by Lina Simoni
With a small jerk, Caterina lifted her head from the paper. She hadn’t expected to see a face peering in at her from the garden.
“Don’t move,” Lavinia said, pulling away. “I don’t know what to do with this girl,” she murmured as she reentered the palazzina in a hurry. A moment later she was standing in front of Caterina’s armchair, in a large room that smelled of naphthalene balls and was mostly dark and uninviting, other than for the sunlight hovering over Caterina.
She asked, “Would you care to explain? You know better than I that you are not supposed to be here. This room is closed. If your mother sees you …”
“What?” Caterina said in a defiant tone. Then her voice softened. She whispered, “I wanted to be alone.” She gazed at the sheet of paper on her lap.
Drawing was a passion she had developed in childhood, as soon as she had begun elementary school. Everyone had quickly discovered that she was a talented artist, capable of capturing the essence of a subject with minimal strokes. Her teachers had noticed and praised the girl with big words and awards and even a one-person show at her high school. Her father had refused to attended, scoffing and labeling Caterina’s artistic endeavors a waste of time. But Matilda had participated, always encouraging Caterina and telling her she should be proud of her accomplishments, no matter what her father said. In fact she had framed two of Caterina’s best drawings and hung them in the blue parlor, above the fireplace, where her lady friends could see them. Their compliments about the freshness and originality of the compositions made her gloat every time.
“Alone? Why?” Lavinia asked, taking a step forward and glancing at the paper. She expected to see one of the girl’s two favorite subjects: Madame’s face or a flower composition. But what she saw was no Madame or flowers. On the white paper was a sketch of a mandolin next to two dark, gentle eyes.
“What is wrong with you?” she said, snatching the drawing out of Caterina’s hands.
Caterina looked away, out the window, in the distance, her expression forlorn, her eyes melancholic.
Lavinia spoke with disbelief. “Are you still thinking about that baker?”
Caterina didn’t answer.
Lavinia’s eyes widened as she spoke with a deeper, worried voice. “Stop thinking about him at once. He’s a baker, for Christ sake, a baker!”
Caterina shook her head. “I can’t. I have been thinking about him ever since we left his bakery this morning.”
Lavinia rolled her eyes. “God help us,” she whispered.
With a sudden energy in her movements, Caterina turned to her chaperone. “I want to see him again. Please, arrange an encounter. Tomorrow. Please …”
“Certainly not,” Lavinia stated. Your father would kill me.”
Undaunted, Caterina clasped her hands as if in a prayer and gave Lavinia the most innocent look she was capable of producing. “Please …”
“No,” Lavinia stated. “And stop drawing mandolins and sweet, drooping eyes. There’s no way you’ll see your baker friend again.”
She set her hands on her hips, expecting Caterina to make a scene. Instead, Caterina stood up and whispered, “I love him, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change how I feel.”
Lavinia took a step back. Love? What did Caterina know about love? Surely nothing. She was raving, raving under the influence of that silly music she had heard. Damn rain. Had it stayed sunny all morning, none of this nonsense would be happening. She cleared her throat to give herself time to come up with a plan. She considered giving Caterina a lecture about the appropriate and inappropriate behavior of upper-class girls, but on second thought decided to drop the subject. Perhaps the best course of action was to cut the conversation short. All Caterina needed was time, a day or two of distraction, and then the mandolin player would be forgotten. He was a whim, like many others Caterina had. She should take her to the port, to see the transatlantic ships docking and unloading passengers; or to the theater, to see an opera matinee.
“Let’s go get your tea tray,” Lavinia said casually. “I left it in the family living room, where you should have been in the first place. I bet the tea is cold by now. We’ll warm it up. Come on.”
Surprisingly, Caterina followed Lavinia without arguing. Once they reached the kitchen, however, and Lavinia placed the teapot on the stove, Caterina clasped Lavinia’s arm.
“I want to see him again,” she said with a determined voice, “and you know all too well that I won’t stop annoying you until I do.”
Lavinia nodded. She knew how stubborn Caterina could be, and it came to her as no surprise that in the case of her sudden passion for a sweet-eyed, mandolin-plucking fellow the girl wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was nonetheless determined to impede any further contact between her charge and the baker.
“I will not let my affection cloud my judgment,” she mumbled to herself as she turned away from Caterina to place the teapot back on the tray. And with that, she headed back towards the family living room.
Caterina tagged along, begging and begging, explaining how she had often wondered what falling in love might mean and how she’d feel when it would happen, and how she had discussed those topics over and over with her schoolmates, who were as ignorant of that matter as she was, but as eager to find out. “Now I know,” she said with a trembling voice. “I’m in love, Lavinia. This won’t go away.”
It was a fact that Lavinia, who had not been blessed with children of her own, had a weakness for Caterina she struggled to control. She had loved the girl from the day she had been hired to work at the palazzina, when Caterina was five, and the large amount of time she spent with her daily had only strengthened the affection. Consequently, Lavinia’s initial determination to put an end to the queer idea of loving a baker weakened under her mistress’s continued and passionate begging for an encounter. It took Caterina exactly one hour to bend Lavinia’s will.
“Fine. I’ll set up a meeting,” Lavinia said, exhausted from the long quarrel. “But only one. And the only reason I’m doing it, so you know, is so you can see for yourself what kind of low-class, ignorant man your mandolin player is. I’m certain that after talking to him for three minutes you’ll want to shove him out of your life forever.”
“Yes!” Caterina shouted, giving Lavinia a heartfelt hug. Then she ran off to her room, where she lay on her bed and stared a long time at the ceiling.
She had never experienced so deep an unsettlement before. Her breathing was shallow and fast, her mouth dry, and she had the impression that her bones were melting into the bed sheets. She was lost in visions of Ivano’s angelic eyes, his beautifully sculpted body, and his skilled hands caressing the strings of the mandolin. The music was playing in her ears, note after note after note, as if she had known that tune all her life. It was inside her, flowing along the blood in her veins. She was brimming with Ivano’s images, with his smell, with his sounds. She stood up a half hour later to take a ream of white of paper and three pieces of charcoal out of a drawer. Over the two hours that followed she did nothing other than draw Ivano: his mouth, eyes, brow, hair, hands, nose, and of course his mandolin. To Caterina, the instrument was part of Ivano’s body. The way he had played it, so naturally, so fluidly, it had seemed an extension of his arms—and of his heart. She stopped sketching only around dinner time, when Lavinia came to her room to fetch her. By then, she had filled twenty-three sheets.
The following morning, in the twilight, when everyone was still asleep, Lavinia snuck out of the palazzina and headed downhill at a speedy gait. She arrived at the bakery at six, when Piazza della Nunziata was quiet and its sidewalks deserted. The front door of the bakery was locked, but a light was on inside, so Lavinia kept knocking until Corrado, Ivano’s father, came to the door, saying, “We open in half an hour. Come back later.”
“I don’t want bread,” Lavinia explained. “I’m here to see the mandolin player regarding a private matter. Is he here?”
Corrado let her in. “He’s baking,” he s
aid, pointing to a half-open door. “Go ahead.”
Gingerly, Lavinia walked into a room that was darker and much warmer than the storefront and smelled strongly of butter and baked dough. A bulky table and two chairs occupied the center of the room; shelves storing loaves lined the left wall; and on the right wall two large wood ovens were at work. Next to the ovens, Ivano was buttering a large baking pan. “Good morning,” Lavinia said.
He started at the sound of a woman’s voice. “You are the blonde lady’s friend!” he exclaimed, staring at the unexpected visitor.
“I’m her chaperone, not her friend,” Lavinia specified. In a few words she explained the reason for her visit.
When Ivano heard that the blonde girl wanted to see him again, his surprise grew even stronger. He had flirted with her without imagining even for a moment that such a beautiful, elegant young woman, clearly out of his reach, would give his flirtation more than a superficial thought. As Lavinia went on explaining that the appointment was set for Sunday at four in the afternoon in the gardens of San Nicolo’, he felt a pang in his belly and his breath became quick in his throat. Lavinia noticed his emotion.
“Don’t get too excited, young man. I’ll be there, watching you like a hawk.”
He nodded, “Of course.”
“Is this a yes?” Lavinia asked.
“It is,” he babbled. “Four o’clock. San Nicolo’.”
“What’s your first name?” Lavinia asked as she headed for the door.
“Ivano,” he replied. “What’s hers? And her family name?”
“Her name is Caterina, and for the time being it’s all you need to know.”
On Sunday, following Lavinia’s instructions, Ivano waited for Caterina in the most secluded section of the gardens. He had brought his mandolin along. The instrument had a calming, soothing effect on him, and it had been that way ever since he had held it in his hands as a child. He squeezed it as he wondered if the meeting had been prompted by an attraction the young lady had for him or it was the pastime of a bored upper-class girl with nothing better to do on a tedious January Sunday. Despite the comfort of the mandolin, his hands were shaking with doubt and fear of being deceived.
Caterina arrived shortly, followed at close distance by Lavinia. She walked up to him in small steps, slowing her gait as she approached. A few inches from him, she opened her face in the sweetest smile. Looking into her glittering green eyes, at the glossy blonde hair dancing on her shoulders, at the fullness of the heart-shaped lips, and at the watery grace of her gestures, Ivano understood in an instant that he was in love. He took her hand, thin and shaky, and felt a flow of heat enter his flesh and spread inside his bones. She blushed at his touch, and they both stood there a long time, he unable to let go of her, she incapable of taking her eyes off his, both helpless and powerless and without the strength to move or speak.
They snapped out of their trance when Lavinia cleared her throat. Then they strolled hand in hand along a path until they reached a rotunda shaded by tall trees. There, without having said a word to one another, they stopped, looked into each other’s eyes, and fell tenderly into each other’s arms.
Lavinia approached them and broke up the embrace. “Watch yourself, young man,” she said in a piercing voice, “or this will be the last you see of my mistress.”
He smiled. “If this were the last I’m allowed to see of Caterina,” he said, keeping his eyes on her, “I’d have little reason to keep living.”
It was the first time he had pronounced her name, and the effect on Caterina was disastrous. If she had had any doubt about her feelings for him, any concern about his social place, hearing him pronounce her name cleared her mind of questions and misgivings. She lowered her eyes.
“I want to see you every day,” she murmured. “And I want to hear you play the mandolin again. Your music is amazing. I love the piece you played at the bakery.”
“What you heard at the bakery wasn’t my music,” Ivano said. “It was Mozart’s. But this piece is mine, music and words.” He leaned against the back of a bench and played a ballad he had composed a year earlier on a night he hadn’t been able to sleep. He sang along, and it was so that Caterina and Lavinia discovered that Ivano was also a composer and a gifted singer with a deep, endearing voice.
“Have you composed many pieces?” Caterina asked at the end of Ivano’s performance, her voice dampened by emotion.
He nodded. “There’s a place at the top of this hill where I go when I want to be alone. That’s where I compose most of my pieces. It’s a beautiful spot, with views of the whole city. I’ll take you there some day.”
Lavinia made her opinion clear. “Don’t even think about it.” She took Caterina’s hand. “Time to go home.”
Incapable of moving even the tiniest muscle in his body, Ivano watched Caterina walk away alongside her chaperone. He remained in the gardens a long time, occasionally grazing the strings of the mandolin. He had courted several women before, but not one of them had made him feel so lost, so out of control, so moonstruck.
As for Caterina, she kept silent all the way back to Corso Solferino. “Thank you,” she said to Lavinia as they were entering the palazzina. “I’ll always be grateful to you for what you did today.”
“I am not so sure this was the right thing to do,” Lavinia commented, holding back a smile, “but I know for a fact that I’ve never seen you this happy before.”
Doubts and remorse kept hunting Lavinia on a daily basis. Caterina’s showings of happiness, however, infected her, weakening her remorse for being an accomplice in an adventure the girl was not supposed to have. It was a different Caterina she was seeing. Before meeting Ivano, Caterina had been, in everyone’s opinion, a happy girl. Her childhood tantrums had subsided, replaced by a polite stubbornness everyone seemed to accept as an intrinsic part of her being. She was courteous and kind, with big smiles for everyone. Nevertheless, Lavinia had often asked herself if Caterina was truly as happy as everyone—her parents, her brothers, and the house guests—seemed to believe. Something about her outgoing attitude seemed forced, unreal, as if Caterina’s enticing smiles were a device meant to cover up a second reality, perhaps a tragic secret. Lavinia never mentioned her thoughts to anybody, because she couldn’t have explained them rationally and because she had no proof whatsoever that her suspicions were real. But after the meeting at the gardens of San Nicolo’, for the first time Lavinia saw Caterina express a true happiness, genuine and unhindered. The difference was astounding. Lavinia knew then that Caterina’s happy life up to that point had been in all probability a lie. She asked the girl one day if something unpleasant had happened to her and if she wanted to talk about it. Caterina reacted with rudeness and sarcasm at first, then with indifference, as if Lavinia had brought up the evening menu or a new store opening in town.
“Since when do you ask personal questions?” she said dryly. “I thought my father hired you to keep me company, not to pry.” Then she went on to talk about the weather and the hydrangeas needing fertilizer and more water.
Looking past the sarcasm, the rudeness, and the idle conversation, Lavinia noticed how Caterina hadn’t found the question unusual or asked why Lavinia had formulated it or come up with such a thought. Caterina had skillfully dodged the topic, confirming Lavinia’s suspicions that something in the girl’s life was not as it seemed.
Lavinia nurtured Caterina and Ivano’s love story for two and a half months. The faithfulness to her employer she had paraded on so many occasions was forgotten, her affection for Caterina being only one of the reasons. The other was Ivano’s music. It had put a spell on Lavinia as well. It was a different kind of spell than the one he had bestowed upon Caterina—it was the enchantment an older woman feels in the presence of a young artist’s display of skills. In all her life Lavinia had never been exposed to classical music or to popular music performed by its composer. She had always thought those forms of art were the prerogative of the rich, not of a working woman. Eve
r since Ivano’s first performance at the bakery during the rain storm, she had secretly felt thankful for the opportunity to listen to such an extraordinary artiste, and from then on had looked at Ivano’s music as a special treat life was finally giving her after many years of hard work. When he played, she observed his facial expressions and the movements of his hands in wonder, as a baby watches an event for the first time. She marveled at the speed of his right hand and the precision of the left one, registering the tilt of his head, the patterns of his breathing, and the stretching of his vocal chords when he sang. She knew, of course, that he wasn’t playing for her and that he would rather be alone with Caterina, but none of that mattered to her. Every time she heard him play or sing, she was transported to another world.
The encounters between Ivano and Caterina, which couldn’t possibly occur in public venues, took place in the bakery’s oven room, in the afternoon, when Corrado had left for the day and customers were rare. Tony, the hired help, dozed off on a cot behind the counter, awaking briefly when the occasional shopper came in. Of the two entrances to the oven room, one was off the bakery and one off a blind alley bordering the rear of the building. The alley ended with a wall, against which stood several boxes utilized by the local stores to dispose of their garbage. Several times a week Lavinia and Caterina entered the oven room through the alley door and, unseen by customers or passersby, met Ivano. In the privacy of those four walls, Caterina and Ivano talked about their lives and their dreams, he played the mandolin and she listened with her heart racing. She often brought paper and charcoal along, and while he played she drew him, over and over and over. The drawings cast a spell on Ivano, as much as his music cast a spell on Caterina. He looked at the lines and the shadows in amazement, incredulous of the fact that anyone, especially such a young girl, could so faithfully reproduce his features and expressions.
“I’m composing a special song,” Ivano told Caterina one day, during one of their clandestine visits. “I’ll play it on the day your family will accept our love and we’ll begin our life together.”