The House of Serenades

by Lina Simoni

  “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.

  “That Giuseppe Garibaldi did a great disservice to the world, darling,” she told her husband when she regained her strength, “when he set out to make one country out of many, as we Piedmontese have nothing in common with those ignorant, gaudy peasants who live in Sicily. They can’t speak Italian, I hear, and most of them are bandits.”

  In spite of their continued efforts to find a suitable husband for Matilda, it soon became clear that the breakup with Arnaldo had made all the aristocratic families suspicious and unwilling to look upon Matilda as a desirable bride for their offspring. Besides, there was always the question of how a husband would react to Matilda’s lack of virginity and how the Pellettieris could possibly justify it and not incur another rejection. On that thought, reluctantly, Anna and Telonio decided to look outside the aristocratic circles for untitled families who would accept their daughter’s condition in exchange for the prestige a wedding to an aristocrat would bring to their breed. The Berillis turned out to be the perfect match. They were wealthy and respected, hungry for prestige, and lived far enough from Turin to foster forgetting but still in the North of Italy, not anywhere close to Rome or Naples, which the Pellettieris considered another world altogether.

  Filiberto and Giulia Berilli met privately with the Pellettieris the day after their encounter at the theater, and at that time the Pellettieris dictated the proviso for their daughter to join the Berilli household: Giuseppe would accept Matilda’s imperfect physical condition and would never, ever mention the missing hymen to a soul. Filiberto met then with his son. He talked to him about Matilda not being a virgin and pointed out what an asset it would be to have a Pellettieri in the family despite the inconvenience of Matilda’s condition. Giuseppe agreed that Matilda would be an asset not only to the family but also to his own legal career and swore he’d keep the story of the missing hymen a secret for the rest of his life.

  “Wonderful!” Filiberto exclaimed. “I’m proud of you, my son.”

  The wedding date was chosen. Shortly before the set day, Giuseppe and his father sat in the reading room and discussed over several glasses of red wine where Giuseppe and Matilda would live once wed.

  “Our palazzina is so spacious,” Filiberto told his son, “Why don’t you continue to live with us? There’s plenty of room in this house for Matilda and all the children she will have.”

  Giuseppe was pleased. “Thank you, father, for your generous offer. I’m sure Matilda will be happy here and will love this house as much as I do.”

  Indeed, in a matter of days, as Giuseppe had predicted, Matilda grew fond of the palazzina and its occupants—with one exception. “That Eugenia is like a leech,” she wrote in a letter to her mother. “She clings to her brother and doesn’t let go.”

  Eugenia wasn’t fond of Matilda either. “She wants the servants to call her Madame, the French way,” she told her good friend Lucia Della Valle on a Sunday on the way out of church. “How snobbish is that?” She continued with a scornful grimace on her face. “She just arrived and already bosses Giuseppe around. Do you know what she did yesterday? She took Giuseppe’s favorite liquor, a prune grappa, and poured it into the sink. She said, ‘It’s bad for your heart, darling.’ She is bad for Giuseppe’s heart, I say, not the grappa.”

  Seven years passed and then the accident came about, taking the lives of Giulia and Filiberto Berilli without warning. Their coach fell off a cliff, smashed on the rocks below, and sank into the sea. The cause of the accident was never ascertained. The police spoke about a defective wheel, but didn’t discard the possibility that something might have scared the horses out of control. In any case, everyone on board was killed, including the coachman and the maid who had accompanied the Berillis on their trip. By that time, Matilda had given birth to two boys, Umberto and Raimondo, then five and two years old respectively. Caterina wouldn’t be born until fifteen years later.

  With her mother dead, Eugenia assumed she’d be the one running the house. Matilda didn’t think so.

  “I’m your wife, Giuseppe,” she told her husband a few days after the funeral. “I should be the one in charge of the household, not your sister.”

  “I was born in this house,” Eugenia fought back. “I belong here. That Torinese cannot rule as and when she pleases.”

  For four years Eugenia and Matilda bickered and quarreled daily on every aspect of their domestic life, from the menus to the hiring and firing of the servants, from the color of the curtains to when the windows should stay open or closed, from the floral arrangements in the living room to the house cleaning schedule. If Eugenia said that the living-room floor had to be washed, Matilda stated that the floor was clean and changed the order to the maids. If Matilda thought it proper to invite the Mayor and his wife to dinner, Eugenia criticized her for wasting the family money on useless social events. Matilda replied that such events seemed useless to Eugenia only because she wasn’t married, and then Eugenia rushed to the garden, picked Matilda’s favorite flowers, and fed them to the horses.

  In spite of his attempts to dodge the quarrels, Giuseppe was often caught in the middle, like a ship under crossfire.

  “Stop it, stop it!” he’d scream halfway through dinner, or at breakfast, or during the Sunday walks. “You’re driving me crazy! One of these days I’ll move my bed into my office, where I can’t hear you arguing.”

  One evening, he called his sister to the reading room. “This can’t go on. I’m exhausted,” he said. “I’ve had enough of your senseless squabbles.”

  Eugenia lifted her chin and snapped it down. She said, “I agree.”

  “I know how you feel about the palazzina, Eugenia,” Giuseppe said in a soothing voice, “but Matilda is my wife and has the right to live in this house and care for it.”

  “So do I.”

  “True,” Giuseppe agreed, “but I can’t see how you two can continue to live under the same roof, given that you are both more stubborn than mules.”

  “It’s not my fault if—”

  “Now listen, Eugenia. I have given this matter much thought and this is what I’ve decided to do. I’ll buy from you your half of the palazzina at market value. I’ll also give you a bonus equal to twenty-five percent of the transaction. You’ll have more than enough to buy your own place. Of course you’re welcome to visit any time you want. The palazzina will remain your home for as long as you’ll live.”

  S
he jumped to her feet. “You what?”

  “Sit down. Do you think I like it? I don’t, but a separation of households is the only avenue for the three of us to find peace of mind and return to the quiet life we had before our parents died.”

  “Never,” Eugenia said, striding out of the room like a general on his way to war.

  Giuseppe followed her in the hallway, begging her to consider that resolution seriously. “Everyone will be happier afterwards,” he said. “What’s the point of persisting in an arrangement that makes everyone mad at each other?”

  Eugenia stopped and turned to face her brother. With a shrill voice he had never heard before, she told him he could go straight to hell, he and his resolution, and he should take that aristocratic wife of his along, and that was her own resolution, and what did he think of that.

  It took Eugenia two weeks to let the idea sink in. If she begrudgingly accepted the offer in the end, it was only because she concurred that her relationship with Matilda was doomed. So she sold her brother her half of the house, cashed the bonus, and agreed to move out of the palazzina on the condition that she would never, ever have to ask Matilda permission to visit. Matilda promised to honor her sister-in-law’s demand, and Eugenia set out to look for a new home. It was the spring of 1879.

  When Eugenia bought the apartment on Via San Lorenzo, Giuseppe was surprised. “You could have done better, sister. There are many residences in this town that are more appropriate for a woman of your class than an apartment three blocks from the port.”

  Eugenia explained calmly that the apartment she had chosen was centrally located and close to everything she needed: the cathedral, the stores, and the cafés where she could meet her friends in the afternoon. Giuseppe shrugged, and the question of who should or shouldn’t rule the palazzina would not be discussed again for thirty-one years.

  3

  IN THE BLUE PARLOR, the cozy retreat where she embroidered and received visitors, Matilda was ensconced on a loveseat, fidgeting with her needlework. Worry was visible in her keen movements and eyes. Her husband’s behavior was a mystery, and she felt at a loss as to what she should do to extract from him a reasonable explanation. Should she continue to question him? Should she wait for him to speak? A knock on the door startled her. She dropped the needlework before saying, “Yes?”

  The door opened in slow motion. “Lunch is served, Madame,” Guglielmo said.

  Matilda acknowledged the butler with a nod. She waited for him to leave before standing up and drawing the azure velvet curtains that gave the parlor its nickname. Slowly, she gazed about the room, eyes lingering on the gray-toned loveseat, the matching armchairs, and the small fireplace with its white marble mantel. So many encounters, conversations, gossips had taken place there. With her mind’s eye she saw her lady friends in their visiting dresses and hats, their powdered faces. She heard them talking, describing the latest balls, the newest restaurants, the theatrical performances. And then she had a feeling, a discomfort that set deep inside her stomach, a premonition that the parlor was bound to remain silent in the future: no more visitors, no more sounds. “I’m losing my mind,” she said. She shook her head and walked out.

  The spacious rectangular dining room was full of light at that time of day. Centered in it was a four-meter-long ebony table set for two. The off-white embroidered tablecloth, the British gold-rimmed china, the Venetian hand-blown stemmed glasses, and three golden candlesticks gave the table an air of pretentious opulence. No one was there when Matilda arrived. A quick look was all she needed to realize that the candlesticks weren’t equidistant and the glasses were asymmetric with respect to the plates. Servants in Genoa were badly trained. In her paternal home in Turin that would have never happened. As she replaced candlesticks and glasses, Giuseppe came in from the hallway. “I’m starved,” he grunted.

  “I’m glad you decided to have lunch with me today,” Matilda said in a sweet voice.

  Without looking at his wife, he took a seat at one end of the table. Matilda sat to his right. She stretched her arm and grazed Giuseppe’s hand with the tip of her fingers.

  “What’s going on, darling? Why did you sleep in the reading room last night? And why do you do so many poultices? Your skin will rot under those stinking leaves.”

  “My shoulder still hurts, if you need to know,” Giuseppe said crossly. “And how many poultices I do is none of your business.”

  Matilda didn’t react, having noticed that Viola, the table maid, had come in with an open bottle of Rossese, Giuseppe’s favorite red wine. With a deliberate motion, the maid placed the bottle under Giuseppe’s eyes, label up. He nodded, and she poured a small amount in his glass—a lunch and dinner ritual. Giuseppe, a wine connoisseur and under normal circumstances a subtle and discerning taster, guzzled the wine and pointed to the empty glass.

  “Fill it up,” he said.

  An astounded Viola obeyed the order and filled Giuseppe and Matilda’s glasses before returning to the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Matilda asked once Viola was out of sight. “You haven’t even tasted the wine today. You’re drinking it as if it were cappuccino.”

  “Please, Matilda. I have no desire to discuss my problems with you at this moment.” He waved his hands in the air. “Or with anyone else.”

  “Well,” she said, raising her voice. “There’s something I would like to discuss with you.”

  “What might that be?” he asked.

  “Caterina.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss. Caterina is dead.”

  “Caterina is not dead. She may be dead in your mind, Giuseppe, but not in mine. I want her back. This is her home.”

  “Out of the question,” Giuseppe stated.

  The argument died when Viola came in carrying a rectangular silver tray. Matilda watched her in silence as she served the appetizers and refilled the wine glasses.

  “I know you’re still upset about what Caterina did,” she whispered the moment Viola left the room, “but over two years have gone by. Don’t you think it may be time to forgive her and let her live her life again?”

  Giuseppe remained silent.

  “Say something,” Matilda begged.

  He kept his eyes fixed on his plate. “I have no daughter.”

  Matilda squeezed her hands into fists; her pointed nails sank into her skin. Nothing and no one, she knew, would ever persuade her husband to let Caterina come home. She bit her lips, but couldn’t hold back her tears. “You never listen to anything I say,” she sobbed.

  “Stop whining!” Giuseppe exclaimed. “All you do is complain, complain, complain! You should be grateful to me for having married you in your condition. If it hadn’t been for me, you’d be an old spinster now, with an embarrassing past and no future.”

  Matilda paled, her lips quivered. “How can you …”

  She went no further because Viola had come in again with the main course. She changed the topic of the conversation. “At least tell me what worries you, Giuseppe. Your shoulder?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is it your heart, darling? If that’s what bothers you, we should call Doctor Sciaccaluga. I’m sure he’d see you this afternoon.”

  “No doctor,” Giuseppe said firmly. “I’m not sick. I mean, I’m sick, but I don’t need a doctor.”

  “Then what do you need, will you tell me?” Matilda asked, her raspy voice showing the extent of her exasperation. “You’ve been inside that room of yours since last evening. You didn’t sleep in your bed last night. I have the right to know what’s on your mind.”

  Giuseppe sprung to his feet. “I told you! I want to be alone!” He threw his linen napkin, pushed the chair aside, and dashed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “You, you … You’re an impossible man!” Matilda burst out. Then she retired upstairs so the servants wouldn’t see her cry.

  On the second floor, in her south-facing bedroom, she took a lavender-scented handkerchief fro
m a drawer. She sat by the bow window, on an upholstered rocking chair, and stared emptily at the sky. Her eyes were wet, her throat swollen. Her fights with Eugenia years earlier had been a forewarning of the misery of her married life. Giuseppe was a difficult man to share life with, always busy, uncommunicative, and showing little or no interest in her personal struggles. The past two days, she thought, had showcased Giuseppe’s selfish disposition: something was wrong, and he wouldn’t say one word to anyone. All he could do was lock himself in the reading room and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. At twenty, she had willingly accepted her parents’ suggestion that she marry Giuseppe. She had been happy to get away from Turin and the sad life she was living after the end of her engagement to Arnaldo Della Tessiera. Now she wished she had never left. Yes, she lived in a palatial home, was in a socially-enviable position, and had all the material possessions one could imagine: money, clothes, maids, coaches, jewelry, even the luxury of a private automobile. She had electricity in every room and invitations to every party in every home that counted, but she was sad. She had been married less than a year when she had come to realize that by joining the Berilli household she had fallen into a worse misery than the one she had left behind. And all because nature had played a trick on her by forgetting to give her a hymen or by letting her hymen break on its own before the set time. Sighing, she wondered, as she had wondered many times before, what her life would be like had the doctors found her capricious hymen in its place and had she married Arnaldo instead of Giuseppe. She had often visions of Arnaldo as she had seen him last, forty-three years earlier, tall and handsome and with the bearing of a prince. She imagined how tender and loving a husband he would have been and wondered what it’d be like to wake up every morning with him by her side. It was too late now to change things. At sixty-two, she was too old. She felt too old. And she felt remote from the man she called husband and from the city she had moved to after her wedding, a city that, she was certain, would ignore her, even snub her, despite her aristocratic lineage, were she not married to Giuseppe Berilli, the lawyer. The Genoese even had a saying for that, she had been told: Mogli e buoi dei paesi tuoi, Wives and oxen from your own land. What a way to welcome out-of-towners. At least once a month, especially after her two sons had moved out of the palazzina, she had considered returning to her native Turin, where she was someone because of her own name and where she owed her social standing to birth rather than to an unloving husband. She had dreamed of taking Caterina along, showing her the castle where she had grown up and introducing her to her cousins and aunts. She had never found the courage to break away or denounce Giuseppe’s lies about Caterina’s death. So many times she had been one whisper away from revealing the conspiracy to her sons. Her tongue had frozen in her mouth on every occasion. Besides, she knew all too well that her family didn’t want her to move back home. Although they didn’t know all the facts, they considered her a living reminder of the shameful rejection her parents had endured at the Della Tessieras’ hand forty-three years earlier and which, many of her relatives thought, had brought them both prematurely to the grave. Matilda knew that she was destined to spend the rest of her life in this ungrateful town, and nothing she could do or say would change the course of the events. She dried her tears and headed to the kitchen to instruct the cook about dinner.