“Hungry?” he asked.
She smiled.
Chapter 36: Oltramari
Serafina felt the wind, a blade at her back, as she alighted from the carriage. The piazza was dustier than she remembered. She held her skirts and looked at her home, the home of her ancestors, haggard in the noonday sun. The shutters were in need of paint, the stucco fading from rose to dirty ochre, water-stained close to the ground. Missing Carmela’s touch, the gardens were choked with weeds. The heat was different from the Midi’s joyous weight. It scorched, blinded, did little to comfort. And yet it was home.
Loffredo opened the gate and walked with her on the gravel path. When he opened the front door, the stone angel smiled down at her and she heard Maria’s piano, the crashing chords of a Brahms sonata. As she listened to the music, she watched the caretaker bringing her trunk and Loffredo’s luggage up to her bedroom—their bedroom—and like that, the trip was over, the mystery solved. Almost. She decided to wait until this evening after supper to read Busacca’s letter.
The domestic rose from her chair in the kitchen to greet them. Her lips trembled. Renata had gone to La Vucciria for fish, she told Serafina, and Totò wouldn’t be home from school for another hour, but Maria was in the parlor, her usual time to practice. When is she not practicing, Serafina wondered, certainly not stopping to open her arms to her mother whom she hasn’t seen in what, over a month.
“Give Maria her mood,” Loffredo said, kissing her on his way out the door to check on his office. “She’s letting you know how she feels. There’s time enough for her to grow up, but let’s not make her do it today. She’s hard to control, but we’ll find a way,” he said.
It would be easier with the two of them. She nodded. “We teeter between indulging her moods and praising her talent, difficult waters to navigate.”
Still, Serafina felt Maria’s petulance like a slap. Come to think of it, how did Loffredo know this, he had no children. But perhaps his wisdom was why they never fought, not yet at any rate.
“And Vicenzu sorts through the rubble,” Assunta said.
A strange turn of phrase, but then the housekeeper must be more aware of Oltramari’s poverty than Serafina realized. Assunta, like all peasants, understood that the price of bread was high and therefore business was bad.
Standing in the kitchen, Serafina breathed in the fragrance of Renata’s cuisine—oregano, tomato, olive oil, the sweetness of a cooling cassata on the counter. She spied the barrel of olives sitting in the corner beneath dried garlic and parsley. How she’d missed this kitchen. She scooped up a ladle full of olives and offered some to Teo. He declined, walked toward the parlor, stopping to smooth the brochure he’d brought for Maria. She wondered where Vicenzu was. No note from Renata. But of course, they weren’t expected until tomorrow. Fair winds had driven them early to an empty homecoming.
* * *
Teo stood in the doorway of the parlor, hesitating for a moment. He breathed in and closed his eyes. Yes, he must wait until she finished the piece.
When the music stopped, he cleared his throat. “I bought this for you from the workroom of Sébastien Érard.”
Maria lifted her face. “I know all about him, the inventor of the double escapement action.”
He held it out, a pamphlet about Érard’s harps and pianos. It had photographs of some of the grand pianos in the collection at the museum with a description and the prices underneath. “One day I shall buy two or three Érard pianos for you. Would you like brown or black?”
Maria smirked. “You’re a boot boy. Where will you get the money to pay for them?”
He ran a tongue around his lips. “We saw them in the Chateau de la Muette.”
“I should have been there. Mama was wrong not to take me to Paris. It has hurt my career. I have been cursed. The wrong parent died and now I’m surrounded by those who don’t care a fig about music.”
Teo said nothing.
“But at least you thought of me.” She smiled.
Teo blushed. His forehead prickled with sweat and he rubbed his hands on his pantaloons.
“Are you going to sit or not? You’re distracting me. And I think I want two browns and one black.”
“We just got home. The ship was faster on the return trip. Only took a day and a half from Marseille. Favorable winds.” He told her that her mother married in Aix, the day before they left for Marseille.
“I heard. That count person?”
He nodded.
“He’s all right, I guess. At least he appreciates my playing. He likes Brahms.”
“The house seems empty. My baby brother’s all right?”
She shrugged. “I guess so, I never go up to the nursery. But sometimes I hear the nurse singing to him. What would you like to hear?”
Teo felt the new stubble on his upper lip. His hands trembled so he shoved them in his pocket. He hoped his voice sounded deep. “Whatever you want to play.”
“Don’t say that. Tell me the name of a piece or give me the name of a composer. Anyone will do.”
“Debussy.”
“I don’t bother with his work.”
“I’m teasing. He’s our age and attends the Paris Conservatory. He played at a party we went to. Three waltzes by Charles Marie Widor.”
She made a face. “Who?”
“The organist at St. Sulpice. And Debussy’s piano was unique. Not as good as yours, but you’d have enjoyed it, I think.”
“I knew Mama should have taken me. I would have played Brahms. They’d have been enchanted.”
“But the audience was French and Brahms is German.” He shouldn’t have said that. He looked at her in alarm.
She didn’t seem to notice. She pushed her spectacles up and tossed her curls.
He saw that Maria’s hair was a bit stringy, but he didn’t say anything. He’d never say anything that would hurt her. Ever. “That’s what I want to hear, the piece you would have played at the salon.”
The opening chords of the Brahms third piano sonata resounded. Then slowly, softly, the piano rumbled distant thunder, and Teo was home.
* * *
Serafina turned around and more of her children appeared, Renata, Vicenzu, and Totò. Hugs, kisses, laughter. In a flash, Totò went in search of Teo, something to do with knucklebones. She sniffed the air. Smoke?
Renata hugged her. “Welcome home, Mama. We didn’t think you’d be here until tomorrow,” she began. “I planned a simple meal for this evening and a feast for tomorrow.”
“No matter, let me look at you.”
“And Vicenzu.” But he hung back. “Sorry I’ve been rooting through the rubble.” He wiped his hands, shoved fists into his pocket, his face red, his fear and stiffness filling the room.
Of course. She knew what rubble smelled like, the memory hadn’t left of the fire at La Maternité. Her son smelled of smoking embers.
“What’s this I hear? Assunta told me you were ‘rooting through the rubble,’ her words. Was there a fire?”
“Carmela didn’t tell you? We wired her.” He stopped.
She shook her head and felt her heart pound. “Not a word.”
“Papa’s drugstore burned to the ground. It’s gone, destroyed.”
At first she thought she’d misheard, or perhaps they were joking. Her temples started to pound and the room seemed to shift.
“The whole—”
Vicenzu nodded. “There’s nothing left.” His face reddened.
She didn’t know what to do, what to say, but she felt Vicenzu’s terror and she hugged him. She remembered holding him after he was born and sixteen years later, after the accident that changed his life forever. He told her of the bleating horns, the shouts of fire from the men, the bells ringing in the Duomo, the mules who should have been pulling the water refusing to move. He spoke of watching the flames, the smell of the smoke that still hung in the air.
“It happened so early in the morning. The sound of the bells woke me. By the time I arrived, the
store was gone. Now I have nothing to do but search for scraps of paper, something, anything to remind me of Papa. I’m glad he’s dead so he’d never have to see this.”
He began pacing while she cried for the end of Giorgio and his legacy. She raked her mind for images of Giorgio on their wedding night, their honeymoon, remembered him sitting on the chaise and reading his apothecary catalogue. In the end she felt his presence as a young man. She could almost touch him.
“When did it happen?” she asked. About a month ago, he told her. The date? April 29th, a Wednesday, and Carmela lived with the news and didn’t tell her. She was in the midst of the investigation then, she remembered. She pulled the notebook out of her pocket and searched for the date of her encounter with Don Tigro’s men. It was the day before the fire.
“And our finances? Tell me everything, Vicenzu. Don’t hide the truth.”
“We owe nothing. We have a thousand lire in the bank.”
“Cash in the house?”
“About two thousand.”
“Tell me the exact amount.”
He went to the locked box they kept under a stone near the hearth and counted, eighteen hundred and fifty. She emptied her reticule and pockets. They counted five thousand in all, not including the coins and the ten thousand lire note she hadn’t cashed. She suspected there’d be a bonus inside Busacca’s letter, the one she hadn’t opened. More than enough.
“Keep it all in the locked box,” she instructed.
“Not the bank?”
She shook her head. She asked about any large expenses still outstanding and watched him thinking, waited while he looked in the ledger. She reminded him again that she needed the truth.
“Carlo’s tuition for next semester is due in two weeks.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred fifty lire.”
“Pay it now. We’ll decide our next moves tonight. I know who burned the apothecary shop. We must leave this town. We must make a new life.”
“Leave Oltramari?” he asked.
She felt her heart sink and rise again, sticking into the side of her throat. She saw Renata standing in the kitchen wringing a towel. She asked about Carlo. Renata said he might come tomorrow, she wasn’t sure.
“Must we leave?” Renata asked. She wrung her apron.
“I saw in Paris what we’d become in Oltramari. We must wire Carlo. Do that too, would you, Vicenzu?”
“Or I can take the train to—”
She looked at her watch. “We’ll decide later if there’s time, but we need you here tonight.”
“What should I say in the telegram?”
“Come home at once.”
“Where’s Carmela?” Renata asked, a hand on her forehead.
“She didn’t tell you?”
While she told them about Carmela’s job in Paris, Renata busied herself in the kitchen. Dishes and cups, pots and silverware trembled in her daughter’s hands. Vicenzu paced. Maria’s piano played that awful Brahms, but at least the youngest were in the other room or upstairs. Serafina hugged Renata, popped more olives into her mouth. There was purpose in her step.
Serafina looked at Assunta. She was sitting in her corner in the kitchen, one hand covering her eyes, the other holding a rosary.
“I want you to do some research,” she said to Vicenzu, as she stroked her daughter’s back.
Vicenzu smiled.
“Tomorrow I want you to go to the office of Messageries Maritimes in Palermo. We’ll need ... she tried to count in her head, but couldn’t, brought out her notebook and sat, pushing back the curls that had fallen into her face. “Let’s see,” she mumbled and began to scribble. “Tell them we’ll need accommodation for a party of at least seventeen from Palermo to Paris, six or seven staterooms.”
“Paris?” Renata asked. Her eyes were wide. She carried an empty plate to the table, carried it back.
“Do the same at the other shipping lines but give them different destinations—São Palo and New York. Tell them we leave as soon as possible, but don’t buy anything yet. I just want an approximate cost. And not in steerage. I want first class accommodations. Hard enough leaving.
“Assunta, I want to talk with you in private.”
In the parlor she told the domestic they were leaving, she didn’t know where yet.
“The land is bad,” Assunta said.
“Yes, and we must leave. I pray you’ll come with us, but it’s your decision.”
“Where are we going?”
“A better city, but I don’t know where yet. Think, and tell me tonight, but tell no one else, not the caretaker, not your friends, not anyone else except perhaps Gesuzza.”
“Does she go with Rosa?”
“I don’t know yet. And now I have to leave.”
* * *
Rosa had heard about the fire. “Let’s go back to Paris,” she said. “Perfect for Tessa. It doesn’t have to be forever. The caretakers and guards can watch the houses.”
“Besides Tessa, who else?”
“Formusa and Gesuzza. I must have them both.”
“I asked Assunta. We’ll meet tonight after supper.”
Is leaving really leaving if it’s not forever? If I bring all that I love? Would I go without Rosa, without my children?
Serafina opened Loffredo’s door. The waiting room was crowded—women with pale faces, men with bandaged limbs or swollen ankles, an old soldier with a growth on his face. She sat. He wasn’t back fifteen minutes and already had patients. Would he want to leave his practice? Of course not, but would he?
Loffredo was about to call the next in line when he saw her. He waved her inside. “My wife,” he said, shrugging to the room. “You know how it is.” He smiled.
“The drugstore burned to the ground. Carmela knew and didn’t tell me.”
“We must leave,” he said.
She nodded, staunching her tears with a linen. No time to cry. “I’ve told Rosa. She’s coming for supper tonight. But first I need to find out who’s behind this.”
“How could you not know? He calls himself your brother.”
Serafina had to sit. “He told you that?”
He nodded.
“You knew all this time?”
He held up his palms.
“And you never said.”
“Why would I? I’m not sure I believe him, but what difference does it make?” He scratched his chin, peering at her. “Although I have to admit, there’s a physical resemblance.” He touched her curls and smiled. “Told me you share the same mother.”
She shivered. “Why?”
“Who knows?” Loffredo shrugged. “He’s cunning, you must admit. I think he’s trying to spoil your happiness. What we did to his men in Paris, he won’t let go of that.”
“He’ll crush us if we have to keep paying protection. When did he tell you about my mother?”
“A few years ago. I remember it was in the spring. He was standing in front of the music store. I was passing and he stopped me. Weird sort of thug, he was listening to the Brahms coming from Lorenzo’s shop. He mentioned Maria’s name, said it was her piano. He said she was his niece. Brahms is an odd thing for a thug to like. You’re pale.”
Delivered in a deathbed coup, Maddalena told her tale to Serafina, a story about bearing a son out of wedlock. Don Tigro had ginger curls like hers, gestures and a saunter like her mother’s. You’ve given me a burden, Mama. But after all, the woman was delirious when she told the tale, perhaps a chimera. Poor Mama, she must have been so lonely. No one else knew except Don Tigro, and come to find out, Loffredo. Could the don have told others? Her children must never learn of it. A real burden, Mama.
She had to calm herself.
“Fina!” He held her and she wanted him right then and there so she kissed him hard.
“We can’t, you have patients.”
Seven minutes later she left Loffredo’s office, blowing him a kiss and re-pinning her hair.
But he caught her before she opened
the door, kissed the shoulder where she’d been shot.
“Have you read Busacca’s letter?”
She shook her head. “We’ll talk after supper. All of us.”
“Perhaps Paris?” he asked.
She had to think. So she hurried to the public gardens, the gardens that used to be lush, a place where birds gathered. Today a few flowers wilted in the dusty light and no birds sang. She sat on the same stone bench where she and Giorgio had courted. One night they faced Betta and Tigro, the four of them talking as two young couples will do on the edge of new life, Betta’s stomach distended with twins. Now that world with Giorgio was gone.
She steeled herself and walked around to the other side of the piazza and sat, staring at the burnt wood and ashes, the remnants of Giorgio’s apothecary shop. She choked, glad she hadn’t seen the flames and felt tears crowding her eyes, a throbbing in her head. Remembering Giorgio in his white shirt and black vest as he stood in back of the counter—his counter, his father’s, their store for generations—she smiled. He was young then, young and certain, eating his morning snack, honey dripping from the corner of his mouth. She pictured him pouring the wine while they were gathered around the table, his laughter tumbling over them, the children grabbing, the house rich with the smell of roasted pork. They were prosperous then. She longed for five more minutes of that time. But that could never be: Oltramari had changed, and she’d been holding onto the dream for too long.
She dried her eyes and drove a fist into her thigh, thinking, he’ll pay, one day he’ll pay. In her mind she slammed a splintered board into the side of his head, crushing it, just as the Virgin had done to the snake. Devil, he’s a devil. She imagined one side of Don Tigro’s head missing, like the woman Elena had killed in the Rue Cassette. She squirmed. No, she wouldn’t sink to that level. But she owed him a visit or her anger would corrode.
When she arrived, two men lounged outside his baglio on the outskirts of Oltramari squinting into mid-afternoon light, sweat on their faces, the air around them sour. She asked to see Don Tigro.
Murder On The Rue Cassette (A Serafina Florio Mystery) Page 25