The House of Serenades

8



FOR SEVERAL DAYS DAMIANO lived in confusion. What his father had done was unquestionably illegal, but he had done it for a greater good and to help people, and for that he felt respect and admiration. On the other hand, he, Damiano Sciaccaluga, had taken an oath when he had become a doctor. By keeping his father’s actions secret and burning the birth records he’d be betraying that oath, which was the foundation of the profession he had chosen. It was a conundrum, one that troubled him even in his sleep.

One morning Federico died. Watching his father lying immobile on the white sheets, hands crossed on his chest, Damiano realized he couldn’t betray him. He rushed to Federico’s medical office and opened the safe. The box was in the very back, as Federico had said. Damiano’s hands trembled as he held it, for he knew he was holding the legacy of his father. He brought the box to his own home, where he started the wood stove. With no hesitation, he lifted the stove lid and placed the box over the opening, ready to toss it into the flames. It was then that he began to wonder what the box contained. Papers? How many? Names, for sure. Someone he knew? He shook the box. So many secrets … I’ll look once, he said to himself, and then I’ll burn the box and forget it ever existed. What ill can it do if I take a quick look, it’ll be a moment then the box will turn to ashes. “Don’t read its contents …” he heard in his head. “The truth should die with me …” He stared at the red of the flames, watching his curiosity eat the voice of his father. He walked away from the stove, sat at the kitchen table, and untied the string. His heart raced as he began to skim through the handwritten papers. Each sheet contained information related to one child sale, beginning with the parents’ names—biological and adoptive—followed by the child’s data: birth date, sex, weight and length at birth. In the bottom right corner numbers indicated how much the adoptive parents had paid and how that amount had been divided between Federico and the birth mother. Looking at those numbers, Damiano realized it was true that his father had never gained any money from those sales. Emotion and guilt grew and fought inside him so strongly he had to stop reading. What should he do with those sheets? Should he look for the parents? For the children? It was a difficult decision, one he should not make hastily or while he was at the mercy of his emotions. One thing he knew for sure: he wouldn’t destroy the box—he would keep it. Those papers were a connection between him and Federico, the only tangible link left after his death. So he replaced the documents inside the box, closed it, tied the string around it, and went to sleep. The following day, he took the box to his own office and placed it on a bookshelf, behind a large medicine manual. That’s where the box stayed, clear of everyone’s eyes, for half a year.

One day, a young girl arrived at Doctor Sciaccaluga’s office. She was dressed in modest oversize clothes, which hung from her shoulders over her gaunt body like an empty potato sack. Damiano had never seen her before.

“How may I help you?” he asked.

Eyes to the floor, the girl whispered, “I’m in trouble, Doctor. I need your help.”

“What kind of trouble are you in?”

The girl touched her belly. “Baby trouble.”

“Are you pregnant?” Damiano asked.

She nodded.

“Are you feeling sick?”

She nodded again.

“Let me visit you then. I have medicines that will ease your discomfort.”

She shook her head. “Please make the baby go away.”

Damiano froze for a moment then knitted his brow. “What makes you think I’d be willing to do such a thing?

The girl said, “I wouldn’t know, sir, but I went to four doctors already, and nobody wants to help me. I live in this neighborhood, and I saw your sign out in the street, and someone I know told me you are a good man, a man who helps people. Please help me. I feel so sick …”

Damiano swallowed twice. He didn’t like the tone of that conversation and had no desire of being involved in illegal practices that could compromise his career. So he told the girl how sorry he felt for her but he wouldn’t be able to help her, and she should leave now as he was very, very busy that day.

She moaned, “Please don’t send me away.”

Damiano showed the girl to the door. “Please leave,” he said, “and don’t come back.”

Alone again, he went back to his business, which was to examine the health records of his next patient, Filomena Bregante, who was due in less than ten minutes. Thank god, he thought, no one had witnessed that encounter.

Filomena Bregante, a middle-aged woman afflicted with chronic cold and asthma attacks, arrived at the office shortly. “Doctor,” she wheezed, “so you know, there’s a girl seated on the landing. She’s crying, and when I asked her what she was crying for, she said she has no reason to be alive and she’d be dead soon anyway because she’s no longer able to work. ‘It’s all the same,’ the girl added, ‘if I die soon and at my own hand.’”

Damiano breathed deeply in and out. To reassure Filomena Bregante, so she’d go home without thinking about the girl and her trouble, he said, “She doesn’t truly mean that, don’t worry. I’ll take care of her as soon as I’m finished with you.”

Indeed, after Filomena had left, he stepped outside. The girl was seated on the floor, back against the wall. She was pale, and her eyes were swollen with tears. Her shoulders twitched, shaken by her sobs. “Would you like to come back in for a short while?” the doctor asked.

Nodding, the girl stood up and followed Damiano inside. Between sobs, she told him that her name was Teresa Percato and her age seventeen. “I don’t want to be pregnant, sir. I work for my mother in her establishment, cooking and cleaning, but I cannot work in this condition. Yesterday I felt so sick I couldn’t stand up. My mother doesn’t like me. She told me many times that if I can’t work I should leave. I have no one to look after me. If I lose that job, I lose my life.”

Damiano scratched his head in puzzlement. He had never considered interrupting pregnancies before and didn’t like the idea of doing it because the Church was fiercely against that practice. Not that he cared about the Church’s wishes, but he knew how powerful the Church was in that town. Those high-level priests were politicians without scruples, especially the Archbishop and his court, and if the notion that he messed with pregnancies should spread and reach their ears, he could be in serious trouble. He could lose his practice at a snap of the Archbishop’s fingers, perhaps go to jail. The girl, nonetheless, was clearly in distress, and it was possible she’d do something inconsiderate out of despair, like take her own life, as she had already told Filomena Bregante she might do. He didn’t want to be responsible for the life of a girl he had never seen before. Looking across the desk at Teresa’s thin, emaciated figure and at the anxiety in her eyes, Damiano decided to buy himself some time. Kindly, he asked Teresa to return the following day at three for a consultation. Teresa kissed his hands and said, “Thank you, sir. I’ll always be grateful to you.”

That night Damiano dreamed dead babies floating in the air and big black crows flying low, inches from his head. The crows had the faces of priests he knew–the Archbishop and Father Luigi and Father Mario—and clutched silver crosses in their beaks. Every so often the crows landed on his head and pecked at his skull with the crosses. He waved his hands to chase them away, and they flew up towards the ceiling and then back down towards him at full speed. At six AM, when he awoke, he had a pounding headache. He stood up and wobbled to an open window, breathing the clean air of dawn. He gazed at the pigeons huddled on the gutters, the swallows darting in the sky. He thought about his father, the cardboard box, and being the doctor of dreams. When he saw the sun disk rise beyond the roofs, he decided he’d do exactly what his father would have done in that situation. He remembered Lucia Ivaldi, a young woman from Turin he had visited two weeks earlier. Lucia was married and childless, and had come to Genoa to spend the winter so her health would improve with the sun and the air of the sea. During her last visit she had confided in him, as often women do with their doctors. She had spoken about her numerous attempts at becoming pregnant, the many doctors she had seen in Turin and Milan, the various cures she had tried, and how everything had failed.

“I keep my faith, Doctor Sciaccaluga,” Lucia Ivaldi had said, “in the hope that God sooner or later will give me what I long for more than my own life: a baby.”

Later that day, Damiano spoke to Teresa about the meaning of life and the horrors of death, and wouldn’t she consider carrying the pregnancy to term and giving birth to the baby instead of getting rid of it, which was against the law. He promised Teresa he’d find a suitable home for her child and she’d never, ever hear about the baby again. He also promised her money, good money, so it’d be as if she had worked throughout the pregnancy, even better. Teresa took a short moment to think then nodded yes.

Six months later, at night, in Doctor Sciaccaluga’s home, Teresa gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She stared at the screaming, kicking, slimy heap of flesh and bones her body had expelled, and her heart melted with love.

“I want to keep him,” she said to Doctor Sciaccaluga.

He shook his head. “A deal is a deal, dear Teresa, and cannot be undone. Remember? Money?”

Teresa burst into tears. She looked after the boy for four days, as her agreement with Damiano called for. She fed him, bathed him, and sang him lullabies. At the end of the fourth day, Damiano took the baby from Teresa, handed her a stack of banknotes, and shooed her out the door. Meanwhile he had contacted Lucia Ivaldi, who had agreed months earlier to buy the child. When she heard the good news, Lucia could hardly contain her happiness. She and her husband drove to Genoa, took the boy, and handed Doctor Sciaccaluga an envelope full of cash.

That night, alone in his living room, Damiano opened the envelope and spread the banknotes on the floor. He ran a hand over the bills, sighing. Of peasant origins, his father had been the first in the family to study and earn his living from a professional occupation. Federico, who had never become richer than he had been born, had never felt ashamed of his roots. All his life he had remained in touch with his relatives, who still lived in the countryside and supported themselves by planting hay. Damiano was not as family-oriented as his father was. Estranged from his peasant relatives, he went out of his way not to let people know who his ancestors were, managing over the years to become the doctor of several important families and a handful of aristocrats. The daily contact with wealth had affected him in a profound way, setting his life’s priorities upside down. Before he knew it, he had begun to imagine how wonderful it would be to become a member of the Genoese elite and be admitted to his clients’ homes as a peer rather than a hired specialist in charge of their well-being. In his sleep, he often dreamed of going to one of the Berillis’ social dinners, which were famous in Genoa for gathering the good society along with the important political figures; or of owning a house in the hills—rather than his downtown apartment—and hosting elegant soirees in it. Every Genoese that mattered would seek to be invited, and the excluded would bite their lips in frustration and envy. Up until that moment, with the money Damiano had set aside, the lifestyle he could afford was far from glamorous, and the ownership of a house in the hills was out of his reach. That night, in the living room, as he counted the banknotes the Ivaldis had handed him in exchange for Teresa’s baby, he realized he had found a way to make his dream of wealth come true. All he had to do was continue to sell babies. His father had done it all his life, and so could he. He crumbled a banknote in his hand and smelled it, sinking once more in reveries of stupendous wealth. He had a vision of a two-story home, higher up than the Berillis’ residence, with tall latticed windows, a portal surrounded by columns, and a garden with olive trees and oleanders and many beds of roses. He saw himself walking up to the second floor and opening the doors to a terrace from where he could see the city and the water unroll at his feet like a carpet. Then he saw all the important people of the town–the Berillis, the D’Onofrios, the Passaggis, the Tassanis, the Mayor and his wife, and many more–arrive at his villa for a dinner party, all dressed up and escorted by their butlers and drivers. He saw them looking at the house’s elegant shape with admiration and envy and walking from one room to the next, in awe of the antiques and the precious pieces of art and the brocades, and felt as if he had reached the top of all tops, and his head went dizzy, like the head of a drunkard. He took another look at the money then split it into two uneven piles. The larger one was his gain, the smaller one was the amount he had anticipated to Teresa. The disproportion between the two piles was startling. Still, the money he had given to Teresa was more than the girl made in nine months. It had bought her silence and a train ticket to Benevento—the southern town where she had been born and which she had left as a small child.

A few days later, in the early evening hours, when there were no more patients in his office and his nurse had gone home, Doctor Sciaccaluga sat down at his desk and set out to write on a sheet of paper the information about the sale of Teresa’s baby in the same exact format used by his father. Finished, he moved aside the medicine manual, took the box, opened it, and searched the papers for the proper place to add the new sheet. All the transactions were arranged in alphabetical order based on the last name of the birth mother, so Damiano flipped the pages to reach the letter P. There was only one other transaction filed under that letter, with a mother named Mercalia Parenti. Damiano was about to insert the Percato’s paper under it when the writing in the middle of the Parenti page caught his attention. That’s where the names of the adoptive parents were listed, and when Damiano read them, his breathing came to a halt for a moment. He hadn’t noticed those names the night he had looked at the documents for the first time. Emotion had choked him, and he had stopped reading long before reaching the letter P. He read the Parenti page over and over until he was certain his eyes weren’t playing a trick on him. When he became absolutely certain of what he was reading, his heart began to race. He popped a calming pill, then another, then took a deep breath and waited for his heart to calm down. When he felt in control again, his lips stretched into a clever smile. A moment later, he began to laugh like he had never laughed before. He couldn’t believe his luck. Not only had he found a way to become rich; he was also holding in hand a piece of information that gave him more power than he had ever dreamed of. Adrenalin rushed through him as he placed both Teresa Percato’s and Mercalia Parenti’s sheets in the box and hid the box behind the medicine manual.

He celebrated his good luck with an extra-long session at the Luna brothel. For the first time, as he took off his clothes in front of a seasoned woman with heavy make-up on her face, he felt no shame for his flaccid, shapeless body, or his limp double chin, or the dull color of his skin. He acted like he owned the woman, and every woman on earth, and the earth itself, without bound. There would no longer be loneliness for him, no longer frustration, for he was about to become a very important man. He, an ugly, old bachelor who had never been able to attract women, would perhaps even marry a society lady thanks to what he knew. He laughed loudly as he dipped his face between the prostitute’s breasts and spoke all the dirty words he knew.

He was pleased and intrigued when, the following evening, Giuseppe summoned him to the palazzina, where he told him he wanted to discuss a very sensitive matter, a matter requiring the outmost secrecy and tact.

“You have great knowledge and ability, doctor,” Giuseppe told him, “and you deserve to elevate your position. I can offer you the social status I know you long for in exchange for a small favor.”

Damiano couldn’t hide his surprise. Had his dreams been so obvious? “How did you know?” he babbled.

“I can see how you look at us upper-class people,” Giuseppe said with ill-concealed irony in his voice, “how you act when you are around us, how you talk.”

Damiano blushed, unable to hide his embarrassment. He asked, “What do you need?”

Calmly, Giuseppe explained that he needed a death certificate for Caterina, who was spending the rest of her life away from Genoa because she had done unspeakable things that would drag into the mud the entire family along with the upper class and its image. Presented with those arguments, Damiano had no doubt as to whom he should protect. He agreed to prepare the document, which he signed with the name of a doctor who had recently left town. He also promised on his dead father’s soul that he would never, ever speak of the matter with anyone.

From then on, the utilitarian friendship between Giuseppe and Damiano blossomed like a spring flower. On one hand, Giuseppe was convinced to be out of harm’s way and have Damiano well under control thanks to the doctor’s lust for belonging to a social class that wasn’t his. He was certain Damiano wouldn’t betray him: without his support, the ugly doctor would have no choice but go back to his grim, unattractive middle-class life, and he knew all too well that once a man has experienced luxury, the squalor he once managed to endure would be excruciating. On the other hand, Damiano thought he had Giuseppe on a leash, as not only he knew all about Caterina’s fake death but also because of the document describing the Parenti child sale. He had originally thought of using the document for blackmailing, but he realized he had reached his goal in a much smoother way. There would be no need for him to confront Giuseppe. On the contrary, now that he and Giuseppe had become best friends, he should do all he could to keep that document safe and secret, so the Berillis would remain powerful and respected, which was what he needed in order to continue to have access to his dream.

Weeks later, when he was alone in his office planning two more child sales, as a precaution, he decided to remove the Parenti document from the box and bring it to his home, where he placed it in his nightstand’s drawer. He’d read it often before going to sleep, smiling and chuckling at what was written on it, savoring the flavor of his new life as a gentlefolk, shivering from pleasure at how exhilarating it felt to be, for a change, the one holding power.

During the weeks between Lavinia’s discovery that Caterina had been taken to a sanatorium and the day her death was announced, Lavinia and Ivano continued to investigate. While Lavinia kept questioning Viola and the cook and instructing them to listen into the Berillis’ conversations, after many days of knocking pointlessly on the Berillis’ door and playing his mandolin, Ivano changed tactics. He went looking for Caterina’s brothers in the hope they’d act differently from their father. First, he went to the law firm and asked to see Umberto. A clerk dismissed him without ceremony. Then he followed Raimondo to a bar and joined him at the counter as he was sipping a yellow liquid from a tall glass.

“Mister,” Ivano said, “I know you are Caterina’s brother. I am a friend of hers. Would you please tell me where she is?”

Raimondo, who was on his third bar of the day and had swallowed several strong cocktails on an empty stomach, looked at him with glossy, absent eyes. “I don’t know where she is,” he slurred as he took another sip of liquor. He set his head on the counter. “Let me sleep.”

Later that day, Ivano returned to the palazzina, without his mandolin this time. He stood in the street and watched. The first person he saw was Guglielmo, who stepped out of the gate with buckets and rags and began washing the family automobile. Ivano approached him, wondering if there was a way to make the butler his ally rather than a wall standing between him and the Berillis’ secrets. He spoke to him kindly. “Good morning.”

Guglielmo nodded as he dipped a rag into the water.

Ivano asked, “Could you help me? Please?”

Guglielmo began wiping the hood.

“Do you realize,” Ivano insisted, “that Caterina is not ill? She has been taken somewhere against her wishes!”

“Please leave,” Guglielmo said.

“I will not leave,” Ivano replied, realizing that the butler would never take his side. He stepped inside the garden and sat on the ground, between a flower bed and the gate. “I will sit here,” he told the astounded Gugliemo, “and wait.”

Nonchalantly, Guglielmo continued to wash the car. Finished, he reentered the palazzina and closed the door.

A half hour later, a policeman arrived. “Mister? You need to go.”

“Why?” Ivano asked.

“This garden is private property,” the officer explained. “You are trespassing, and the homeowner doesn’t want you here.”

“The homeowner is a coward and a liar,” Ivano said. “He’s hiding his daughter and refuses to see me for fear I’d find out where she is.”

“I know nothing about the homeowner or his daughter,” the policeman said. “All I know is that he called us because you are trespassing. If you don’t leave these premises at once, I will arrest you. Do you understand?”

“What I understand is that in this town the police protect the rich and don’t give a damn about us workers,” Ivano rebutted. “Don’t worry though. I’ll leave.” He stood up. “The last thing I need is go to jail.”

A deep sense of defeat clutched him as he slowly made his way back towards the bakery. He was certain that Caterina was not ill, but had no way of proving it. Even the policeman had paid no attention to his accusations. No one seemed to care. What was wrong with that town? How could someone disappear without a trace? Where was Caterina? Was she well? Was she being mistreated?

He arrived at the bakery without realizing it. As soon as he stepped inside, he noticed the customers’ surprised faces and the thicker-than-usual chitchat among them. He picked up the conversation in bits and pieces, and it was nothing new: Caterina Berilli was sick in her lungs and confined to a sanatorium in the mountains. Which one, nobody knew for sure. And who knows, said a fat lady in a hat, if she’d ever return. The secret Lavinia had discovered, Ivano realized, had become public knowledge. Hearing that story told by the bakery customers made Ivano wonder for a moment if it could be real. He knew it wasn’t, so he voiced his beliefs to his father. “They sent her away because she loves me. I hate the Berillis!”

“How can you say that?” Corrado marveled. “The whole town is talking about Miss Berilli’s illness. It must be real. What kind of parents would invent such a story about their daughter?”

“Rich, stuck-up, despotic parents.” Ivano shouted. “Caterina’s parents!”

Corrado could see that his son was in a state of very high rage. “Calm down,” he told him. “If what you say is true, that Caterina is well, things will return to normal over time. A father’s anger can’t last forever. She’ll be back soon. If, on the other hand, Caterina is truly sick and has the illness they say she has, you should forget her as fast as you can. Move on. Life has much to offer to a handsome young man such as yourself. Find someone else to love.” He leaned forward and raised the tone of his voice. “A working woman.”

“I’ll find a way to make the Berillis talk,” Ivano insisted.

“You know better than I that the Berillis don’t talk to us workers,” Corrado pointed out. “Remember what happened when you went knocking on their door? Forget Caterina.”

Angered, Ivano walked away, telling himself that the Berillis’ home was not the only place where he could meet Caterina’s father. There was his office, for example, where he went every day.

So the following morning Ivano walked to Piazza San Matteo. It was nine AM when he arrived and took position across the building that hosted Berilli and Figli, on the steps of the small church that occupied the piazza’s north side, where he could easily mingle with tourists and passersby. Moments later, Giuseppe arrived, on foot, accompanied by two well-dressed men.

“Lawyers,” Ivano scoffed, grimacing in disgust.

Seeing Giuseppe’s confident gait and arrogant expression as he entered the building, Ivano felt an urge to stop him and confront him, but the presence of the two lawyers kept him at his post. He wanted a one-on-one conversation with Caterina’s father, without any of his allies present.

So he sat patiently on the church steps, mastering his impatience and waiting. During the wait, he reasoned that the best way to obtain information from Giuseppe would be to ask kindly, without resentment, so Mr. Berilli would understand that he was a polite, educated man, not the low-class scoundrel he certainly thought he was. As the hours passed, the hypothetical encounter with Giuseppe grew in Ivano’s mind in rich detail. He imagined every word, every facial expression, including a happy ending in which Giuseppe would tell the truth about Caterina’s fake illness and apologize to Ivano for the rude treatment he had subjected him to. As it turned out, it was only a dream. Around noon, Giuseppe came out of the building alone. The moment Ivano saw him, the anger and frustration he had carried inside for so long exploded in his head like a hurricane. In one split second, he forgot all about his intention of entertaining a polite conversation about the whereabouts of Caterina. He sprung up and in four quick strides he was in front of the lawyer, blocking his way.

“Where is Caterina?” he shouted. “What did you do to her? I want to know!”

Giuseppe was so scared by that sudden, ominous appearance that he fainted and had to be hauled back to his office, where he was administered salts and several glasses of cordiale.

“Seize him! Call the police!” he screamed when he came to his senses.

Ivano, however, was long gone, and the police saw no point chasing a man only because he had asked a question in the middle of the street.

It was the incident Giuseppe would mention to Antonio during their conversation in the bedroom on the night the dead cat was placed on the palazzina’s front door.