by Lina Simoni
Gingerly, Rosa walked on grass for the first time. She smelled the clean earth and stared at the flowers sprouting from the ground. She sniffed and touched a long time, picked flowers, leaves, and petals, and all along thought of Isabel and Azul, together on the hill in Costa Rica, and understood how happy they must have been together. “Thank you,” she told Madam C on the way home.
“Before we go back,” Madam C said, “there’s something I want to show you.” She asked the carriage driver to make a detour on the way down and stop for a few minutes by the belvedere. It was a piazza on the lower part of the hill from where one could enjoy an unobstructed view of the city, the port, and the coastline. They sat on a south-facing bench and watched the scenery in brooding silence: streets and houses rolling steeply downhill to touch the shoreline, ships resting in the calm harbor waters, docks extending out into the sea like giant fingers pointing to reach the horizon. “It’s amazing how different the city looks from up here,” Madam C said to the stunned Rosa.
“Where is Vico del Pepe?” Rosa asked.
“Somewhere in that direction,” Madam C replied, pointing down and to her left, “but it’s impossible to pinpoint it from up here.”
Rosa had never seen rooftops before. She had never even thought of what might be at the very top of the buildings she was used to looking at from below. She stared at the slate tiles, the hanging gardens, the water reservoirs that studded the terraces, the jumble of stairways, and the swallows darting in the sky. She squinted her eyes in the direction Madam C had pointed, and couldn’t believe that down there, somewhere, were the Luna and the roads she had walked all her life. For a moment, she pretended she saw herself sitting by the port and dreaming. She whispered, “It’s almost like looking at someone else’s life.”
“We should come back here at night,” Madam C said. “Then you’d really be amazed.”
“Thank you for bringing me here,” Rosa said as they regained their seats in the carriage and headed for downtown.
“You’re welcome, dear,” Madam C nodded, unsure as to what was going on in Rosa’s mind. She had seen her happy before, but never quite this way. It was an inner happiness, she thought, much more mature than the lighthearted happiness of a girl. She asked, “What are you going to do with all these leaves and flowers?”
“You can have some for your room,” Rosa said, “and some for the parlor. The rest, I have to take somewhere.”
“When I was a child,” Madam C said after a moment, “I had this dream that on my eighteenth birthday I would ride on the hills on a white horse.”
“Did you get to do it?” Rosa asked.
“No,” Madam C replied with only a hint of sadness. “I’m happy you had your day picking flowers.”
Rosa took the flowers to Isabel that afternoon. “Thank you,” Isabel said, holding back tears. “It has been so long since I held in my hands flowers that still smell of the earth they were in. Well, let’s get to work here.”
“I think I found a blend of oils that my skin likes,” said Rosa.
“Really?” Isabel asked. “Which oils are in it?”
“Apple blossoms, lavender, and basil.”
“That’s an unusual blend,” Isabel said. “Let me smell it.”
Rosa opened a small blue bottle and placed it under Isabel’s nose.
“Interesting,” Isabel commented. “I can almost smell the apples. Rub it on your skin.”
Gingerly, Rosa poured a drop of oil on her fingertip, then turned her other hand palm up and rubbed the fingertip on the soft skin of her wrist. Isabel sniffed the wrist three times. “Very good,” she said. “It smells a lot better on you than on its own, and that’s a sign that the oil blends well with the quality of your skin. Keep rubbing it on you. If you never get tired of its odor, it means it’s your perfect oil. If after a few weeks it starts annoying you, then you’ll have to look for another one.”
Rosa nodded. “In one week,” she said, “it’ll be my sixteenth birthday. There will be a party at the Luna. I’d like you to come.”
Isabel shook her head. “Thank you, Tramonto, but no.”
“Why?”
“I never go anywhere, other than to the market looking for flowers.”
“So come to the Luna. It’s my birthday.”
“People don’t like to be with me,” Isabel said, continuing to shake her head, “and I don’t like to be with people.”
“You like to be with me, don’t you?”
“Yes, but you’re different.” She paused. “Your eyes are clear.”
“You’re wrong,” Rosa said, almost in tears. “Madam C would like you, and so would Margherita, Maddalena, and Stella. And the other Luna girls. They’re nice. Maddalena is the one who told me that there must be an explanation for your steam and I should not reach conclusions about you without asking. She reads tarots. I’m sure she’d love to read your future.”
“I love you, Tramonto,” Isabel said, “but don’t ask me to go to a party with lots of people. That’s something I cannot do. But I have an idea.”
“What?”
“We’ll celebrate your birthday right here, right now. I have a present for you.”
Carefully, Isabel pulled loose the stone that had hidden Francesco’s money years earlier and took a small glass bottle out of the wall. “This,” she said, “is the only bottle I have left from the batch I brought with me from Costa Rica. Azul and I made this oil. I want you to have it.”
Rosa took the bottle but said, “I couldn’t. You should keep it.”
“Take it,” Isabel insisted. “Azul would want you to have it.”
“What kind of oil is it?” Rosa asked.
Isabel chuckled. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. And I can’t tell what it is from its odor. For sure it was made from flowers and leaves we picked on the hill. Smell it,” she said, opening the bottle. “See if you like it.”
“I love it,” Rosa said, sniffing gently a few times. “It’s”—she paused—“very strong.”
“It’s very concentrated,” Isabel warned her. “Try adding a few drops of it to your blend. See what it feels like to you.”
With the care of a magician, Rosa poured three drops of Azul’s oil into the bottle of her blend of lavender, basil, and apple blossoms.
“Wait a few seconds to let Azul’s oil blend in,” Isabel said. “Now rub it on your wrist again, and tell me if it feels different.”
“It does,” Rosa said after a moment. “It’s more…I don’t know how to describe it. More…real.”
“Very good,” Isabel said. “Maybe your apple blossoms, basil, and lavender needed Azul’s oil to be your perfect blend. Who knows? Here, take this, too.” She gave Rosa a small glass cup set on a metal tripod. “Pour a little bit of oil in this cup, then add water. One part of oil, ten parts of water. Place a lit candle under the cup. The water will boil and evaporate, taking along the scent of the oil. You can make your room smell of your perfect blend this way. But watch out. These scents have strange effects on people. Some will be entranced by it, others will hate it.”
“I’ll watch out, I promise. Thank you,” Rosa said.
“Don’t mention it, Tramonto. Happy birthday.”
On the day of her birthday, around noon, when she was certain Santina had finished cleaning and wouldn’t go back to her room, Rosa took out of her closet Isabel’s birthday present and took it to the deserted kitchen. Quietly, she poured in the glass cup ten parts of water and one part of her blend of Azul’s oil, lavender, basil, and apple blossoms, then opened Antonia’s pantry and got hold of a small candle and a box of wooden matches. She took everything back to her bedroom, where she placed the tripod on her nightstand and the filled cup on the tripod. Seated on her bed, she lit the candle and placed it underneath the cup. Soon, her room smelled slightly of her oil. It was a delicate yet sharp smell, sweet and spicy at the same time, that startled even Rosa when she returned to her room an hour later. “This is my perfect oil,” she said al
oud. “I have no doubt.”
Around seven in the evening, when the party was about to get started in the parlor, Madam C told Margherita, “I think we should do away with the poetry reading.”
Margherita asked, “Why? Rosa asked for it.”
“You know the mayor,” Madam C said. “He hates poetry.”
“I don’t care,” Rosa said, entering the parlor in her white dress.
“Don’t be so selfish,” Madam C said in a hard voice.
“It’s her birthday,” Stella said. “She’s supposed to be selfish. Besides, who cares if the mayor doesn’t like poetry.”
“I do,” Madam C insisted. “He’s the guest of honor.”
“If he comes to my party,” Rosa said, “he’ll have to listen to Margherita read poetry. He won’t die.”
“If I see him exhaling his last breath,” Maddalena said with a naughty smile, “I’ll give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That he’ll like.”
“Come here, Rosa,” Madam C said, handing Rosa a small jewelry case. “This is for you.”
Rosa opened the case and saw two small gold earrings in the shape of a loop with a tiny pendant at the bottom.
“They belonged to Angela,” Madam C explained. “I gave them to her many years ago as a birthday present. When she started to feel sick after your birth, she wanted me to have them. She’d be happy to know that they are with you now.”
Rosa held them tight. “Thank you.”
“Someone’s knocking,” Stella said.
Madam C headed for the door. “Let’s see who our first guest is.”
The first guest to arrive was Ildebrando Balbi, balder than ever. He had closed the Carena a wealthy man five years earlier and wed Mariangela, his lover of fifteen years. Ildebrando and Mariangela were followed by some of the neighborhood’s shopkeepers and their families: Mafalda, the woman who had nursed Rosa for two years; five former Luna girls with their respective men; Pietro Valdasco—with whom Madam C had years earlier reconciled—in a wheelchair because of a recent stroke; Michele Merega, an older doctor who had been watching over the health of the Luna girls for nine years; Antonia, the crafter of all the food; Mr. Razzano, the robivecchi, with his wife; the two policemen in charge of the neighborhood; and other friends Madam C had fostered during the years.
Rosa, radiant in her white dress, with her shining red hair, was charming everyone with her happy smile. Her eyes glimmered in the light, and the guests couldn’t stop complimenting her on her dress, her earrings, her hair, and, overall, her beauty. By eight-thirty, the party was in full swing. At eight-forty, the mayor arrived.
He made a slow, deliberate entrance, nodding right and left and smiling. “The mayor is here,” Mafalda yelled, joining her hands as if she had seen the pope. Ildebrando Balbi started clapping. Immediately, everyone else joined in. As the mayor waved to everyone with satisfaction, Madam C, ravishing in a long, tight dress of blue silk, rushed toward him with her arms open. “Cesare, Cesare,” she said, sighing. “It has been too long. Let me look at you.” She stepped back. “You look gorgeous. What does that wife of yours do to you to keep you in such wonderful shape?”
“It’s the memories of you, my dear,” Cesare Cortimiglia said, hugging Madam C, “that keep me young.”
“Still smoking, huh?” Madam C asked, pointing at the briar pipe the mayor had in hand. “I don’t recall having ever seen you without it.”
“This pipe is part of me,” the mayor said, “like”—he raised his voice—“this brothel!”
All the Luna girls applauded.
“Come,” Madam C said. “Meet Rosa.”
When the mayor had entered the Luna a few moments earlier, from the opposite corner of the parlor, Rosa had examined him with curiosity, trying to remember if she had seen him before. She saw a six-foot-tall thin man dressed in an elegant dark gray suit. His salt-and-pepper curly hair and the round gold-rimmed glasses he wore halfway down his nose reminded Rosa immediately of Mr. Rabetti, a teacher at Miss Cipollina’s school. She kept staring at him with fascination.
“This beautiful lady is Rosa?” the mayor said, exaggerating his surprise.
Rosa nodded shyly.
With a gallant motion, the mayor bent forward, took Rosa’s hand firmly in his, and kissed it. As his lips touched Rosa’s skin, his nose caught a whiff of her perfect oil. At once, without the slightest hint or premonition, his spine turned rigid, his forehead icy cold. His hairy, masculine fingers softened around Rosa’s thin-boned ones, yet refused to let them go. He remained in that bent position a while, lips on Rosa’s knuckles, head drowned in a thick fog. When he finally rose again and his eyes met Rosa’s, he stood frozen by her, aware only of the scent lingering in his nostrils and the furious thumps of his heartbeat.
CHAPTER 5
The long-standing friendship between Cesare Cortimiglia and Madam C had started twenty-six years earlier, on the evening of his eighteenth birthday. As a present, three of his friends had taken him at night to the Carena. One of the friends, Guglielmo, was a regular client of that brothel, so Ildebrando Balbi walked up to the group the moment they stepped into the crowded lounge. “Welcome, my friend,” he said to Guglielmo. “What can I do for you?”
“We need a special treatment tonight, Signor Balbi,” said Guglielmo, a tall redheaded boy with a voice muddled by alcohol. “Our birthday boy,” he went on, placing his arm around Cesare Cortimiglia’s shoulders, “is a virgin!”
The young Cesare blushed as everyone in the room laughed and applauded.
Guglielmo bowed to Signor Balbi. “We entrust him”—he stood up—“to your girls.”
Signor Balbi bowed back. “Only the best for you, my friend,” he said, then gazed about the room and nodded at a tall, dark-haired girl standing in a corner. At once, the girl walked toward him, waving her hips in sinuous motion. She was Clotilde. In front of Cesare Cortimiglia, she ran two fingers over his sweaty neck, undoing the knot of his tie. When the knot was undone, she pulled the tie off him and tossed it into the middle of the room, accompanied by the other guests’ claps and whistles. Cesare blushed even more. He put up no resistance as Clotilde untied his belt and pulled him by the belt’s end to the opposite end of the lounge, toward a green door. The whistles and claps became louder. By the door, in a red and gold corset tighter on her body than a screw, stood Angela. As Clotilde approached, followed by the confused birthday boy, Angela pulled the door open. As soon as Clotilde and Cesare had walked past it, she waved coquettishly to the crowd, then followed the duo into the dimly lit hallway, closing the door behind her.
The two ecstatic hours Cesare Cortimiglia spent that night in the arms of Angela and Clotilde would forever alter his perception of the world and his role in it. He had undergone a revelation: there was nothing on earth, he told himself on his way out of Clotilde’s room and later as he staggered along the caruggi in a state of deep bliss, worthier than love. At once, he became a habitué of the Carena and several other downtown brothels, which would remain his playground for twenty-one years. An importer by day in the shipping company of his father, he turned into a relentless lover by night and into the skilled and quick client that was every brothel girl’s dream.
Like a sultan, he had favorites in his harem. There was Luz, the mulatto girl who had arrived on a cargo ship from the West Indies, with her full lips and cinnamon hair grazing her buttocks; Ortensia, tall, with a diaphanous skin and a birthmark across her lower back shaped like a half moon; and Matilda, with chameleon almond-shaped eyes, blue and green in the daylight, purple and hazelnut in the orange glow her Chinese lantern cast on the walls of her cubicle. She kept relics of her favorite clients in a box lined with red velvet. Of Cesare Cortimiglia, she kept a lock of hair she had cut with his consent after his third visit and a shirt button that had fallen off his clothes one night without his knowledge during his methodical undressing routine. It was a bottom-up process: shoes first, then socks, pants, underwear, tie, shirt, and undershirt. A looks-conscious man w
ith a taste for elegant, expensive clothes, he took great care in folding and storing his apparel before making love. He placed the shoes next to one another at the foot of the bed; underwear, socks, and tie on the seat of a chair; his shirt on the back of the same chair; and for his pants, he always requested a wooden hanger with two clips to eliminate all chance that wrinkles could form while he was naked. He never lingered in bed after the fact, for he disliked his own nakedness as much as he relished fancy clothes. “Nakedness is a burden of love,” he’d often say, “and not a condition a man should be in longer than necessary.” So the moment the sexual act was over, he dressed swiftly in the exact opposite order he had undressed, beginning with his undershirt and ending with his shoes. The only word he uttered on the way out of his lover’s room was “Good-bye.”
His generosity matched his hunger for love. For the girls he saw regularly, like Luz, Ortensia, and Matilda, he often brought presents purloined from the warehouses of his father: exotic jewelry bought in Cairo, little mirrors set in engraved silver frames imported from the bazaars of Constantinople, colorful silk cuts manufactured in Bombay. He called the girls “princesses of my dreams,” and they would jokingly bow to him as if he were their king. Of all his princesses, no one was closer to his heart than Clotilde, with whom he’d spent many wild nights at the Carena.
One evening, he arrived at the brothel in a very bad mood.
“What’s the matter, Cesare?” Clotilde asked, as he slumped in an armchair and asked for a glass of red wine. “You’re not your bubbly self tonight.”
“It’s my father,” Cesare Cortimiglia sighed.
She sat on the armrest. “What about him?”
“He keeps annoying me. He wants me to marry and make children, so our breed won’t die.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Clotilde asked.
