The House of Serenades (4 page)

you will roast in Hell
.

Your home will burn with you

in the flames of eternal damnation
.

No drawing accompanied this letter. He stared at the handwriting in silence then clenched his fists, causing the edges of the paper to crumble. “Damn it,” he hissed, angry at himself for allowing those two letters to upset him to the point of insomnia. They were only letters, were they not? So why was he so agitated? Why was he taking those words so literally? Perhaps the letters were a prank, he thought, the joke of youngsters trying to kill their boredom, and he should burn them and forget they ever arrived. Horse accidents happened practically every day in the jungle of the downtown traffic, Giuseppe knew. What happened to him could have happened to any passerby. It happened to
him
though, and one day before a letter with the drawing of a horse on it had arrived. What if the writer was a dangerous man, someone with a sick mind?

“I’ve
got
to do something,” he said, “or I’ll drive myself crazy.”

Lots of people, of course, had reasons to dislike him. He was a visible man, with scores of bitter enemies, all envious of his social and professional standings and of the wealth his family had preserved and grown for generations. Perhaps the letters had been written by members of the labor unions, he thought, men of low extraction looking to make a statement against the class the Berillis belonged to. Many a time, he was aware, fingers had been pointed at him with accusations of being an outdated defender of privilege and a promoter of social injustice. He had dismissed the charges without blinking.

“I will not be intimidated by some cheap, demagogic Socialist propaganda,” he had told Raimondo and Umberto, his sons, on the day a group of longshoremen had surrounded the building that hosted
Berilli e Figli
. For hours the port workers had stood in the street, voicing their anger in repetitive, chant-like slogans. The target of their wrath was Umberto, who earlier that day had represented the shipowners association in a dispute over the longshoremen’s right to a guaranteed minimum number of working hours. Umberto had won the case, causing the longshoremen’s right to be repealed.

But the longer Giuseppe looked at the words the anonymous writer had chosen, the more those words seemed to him the product of fanaticism rather than the rational thought of a political opponent. If that was the case, he had every reason to be concerned about his safety and that of the rest of his household. Frowning, he brought the tips of his fingers to his throbbing temples. Should he call the police? With some luck, the police could find the culprit and put a halt to the harassment, but there would be negative publicity coming from the investigation. Should he show the letters to the police, he’d be forced to discuss his personal

and professional affairs with the officers in charge of the case, and there was plenty he didn’t care to discuss with strangers. There were, nonetheless, other considerations: What if someone got hurt because he had kept the letters to himself? What if he should die at the hand of a mad stranger? Suddenly, Giuseppe was hit by the thought that this might be the last day of his life. He swallowed twice, then took a pill from his pocket and thrust it into his mouth. He knew he had to act immediately, or he would have a heart attack for sure. It was at such trying time that he needed all his stamina and control. He remembered one of his father’s favorite sayings, God bless his soul: “Always think rationally, never out of fear, for he who lets fear be the captain of his ship will suffer shipwreck and will be lost in the waves.”

Easier said than done, he muttered between his teeth as he put the letters back in the drawer. He breathed in then hummed the air out of his shiny nose. A moment later, on the north wall, next to unlit fireplace, the grandfather clock struck noon. With firm gestures, he took a steel-nibbed pen from a pewter tray and plunged it into an inkwell. As always before using fine parchment paper, he tapped the wet nib on the edge of the well and waited for a drop of ink to fall. Three lines were all he wrote to make his point. Finished, he rang the table bell. Guglielmo appeared at the door within the minute.

“Sir?”

Giuseppe dried the ink with the blotter and folded the sheet of paper. He slid it into an envelope, closed the envelope with the family wax seal, and said, “Have this letter hand-delivered at once to the Chief of Police. With discretion.”

Guglielmo took the letter from his master’s hands. “I’ll take care of it myself, sir.” He added, “Madame would like to know if you intend to have lunch with her today.”

“Yes, I’ll have lunch today,” Giuseppe said.

Guglielmo bowed. “Lunch will be served in fifteen minutes.” Outside, in front of the
palazzina
, Eugenia breathed the sweet perfumes of the breeze. She looked up and noticed that the sun was high. It must be close to noon, she thought, and Matilda hadn’t asked her to lunch. What else could one expect from that snob? Not that she looked forward to spending time with her sister-in-law. She had spent plenty of time with Matilda after the wedding, none of which had been a pleasure. With a shake of the head, she crossed the street and walked to the
belvedere
, a tree-lined lookout area from where one could enjoy wide-open views of the city. As she had done many times before, in her youth and in more recent years, she sat on a bench and watched the scenery in brooding silence: the horizon, the calm waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the port with its ships and docks. Behind the port, the city began, clawing the hill slopes in an irregular, multilevel topography of steep roads and unpredictable architectural arrangements. Then Eugenia turned to the hillside, and her eyes scanned the silhouettes of the villas, the shady gardens, the occasional palm and olive trees. North of the gardens, in a protective semicircle, the sharp hillcrests towered over people, houses, and sea as they had for centuries, since the time of Noah.

Nostalgia caught Eugenia by surprise as a warm longing gripped her heart. She longed for her childhood, her youth, and all the years prior to Matilda’s marrying Giuseppe and moving into the
palazzina
. It was heavenly back then, with her parents still alive. Her father, Filiberto Berilli, had been a tall, strong man with a raven handlebar mustache and a powerful look in his eyes. He had always stood out in a crowd. In contrast, his wife, Giulia, had been short and thin, with no noticeable features. What drew people to her was her remarkable musical talent. Eugenia’s nostalgia grew stronger as she recalled how her mother would spend hours fingering the melodies of Mozart and Beethoven on the piano, which she had learned to play as a child. And Eugenia and Giuseppe, close in age, only three years apart, were best friends growing up and were affectionate and supportive of each other. There was harmony in the family, and the home brimmed with happiness and peace. Then, on a freezing December morning, Matilda had joined the Berillis, and from one day to the next turmoil had swept the
palazzina
and its residents.

That year, 1868, the Pellettieris, an old aristocratic family from Turin, had decided to spend the winter in Genoa. They arrived in pomp and circumstance, with a butler, four maids, two cooks, and a caravan of three carriages drawn by champion horses. In the first carriage rode young Matilda, her mother, and two maids; in the last was Matilda’s father, the Marquis Telonio Pellettieri, accompanied by the butler; and in the middle carriage, cramped with the luggage, rode the rest of the servants. They took possession of an estate in the east hills comprised of a patrician house, a stable, a carriage home, and five acres of land. The Genoese took notice of their arrival. One week later, through a common acquaintance, the Pellettieris met the Berillis at the Carlo Felice Theater, during the opera-season premiere. The marriage between Giuseppe and Matilda was arranged by the two families shortly afterwards. Giuseppe was twenty-seven, Matilda twenty. Eugenia, thirty, was unattached. The wedding announcement stunned the town:

“The daughter of a Marquis marrying someone with no blue blood?”

“That’s unheard of. The aristocrats never marry outside their circles.”

“Especially the Piedmontese. They don’t even talk to those who don’t belong to their caste.”

“Why would the Pellettieris wed their beautiful daughter to someone without a title?”

“I have no idea. Those Berillis know their way up, that’s for sure.”

“They were full of themselves before. Can you imagine how they are going to act now?”

“I’d give my right hand to find out how they managed to arrange this marriage.”

“Money?”

“No, both families are as rich as Croesus.”

“What else then?”

“We’ll find out, sooner or later.”

No Genoese, however, would ever discover anything more about the reasons for that surprising, sudden marital arrangement. Only Filiberto, Giulia, and Giuseppe Berilli knew how they had succeeded. Even within the Pellettieri family, only Matilda’s parents knew the details of their daughter’s broken engagement to the Count Arnaldo Della Tessiera, the heir to a large empire of land in the southern part of Piedmont. Matilda had been eighteen years of age, close to nineteen, at the time of her engagement, and in order to abide to a condition imposed on the wedding by her fiancé’s parents, she underwent a physical examination by the Della Tessiera’s family doctor to assess her suitability to carry children. Arnaldo was the last descendant of the Della Tessiera’s stock and his parents wanted to be sure their breed would continue to populate the earth after their death. It was during that examination that the doctor discovered that Matilda’s hymen was not where it was supposed to be and reported his finding to the four parents.

“Impossible!” Telonio Pellettieri blurted out.

Osvaldo Della Tessiera, Arnaldo’s father, jumped to his feet. “Are you saying that our doctor is a liar?”

“If he’s not a liar,” Telonio said, “then he must be mistaken. Our Matilda is honest and god-fearing. She would never engage in such shameful acts.”

The doctor, however, insisted that the hymen wasn’t there. Furious, convinced that the doctor’s report about the hymen was part of some scheme the Della Tessieras had conceived to walk away from the wedding, Telonio requested that his daughter be examined by his own doctor and that he and his wife attend the visit. “This way,” he told Osvaldo, “we’ll certainly prove the incompetence of the doctor you chose.”

“Fine,” Osvaldo said, “but I want to be present as well. How do I know that you and your doctor won’t lie to save your daughter’s reputation?”

“We Pellettieris do not lie,” shouted Anna Pellettieri, Matilda’s mother.

“Neither do we, darling,” Elena Della Tessiera said. “Neither do we.”

When she awoke the next morning, Matilda saw her parents standing at the foot of her bed.

“Matilda,” her father said, “there’s something we need to do before we set a date for the wedding.”

Without further ado, he ordered his daughter to remain in bed and let a second doctor investigate the whereabouts of her hymen. Matilda was dumbfounded, but complied with her father’s request without arguing, for she had been taught since childhood that the wish of a father is like the wish of God. She lay on her bed in silence, with a big lump in her chest and throat, and looked at her mother with the eyes of a lamb. Her mother looked the other way.

The doctor Telonio had chosen arrived shortly, carrying a square box wrapped in red velvet. Osvaldo and Elena Della Tessiera entered behind him.

“Good morning, Matilda,” the doctor said. “This will be only a moment.”

With the four parents standing by the bed and supervising the visit, the doctor set out to examining Matilda according to a protocol the four parents had devised and agreed upon ahead of time. He began by opening the box and gazing silently at its contents: a small painting brush, a portable inkwell, a bowl filled with a thick, transparent, greasy fluid, and a metallic object shaped like a phallus. With a flick of his wrist, he dipped the phallus in the bowl while saying to Matilda, “Bend your knees.” Then he lifted her nightgown and placed the phallus greased end against her vaginal opening, sliding it in with repeated pressing motions. When the phallus had penetrated Matilda as far as it could go, he moved aside so everyone could see. Osvaldo Della Tessiera said. “Proceed.”

Nodding, the doctor dipped the painting brush into the inkwell and drew a line around the phallus where it protruded from Matilda’s flesh. Next, he pulled the phallus out of Matilda, placing it under the observers’ curious eyes. Without difficulty, they all noticed that the phallus had penetrated Matilda a good twelve centimeters and come out clean, without the slightest trace of blood.

The Della Tessieras called off the engagement at once despite Matilda’s claim that she had never done anything that was against God’s commandments. “I
am
a virgin,” she protested, erupting into tears, but no one believed her.

“We don’t deal with second-hand products,” Osvaldo Della Tessiera stated on his way out of the room. His wife followed suit.

It took Telonio and Anna Pellettieri two days and two nights to regain their composure. At dawn of the third day, they began to think of what they would tell all the relatives and friends who expected an imminent wedding between Matilda and Arnaldo. The version they and the Della Tessieras concurred to give was that the two families had not reached a satisfactory financial agreement, and for a while that story was taken as truthful by all and the matter set to rest. As time went by, however, Matilda’s relatives—her two brothers and the score of her aunts, uncles, and cousins—could not but notice the state of prostration in which Matilda lived, the stubbornness with which her parents refused to discuss the incident, and their edginess whenever someone inquired about their daughter’s future. So the relatives started to wonder and talk. Rumors began to circulate that perhaps there was something wrong with Matilda that had caused the Della Tessieras to reject her. It didn’t take long for Anna and Telonio to became aware of the rumors and realize that the only way to keep them from spreading further was for Matilda to marry, and soon. The groom should live far from Turin, they decided, so Matilda would leave the family for good and the relatives would stop talking and wondering much sooner than if she continued to live close by. Promptly, they began looking for Matilda’s future husband amongst noble families from all over Italy, including those as far south as Florence and Rome, even Naples at a certain point (unthinkable as that was), and Palermo came up one day but Anna fainted at the idea.