by Lina Simoni
“Don’t come any closer!” Matilda screamed, reliving every moment of the shameful vaginal examination she had been subjected to in her youth. “Why can’t you leave her alone?” she begged. “Perhaps in a day or two she’ll be keen on telling us what happened.”
“I need to know the truth now,” Giuseppe said. He nodded at Damiano, who had meanwhile opened his medical bag.
“I am not a virgin,” Caterina murmured.
Wide-eyed, Matilda stared at her daughter.
Giuseppe said, “What?”
“I am not a virgin,” Caterina repeated.
In a fury, Giuseppe walked up to the bed and grabbed Caterina’s hair, pulling her down. “You … whore! You gave away your virginity to a stupid baker?”
“He’s not stupid! I love him!” Caterina cried. Matilda took a step back and continued to stare at Caterina as if she were seeing her for the first time.
Meanwhile, bag in hand, Damiano had retreated to a corner and was quietly observing the scene.
“When did it happen?” Giuseppe shouted, pulling on the hair harder and forcing Caterina to bend her neck all the way.
“You are hurting me…” Caterina moaned.
“When did you lose your virginity?” he boomed, pulling so hard now Caterina was bending sideways.
“Let her go,” Matilda intervened. “Caterina,” she continued once Giuseppe had loosened the grip on Caterina’s hair, “talk to me. Tell me what happened. And when.”
Caterina whispered, “Long ago.”
“Long ago!” Giuseppe exclaimed. “You are seventeen! Is this baker of yours a sick man who seduces children?”
Caterina looked Giuseppe in the eyes. “He’s not a sick man!”
“Yes, he is!” Giuseppe insisted. “I’ll call the police and have him arrested. Men who seduce children belong in jail!”
“Don’t!” Caterina said. She paused then spoke faintly. “It wasn’t him. There was someone else, long before I met Ivano.”
“Someone else?!” Giuseppe shouted. “Are you running a whorehouse? Tell me who he was! Tell me at once!”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t.”
“Say his name!”
She sobbed, “Don’t ask me to tell …”
Giuseppe turned to the silent Damiano. “Please leave the room.”
“And the house as well,” Matilda ordered. Her voice sweetened when she addressed her daughter. “Caterina,” she said once Doctor Sciaccaluga had left, “please tell us what happened. Are you telling the truth? Have you been intimate with a man long ago, when you were still a child? I don’t believe you …”
Giuseppe grabbed Caterina by the shoulders. “Tell me who he is right now!”
Caterina shook her head.
“Speak!”
Caterina shook her head again.
Giuseppe slapped her on the face. Then he turned to Matilda. “I’m going to the reading room to think this over and make plans.”
7
GIUSEPPE’S SHORT-TERM PLAN, Matilda soon found out, consisted of keeping Caterina locked up in her room without food or water until she’d reveal the name of her seducer. The long-term plan was to send her to an isolated place yet to be determined, where she could repent her sins and meditate over the meaning of life. Matilda’s attempts to change Giuseppe’s mind, as usual, didn’t succeed. In the confusion she was experiencing following the discovery of Caterina’s secret, she told herself that Giuseppe’s rage was temporary, an irrational state due to the unusual and stressful circumstances, and that within days such rage would diminish and perhaps subside. Then he would listen to her arguments for keeping Caterina at home and consider alternative solutions. So she kept quiet, waiting for her husband’s fury to evaporate. Meanwhile, to Giuseppe, one thing was crystal clear: whether or not she’d tell who had seduced her, Caterina had to leave town. With her at the palazzina, sooner or later the story of her adventure and lost virginity would surface, endangering the law-firm’s future. The firm’s clients would turn away should a scandal suddenly break out. Already the servants were talking about Caterina’s strict confinement, and it wouldn’t be long before some maid overheard a compromising conversation. That night, before going to sleep, he spent a few hours in the privacy of his reading room analyzing various options to ban Caterina from Genoa and segregate her from her socially-unacceptable, perverted suitor.
While at the palazzina Giuseppe plotted his daughter’s future, at the bakery a flustered Ivano and an astounded Corrado were discussing the meaning and consequences of Caterina’s kidnapping from the oven room.
“Didn’t I tell you that you should date only working-class women?” Corrado lamented.
“I love her. I want to get her back and marry her,” Ivano stated.
Corrado shook his head. “Forget about her and go on with your life.” He paused, realizing that his son had no intention of following his advice. His voice softened. “If you really think you can’t live without her, put on some good clothes and go to her house. If you apologize to her parents, perhaps they will let you talk to her. I doubt it, given the family they are, but you can give it a try.”
Following his father’s suggestion, in the morning Ivano put on his best suit and went to the palazzina with the intention of apologizing to Giuseppe Berilli first and then asking formally for Caterina’s hand. When he knocked on the door, Guglielmo kindly informed him that Miss Berilli wasn’t home, nor were her parents.
“May I see Lavinia?” Ivano asked.
Guglielmo shook his head. “She’s gone,” he stated, closing the door.
Ivano didn’t give up. For hours he kept knocking, and for hours Guglielmo kept repeating that no one was home. Then, on Giuseppe’s order, the butler stopped opening the door.
The trees were casting long shadows and a pale moon was trembling in the sky when a disconsolate Ivano headed back downhill. He felt empty, as if his entrails had been extracted and tossed into the sea. “A gutted fish,” he whispered, “that’s what I am right now.”
All along, Caterina remained confined to her room, where her father visited her every three hours, asking for the name of her seducer. With her famous stubbornness, Caterina refused to answer. The only words she uttered during those visits were that she loved Ivano and wanted to be his wife. The more Caterina repeated those words, the more enraged Giuseppe became. At some point, out of a furor he could no longer contain, he set Caterina’s bedroom upside down. He opened her closets, yanked all the clothes from the hangers, and threw them up in the air. Then he directed his rage to the drawers, pulling them one by one from two chests and overturning them, so that their contents joined the dresses and skirts that lay in disorderly, limp heaps on the floor. It was when he overturned the last drawer that a number of sheets flew out. He froze as he stared at the floating pages with surprise. When he picked one up, his face became livid. “You slut,” he grunted. Then he gathered all the drawings in his arms and rushed to the reading room, where he lit the fireplace with a handful of small branches and three large logs. When the fire caught, with one precise motion, he dropped all the drawings of Ivano and his mandolin into the flames.
While the drawings were turning to ashes, knowing she would not see them ever again, in the bedroom Caterina gave vent to her pain with one of her theatrical acts. Stone-faced, she threw the disorderly mass of clothes and garments out the window, into the east garden. They floated in the air like autumn leaves. The oleander branches caught some of them, others clung to the bougainvillea vines. A few reached the ground. When Guglielmo opened the door in the morning, he stared at the colorful patches hanging from the trees and thought he was hallucinating. Then he realized they were clothes. Across the garden, beyond the gate, three city workers were grooming the belvedere. The east garden was not visible to them, but the clothes that were stuck to the higher branches were. All three workers were pointing, and one of them shouted, “Have you decided to put up your Christmas decorations in March?” His colleagues laughed loudly. Displayin
g no emotion, Guglielmo turned around and reentered the palazzina. He went straight to Viola’s room, where he excused himself for the early-morning intrusion and asked for her help in restoring the garden’s stately beauty.
“What are you talking about?” Viola asked.
“Follow me,” Gugliemo replied.
When Viola stepped outside and saw the spectacle before her, she burst into laughter. She knew at once the clothes on the branches were Caterina’s doing. “She’s back,” she chuckled then turned to Guglielmo. “Get a ladder. We need to take those garments down before we become the laughing stock of Corso Solferino. And you,” she shouted at the city workers, who were still laughing and pointing, “mind your own business or I’ll come out and smack you with my brooms. Then we shall see who likes to laugh!”
A half hour later, Viola and Guglielmo had all the clothes gathered in a pile. Viola shook the dust off each item, folded everything, and placed the clothes in front of Caterina’s locked door. When Giuseppe returned to Caterina’s room, he stared at the pile of folded garment, shook his head, and walked in.
The routine of questions and no answers lasted four days. When from lack of nourishment and liquids Caterina became too weak to speak and fainted, Giuseppe understood that his daughter would rather die than reveal her secret. He summoned Matilda and told her he would do what was the custom amongst upper-class families to cure the souls of unrepentant sinning daughters.
“I’ll send Caterina to a convent,” he grinned, “where she’ll spend the rest of her days meditating over her actions and asking God for forgiveness.”
“Now, Giuseppe. You’re being excessive,” Matilda said, coming out of her silence. “True, she did something she shouldn’t have done, but she’s still our daughter.”
“You’re wrong,” Giuseppe replied. “Caterina is no longer my daughter. She has no right to be in this house and no right to call herself Berilli. I don’t want to see her ever again.”
“But, Giuseppe—”
“Silence! I am the master of this house. You will comply with my wishes. And without another word.”
“I am Caterina’s mother!” Matilda insisted. “I have the right to decide her future as much as you do! I don’t want her locked in a convent. We might as well send her to her death. Can’t you understand that she made a mistake? She’s a good girl. She deserves another chance.”
Giuseppe gave his wife a glacial look. “Talis mater, talis filia,” he said. “It’s Latin, Matilda. It means that mother and daughter always turn out to be alike. Because you did the same, did you not? That’s why you are asking me to forgive Caterina. So you can forgive yourself for your own sins!”
“You … I did not, and you know it! How many times have I told you that my hymen—”
“Please. I’ve heard the tale of your hymen a million times. No human being with a brain in his head could believe that fantasy. You’re a whore, Matilda, and so is your daughter. Do what I say or the story of your missing hymen will be on the lips of every man and woman in every town between Switzerland and the coasts of Sicily, I swear.”
“You promised!” Matilda screamed. “You promised not to tell anyone!”
“And whom did I promise, tell me?” Giuseppe scoffed at her. “Your parents, who are now dead. And my parents, who are also dead. Don’t make any attempt to save your daughter or I’ll drag you and your family into the mud.”
Later that day Giuseppe told Caterina to prepare for a trip. She said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
He slapped her on the cheek with such strength Caterina swayed. “Get ready,” he growled.
Caterina shook her head no.
Then he hit her again, and again, and again. By the time he left the bedroom, Caterina had agreed to go. She spent the night on the floor, empty and thoughtless, tasting the blood that dripped from her lips onto her teeth and into the hollowness of her mouth.
Over the next forty-eight hours Giuseppe telegraphed back and forth with the convent, making arrangements for Caterina’s stay. When everything was set and done, in the dead of the night, he unlocked the door of his daughter’s bedroom. He was wearing a gray raincoat and an old hat. “Let’s go,” he ordered. Docilely, Caterina followed him and her teary mother out of the palazzina, into the deserted street. No one saw them or heard them leaving, as all the servants were fast asleep at that ungodly hour. They walked two blocks and waited for a coach Giuseppe had hired using a fictitious name—a precaution he had taken in order to safeguard the trip’s secrecy. When the coach arrived, as a further precaution, Giuseppe asked the driver to take them to Serravalle, a small town on the train line that joined Genoa to Milan. This way they wouldn’t be boarding the train at the Stazione Principe, Genoa’s station, where someone might recognized them.
They arrived in Serravalle in the morning and a few hours later boarded an express train headed for Milan. Throughout the entire trip Caterina kept quiet and still, sinking into her seat as if she were made of water. In Milan they hired a coach to take them out of town in the direction of Mirabello, a village set deep in the eastern countryside. They crossed farmland and small bridges over streams, often cutting through fog and drizzling rain. Then they cut through Mirabello, an old settlement with only one paved street bordered by an inn, three stores, two osterie, and two large stables. Four kilometers past Mirabello, under pouring rain, they reached the convent of the Sorelle Addolorate—a congregation of veiled enclosed nuns who were not allowed to speak or show their faces to anyone but God. The holy compound stood in the middle of the fields, in a completely isolated site surrounded only by grass and trees. Like on the train, during the coach ride Caterina hadn’t spoken a single word. She had followed her father’s orders quietly, staring at the air with translucent eyes and moving slowly and softly, as if her bones had turned to feathers.
At Giuseppe’s command, the driver stopped the coach in front of a locked wrought-iron gate. Matilda and Caterina remained in their seats while Giuseppe stepped out, approached the gate, and pulled a rope attached to a large brass bell. The bell swung, spreading about a deep, melancholy sound. He pulled again, and again.
Five minutes later three nuns arrived, their faces covered by black veils. One of them unlocked the gate with a rusty skeleton key. Giuseppe nodded, returned to the coach, and opened the door. “Get off,” he ordered.
Caterina obeyed without resistance as from inside the coach a teary Matilda waved her good-bye. Meanwhile, the coachman had unloaded a trunk holding Caterina’s personal belongings and set it inside the gate on the wet ground. Giuseppe placed a hand on Caterina’s shoulder and pushed her past the gate, sitting her on the trunk like a puppet. Then he took an envelope from of his coat pocket and handed it to a nun. The envelope contained banknotes: they were the sum he had agreed to pay so the nuns would keep his daughter. He would send that same amount regularly, once a year. Smiling with satisfaction, without saying a word to Caterina or looking at her in any way, he turned around, walked back to the coach, and got in. The same nun who had opened the gate closed it and locked it with three loud turns of the key.
Seated on the trunk, hair and clothes soaked from the heavy rain, Caterina continued to keep silent. At the moment she saw the coachman regain his seat behind the horses, she was hit by the realization that she was being abandoned in that desperate, solitary corner of the world, where she would die. She ran up to the locked gate, grabbing the posts with both hands. She screamed, “Stop, stop!”
Matilda opened the coach door.
“Do you want to know who? Do you?” Caterina shouted. “Raimondo did it! Do you understand, father? Your son Raimondo did it! My brother!”
Matilda’s eyes widened as shock flooded her face. “What are you saying …” she whispered then said nothing else, muted with disbelief.
Giuseppe looked at Caterina with disgust. “She’s insane,” he murmured. “She must be.” He waved to the coachman, and the horse trotted away.
Upon his return home, Giuseppe
informed Raimondo, Umberto, the rest of his relatives, and the servants that Caterina had been transported to a sanatorium in the mountains because she had fallen ill with a lung disease. No family member had witnessed either Caterina’s bedroom reclusion or her departure from home. Raimondo and Umberto were no longer living in the parental home. During that week in particular, both brothers had traveled to Bologna to attend seminars at the university by three luminaries of law. Surprisingly, Eugenia had limited her visits to the palazzina to one during those critical days, and it had been easy to divert her attention away from the fact that Caterina, locked in her bedroom, was not at the lunch table. Giuseppe saw no need to tell his relatives the truth, as, in his mind, the less people knew about Caterina’s shameful affair, the safer he was. He restated to Matilda that she should keep the secret or he would disgrace her publicly in a heartbeat.
The servants, however, knew that something wasn’t right. Guglielmo, faithful to Giuseppe as no one else was, pretended not to know, but Viola, the cook, and the chambermaids voiced to each other their disbelief. Lavinia, who had departed in a hurry from the palazzina so she wouldn’t be forced to say things that would endanger Caterina more, hadn’t stopped thinking of her. She returned to the palazzina one evening, in the dark, using the servants’ entrance in the back of the house, and snuck up to the third floor where she found Viola and the cook in the corridor in their nightgowns. From them, she heard the strange story of Caterina’s reclusion, sudden illness, and admission to some sanatorium in the mountains. She didn’t believe a word of that story and, as she left the palazzina that night, swore she would find Caterina and prove to the world that her illness was a lie. The following morning she went looking for Ivano at the bakery.
He was standing in front of the store, dressed in his best suit, ready to go knocking again on the palazzina’s door. He was ecstatic to see Lavinia and immediately asked for her help in rejoining him with Caterina.
“It’s more complicated than you think,” Lavinia said. With all the tact she was capable of, she shared with Ivano everything she had heard the night before. Ivano’s reaction to the tale of Caterina’s illness was the same as Lavinia’s and the maids’: disbelief.