the news spread that Caterina had become ill, Mister Bo assaulted me in in front of my office. I almost had a heart attack, I was so scared.” He brought a hand to his heart and gasped. “The mere thought of that incident still frightens me.”

“What happened then?” Antonio asked.

Giuseppe pointed a shaky hand at the nightstand. “I need water, Antonio. My throat is dry.”

Antonio stood up. He poured water in a glass from a pitcher and handed the glass to the lawyer.

Giuseppe drank slowly. “Thank you,” he said, then cleared his throat. “When it became known that Caterina had passed away,” he resumed, “Ivano Bo came to our house again and stood under these windows screaming that Caterina had died because I had taken her from him, that I was to blame for Caterina’s death, and that he’d kill me before he died. I had him arrested, but he was freed the following day, which didn’t make me feel safe at all. So I hired a man—Terenzio Gallo—to watch him. A few weeks later, Terenzio told me that Mister Bo had become a bum and, in his opinion, I shouldn’t worry about him anymore. I called off the watch and didn’t hear about Ivano Bo for some time. I met Terenzio again recently, by chance, in court. He said that Ivano had gone back to work at his father’s bakery. ‘I’m sure that by now he has forgotten all about you and your daughter,’ he told me, and for some time I thought he must have been right, for I haven’t heard another word from Ivano Bo since. I stopped thinking about him altogether. Until the letters came.”

“It’s a good thing you decided to confide in me, Mister Berilli,” Antonio said, frowning. “What you told me will certainly help my investigation. Is there anything else I should know?”

“No, Antonio. This is all.”

“And it’s all true, I assume,” Antonio said.

“Yes. What I told you is the complete truth, I swear.”

Antonio remained silent a moment. Then he asked, “Where can I find Terenzio Gallo?”

“At the cemetery. He died a month ago.”

“Who else knows about the relationship between your daughter and Mister Bo?” Antonio asked.

Giuseppe swallowed. He opened his eyes wide. “Only Matilda and I know the truth. No one else knows the complete story, not even my sons and my sister. Not even Damiano, who diagnosed Caterina’s tuberculosis. I want things to remain this way. I don’t want a shadow cast on my daughter’s memory. Please, Antonio, don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t, Mister Berilli. You can count on me. Before tonight’s accident, I had decided to begin investigating the suspects tomorrow, but I’ll start right away instead, while traces are fresh. It’s possible that Ivano Bo may be the one, although I wonder why he would have waited more than two years to take his revenge.”

“He hates me, Antonio. That I know.”

“I understand. Tell me, how old is he?”

“Late twenties?” Giuseppe ventured. “It’s only a guess.”

“Very well. I’ll have a conversation with Mister Bo tonight. You should rest now,” he smiled, “or Doctor Sciaccaluga will scold me.”

“I’ll try, Antonio,” Giuseppe whispered, “but I’m afraid I won’t be able to sleep. Please, come back tomorrow and tell me everything you found out. And tell Matilda to make sure all doors and windows are securely locked. I know that Ivano Bo wouldn’t hesitate to break into my home to kill me.”

“I’ll see your wife on my way out,” Antonio promised. “Good night.”

From his bed, Giuseppe watched the policeman as he silently walked out of the room. Streams of sweat trickled down his cheeks. His eyesight was misty from the realization that his life as he knew it may soon be over. He breathed deeply and concentrated on relaxing his muscles, which had become tense from his effort to remain in control and sound truthful while he had handed Antonio a story shamelessly studded with lies. Would that story be enough to keep the family secrets safe? He tossed and turned, wondering where Antonio’s investigation would lead. He cursed himself for having mentioned Ivano Bo. He had succumbed to fear. “God help me,” he murmured, “should Caterina’s true story transpire.”

The events surrounding Caterina’s disappearance had begun to unfold on January 4th, 1908, when Caterina awoke on the second floor of the palazzina to the persistent cooing of the turtle-doves nesting in the garden trees. In the blissful interlacement of sleep and wakefulness, she gladly remembered it was the day of Santa Benedetta, and consequently her school, run by the Benedettine nuns, would be closed. With a smile on her face, she reached for the tapestry rope hanging over her nightstand and pulled it. One minute later, Lavinia, a plump, middle-aged chambermaid who acted also as Caterina’s chaperone, entered the bedroom with a spirited gait. “Good morning, Miss,” she chirped.

“Morning,” Caterina yawned back. Suddenly she sat up. “I want to go out today. Downtown.”

“It’s a good day for an outing,” Lavinia nodded, pushing the shutters open. “Look.”

“Sunshine!” Caterina exclaimed as a bright light filled the room.

“And a perfectly blue sky,” Lavinia added. “Let’s get ready.”

By the time they left the house, the sun was still shining as a few strands of gray clouds peeked over the top of the hills. In a light-beige outfit topped by a brown cape, her sparkling, blonde hair flowing down her back, Caterina stepped out of the garden onto the sidewalk and sauntered along Corso Solferino under the attentive eyes of her chaperone. Shortly, Caterina and Lavinia left the main road and took a winding downhill street paved with rugged stone tiles. Ten minutes later they were in the old town, swarming with people, stores, markets, and peddlers in perpetual motion along the caruggi. Here the architecture never ceased to surprise the eye. Portals of marble and slate, religious symbols carved in thick walls, reliefs of noble figures, and Latin inscriptions graced even the darkest corner.

Unhampered by the noise and the confusion, Caterina and Lavinia headed to one of the main shopping walkways, Via Luccoli, stopping every now and then in front of the store windows, then later at Klainguti’s for a cappuccino, and then at Romanengo’s—a sweet-smelling pastry shop that had been a favorite of the Genoese ever since its opening.

“Happy?” Lavinia asked, noticing the glimmer of contentment in Caterina’s eyes after indulging in two mille feuilles and one éclair.

Caterina nodded a yes.

“Very well,” Lavinia continued. “Time to go to church.”

“To church?” Caterina exclaimed. “Why?”

“When I informed your father this morning that we would go downtown, he specifically asked that we stop by the cathedral for your prayers given that you’re not in school today.”

“I pray every day, twice,” Caterina moaned, “as soon as I step into the school and before I leave it. Nothing is going to happen if I skip a day. Besides, I don’t like the cathedral. It’s too big and intimidating.”

“Fine,” Lavinia conceded, “we’ll go to a different church. My church.”

“Your church?” Caterina asked, her curiosity tickled. “What is it called?”

“The church of the Nunziata. It’s only a short walk from here.”

Caterina grimaced. “Couldn’t you just tell my father that we went to church?” she begged.

Lavinia shook her head. “Sorry, Miss. I don’t lie to my employer.”

“What if I refuse to go?” Caterina said, taking one step back and planting her feet on the ground. An air of defiance had materialized on her face.

Lavinia’s eyes fired up. “You will do what I say, Miss. Or I’ll drag you back home. And then your father will take care of you.”

Caterina shrugged and mumbled, “Fine. Why does no one ever let me do what I want?”

“Are you serious?” Lavinia commented, sweetening her expression.

She was referring to the fact that Caterina had an uncanny ability to bend people’s will her way. At the palazzina, she was known for her stubbornness and hot temper. She could become infuriated on a dime if things weren’t going her way. One day, when she was eight years old, she had thrown her shoes out the window when Lavinia had insisted she should get ready to go to Sunday school. And another time she had rolled over a muddy flower bed in her new tailor-made organzine outfit because she didn’t want to partake in her piano lesson.

“You scare me sometimes,” Lavinia had commented after Caterina’s mud roll was over.

“Scare you?” Caterina said, covered in mud from head to toe.

“Yes,” Lavinia explained. “I can see your father in you.”

“What are you talking about?” Caterina scoffed. She twirled, mindless of the mud that dripped from her dress onto her patent-leather shoes. “I look like my mother. Everyone says that.”

“On the outside, yes. You have your mother’s features, her body type. On the inside, you take from your father. You are a Berilli, my dear, not a Pellettieri.”

“Is that a compliment?” Caterina asked coyly.

Lavinia took her hand. “You need a bath and a change of clothes.”

Growing up, Caterina’s disposition had softened. While her reactions were no longer extreme, she remained nonetheless a stubborn and unpredictable human being. She was famous for the food she refused to eat, the games she demanded to play, and the questions she posed over and over until someone came up with an answer that satisfied her. Her father ignored her temper tantrums, as if Caterina were a ghost, a creature from another world, while Madame always tried to entice her with loving words. In the end, she always gave in to Caterina’s whims. Madame hadn’t been this soft with her two sons, Lavinia recalled. She had been much more firm and in charge back then. But the age difference between Caterina and her brothers was so large it was as if Caterina belonged to a generation of its own. Clearly, Madame had no longer the stamina to discipline her as strictly as she had disciplined her sons in their young years. Perhaps it was her aging, perhaps there were other reasons Lavinia wasn’t aware of. It wasn’t lack of interest—for sure. Madame loved her only daughter. So did Lavinia. Despite her temperamental shortcomings, Caterina was a sweet child. There was something about her smile, which lighted her face like the sunshine, and something about her eyes, constantly sparkling like polished jewels, that captivated everyone’s heart. Her tantrums were always forgiven, forgotten, or told by Madame at social gatherings as entertaining anecdotes.

That Caterina should now claim that no one ever let her do what she wanted, Lavinia thought as the girl was still begging for more pastry and no church, was preposterous, a joke. Caterina always did what she wanted, no matter how inappropriate her wishes might be.

“Let’s go,” Lavinia said, sliding an arm around the girl’s shoulders.

The church of the Nunziata stood west of downtown, in the corner of a busy piazza by the same name. At the time Lavinia and Caterina entered the silent nave, outside the clouds had multiplied and amassed to cover large chunks of sky. They sat on a bench and took their time reciting one section of the rosary and three Requiem Aeternam for the dead. On their way out, they lit candles at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary. When they stepped outside, the blue of the sky was fully hidden by a menacing layer of gray.

“We should head home,” Lavinia said. “It looks as though it may rain.”

“It’s not going to rain,” Caterina scoffed, “not on my day out of school. Let’s go look at more stores. It’s still early. I don’t want to go home.”

Without waiting for an approval, Caterina rushed across the piazza, avoiding an electric tram, a horse-drawn carriage, and a honking roofless automobile.

“Come back!” Lavinia shouted, scampering after her. “Foolish girl,” she muttered as she zigzagged to avoid the oncoming traffic. “Foolish and more stubborn than an old mule.”

The two had hardly stepped on the opposite sidewalk when a sharp lightning bolt lit the sky. At the thundering rumble that followed, a downpour of rain crashed onto the dry roads, flooding them in a matter of seconds and sending everyone scrambling for shelter. Lavinia and Caterina rushed through the closest open door, which happened to be the entrance to a bakery owned by Corrado Bo and his twenty-five-year-old son Ivano.

Ivano was a tall, lean yet muscular young man, with a head of thick black curls and two large, engaging, brown eyes. At the time Caterina and Lavinia entered the bakery, he was standing behind the counter, handing bread to a corpulent woman and taking the next order from a boy. Next to Ivano stood a second young man, Tony, the shop helper. While Ivano selected from the shelves the bread ordered by the customers, Tony took payment and handed back change. The room was more crowded than usual: besides the customers, a number of passersby, like Lavinia and Caterina, had sought shelter from the rain.

At some point, with no more customers requiring his attention, Ivano looked about the bakery, noticing at once the shine of Caterina’s blonde hair. He assessed her with a long look up and down her figure, quickly realizing from her outfit and demeanor that she was unlikely to live in that neighborhood and likely instead to belong to some wealthy hillside household. His instinctive adversity for the rich made him turn the other way. He had dated only working-class women up till then, insistently pushed to do so by his father.

“Rich women are empty-headed, son,” Corrado had advised Ivano almost daily ever since the boy’s first puberty symptoms had made their appearance, “and vain, capricious, and unreliable. You should marry a girl of your own class, a girl with her head on her shoulders, who will take good care of you and make you a happy man.”

In the Genoa of 1908 it wasn’t common for young people to cross the class boundaries in their choice of spouse. Nonetheless, Corrado was determined to ensure it wouldn’t happen to Ivano, despite the minuscule probability of it. And Ivano, drummed by his father’s marital advice, had grown over the years an ingrained dislike for the upper class even he, at times, was unable to explain. On that rainy afternoon, however, after his first instinctive withdrawal, he found himself staring at the young girl and hungering inside in an inexplicable way.

He approached her while Lavinia was brushing raindrops off Caterina’s cape.

“You’re soaking wet, Miss,” Lavinia said. “Please don’t catch a cold.”

“I won’t,” Caterina replied, combing her hair with her fingers. “My hair is only a bit damp.”

“Good morning, ladies,” Ivano said with a soothing voice. “Welcome to the best bakery in town.”

Caterina glanced at him distractedly, ready to produce a nod and a half smile, but the instant her eyes met Ivano’s, a shiver ran down her spine.

“Let me take your cape, Miss,” Ivano continued in his engaging voice. “I’ll hang it in the oven room. It’ll be dry in no time.” He took Caterina’s garment gently, with a soft grazing of her shoulders.

At the touch of his hands, Caterina flinched as if she had been brushed by fire.

“January is a crazy month,” Ivano said, cape in hand, as he disappeared behind a door. “Sun, rain, and more sun.”

The brief moments he spent out of her sight felt like an eternity to Caterina. At some point she turned to Lavinia, as if asking for an explanation. Lavinia shook her head and gave Caterina a reproaching smile.

“You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen,” Ivano murmured, reappearing.

Caterina blushed visibly as she lowered her eyes. A weakness in her knees made her sway.

“Thank you, young man,” Lavinia intervened. “We’ll be on our way shortly, as soon as I see a free carriage outside.”

The rain kept falling steadily, and for a long time not a single carriage drove by the bakery or stopped nearby. Inside the store, the customers became edgy as worries about the effects of the horrible weather on their homes and terraces became the main topic of their conversations. Meanwhile, eyes on Ivano, Caterina tried pointlessly to control her shaking knees.

Confused as much as she was, at a loss as to what he should say to Caterina, at some point Ivano reached under the counter and took out an instrument. “Music is a good way to pass time while we’re all trapped in here,” he said, sitting on a stool.

The instrument was a perfectly built and lovingly maintained Neapolitan mandolin, with a deep rounded body. It was made of rosewood and mounted four pairs of metal strings tuned like the strings of a violin. Corrado Bo had purchased the mandolin in Naples in 1882, when he had been twenty-four and a passionate student of music in its popular forms. Family downturns had forced him out of the music milieu back into the bakery trade. As he abandoned his dream of being a professional musician, he vowed that Ivano would grow up appreciating the beauty of the instrument and learn how to play the wide range of music the mandolin allowed for. He taught his son daily, starting at age five, showing him at first the rudiments of music, then the scales and the chords, and then the more advanced techniques. Ivano absorbed all that knowledge effortlessly.

It was with a quiver in his breathing that, on that rainy morning at the bakery, looking straight into Caterina’s eyes, Ivano began plucking the mandolin strings with a red heart-shaped plectrum. Dumbfounded by the attraction he felt for that girl from another world, he frantically searched his musical knowledge for an appropriate piece to play. He knew many ballads and popular songs, but somehow none of them seemed fit for the occasion. Then he thought of a piece his father had taught him long ago, one he had never particularly liked and hence hardly ever played, because it was an opera, his least favorite genre. Suddenly he felt an urge to play that piece, and to do so he groped through memories, hoping to remember the chords and be able to play them in the correct sequence. Caught up in his worries of failing in front of such an attractive young girl, he didn’t realize that the fingers of his left hand had begun to press swiftly the strings as the plectrum in his right hand was producing a perfect tremolando. He went on to play beautifully, as if he had played that piece every day of his life. It was the Serenata from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

The murmurs in the bakery ceased, and Caterina, Lavinia, and everyone present stared at the young musician in awe. When he stopped playing several minutes later, nobody dared break the silence. Then someone in a corner screamed “Bravo!” drawing the rest of the spectators in a long, heartfelt applause. Caterina, meanwhile, had kept silent, unable to move a muscle of her body or unglue her eyes from the magnetic face of her admirer.

“Look!” Lavinia exclaimed, pointing at a window. “It stopped raining. The sun is coming out. Young man, would you retrieve the cape so we can go home?”

With care, Ivano set the mandolin against the wall then recovered the cape from the oven room. “Here it is, Miss,” he said, placing it on Caterina’s shoulders. “I hope you enjoyed the entertainment.”