The Scent Of Rosa's Oil

by Lina Simoni

  “Getting married? No, not if one wants to. But I don’t want to. I need to be free.”

  “Did you tell your father?”

  “Sure I did. He said he’s going to disown me if I continue to spend my nights in the brothels. ‘I’m soiling the family name,’ he says.” He pondered a moment. “He’s obsessed with my marriage. Talks about it every day. It’s a nightmare.”

  “Most people have worse problems than this, you know.”

  “I guess,” he admitted. “But he did get on my nerves tonight.”

  “I know exactly what you need to calm your nerves, darling,” Clotilde said, unbuttoning the front of her camisole.

  “I have an idea,” Cesare said with a clever smile. “I’ll tell my father I want to marry you. He’ll have a heart attack, and I’ll be free to spend the rest of my life in the brothels.”

  “Get over here,” Clotilde said, standing up and beginning to walk.

  Cesare pushed himself out of the armchair and staggered after her past the green door. “What is the meaning of life?” he asked as they walked toward her cubicle.

  Clotilde laughed loudly, then cupped her hand against his testicles. “This,” she said, squeezing, “is the meaning of life. But you know that already, dear.”

  They had a second personal conversation a few months later, over a glass of anisette in the lounge of the Carena. It was Clotilde who spoke about herself on that occasion. “I’m getting old,” she said, “and I’m afraid. This”—she circled her hand about the room—“is all I know.”

  “Have you thought about running a brothel rather than working in one?” Cesare asked after a moment.

  “And how would I do that? I can’t even read or write.”

  “You’re smart. You can learn.”

  “Even if I learned,” Clotilde said with discouragement in her voice, “where would I find the money to take over a brothel?”

  “You don’t need money to take over a brothel,” Cesare pointed out. “All you need is a loan.”

  Clotilde gave him a dejected look. “Do you think there are bankers out there who give loans to prostitutes?”

  “If they had a guarantor, they would. You find a business you want, and I’ll help you get it. Meanwhile, I’ll find you a tutor. To become a businesswoman, you must be able to read and write.”

  “Why are you going through all this trouble for me?”

  He took her hand. “My dear, you taught me all I know about love, and for that I’ll always be grateful. It’s my turn now to do something for you. But you take this seriously, the tutor and learning to read and write.”

  “Of course I will,” Clotilde said excitedly.

  Promptly, a tutor showed up at the Carena the following day and kept coming for Clotilde every morning at eight. As she had promised, Clotilde listened and practiced diligently until, two months later, she was able to read aloud without stuttering and write in black ink with fluid motions. “Congratulations,” Cesare told her one night, handing her a set of papers. “Here’s the loan for that Luna business you chose.” Clotilde nodded quietly with grateful eyes.

  “I like your new name,” Cesare said when a few days later Clotilde told him she had decided to call herself Madam C. “It’s exotic. I’m already turned on.”

  From then on, he never set foot in another brothel. He arrived at the Luna every evening around nine and spent most of the night there with Madam C, Angela, or any of the beautiful girls Madam C hired and personally trained. On the day Rosa was born, he sent Angela an immense bouquet of flowers. “He’s a good man,” Madam C said, as she laid the flowers on Angela’s bed.

  “He’s the best,” Angela replied with a fading voice.

  Changes came into Cesare’s life eleven years later. At thirty-nine, about the time his father had given up on the dream of a grand white wedding for his son, Cesare Cortimiglia met Maria Elena Cerutti, the twenty-year-old educated daughter of Enrico Cerutti, a wealthy man who had made his fortune in real estate and foreign trading. They married two months later, stunning everyone in town, most notably his peers, who had labeled Cesare Cortimiglia a confirmed bachelor, and the prostitutes, who couldn’t begin to imagine life without the client of their dreams. “You scoundrel,” Madam C said, slapping the white skin of his butt. “You figured out the meaning of life!”

  There was a much simpler explanation for Cesare’s drastic change of mindset. During a day-long business meeting with high functionaries in Rome, he had had his very first taste of political power. At the end of the day, he had boarded the train back to Genoa in a state of inner frenzy, completely fascinated by those ruthless, influential men in much the same way he had been fascinated on the night of his eighteenth birthday by the power of physical love. It was on that train that he decided he would marry soon, as he couldn’t possibly rise to power as a bachelor with a double life, one as a businessman, one in the brothels.

  He bid farewell to the brothels the night before the wedding with an erotic marathon at the Luna that would be talked about in the caruggi for years to come. There was music, dancing, and champagne a gogo. In his honor, Madam C made her bed with sheets of French linen, a white embroidered bedspread, and the plushest pillows she had been able to find. It was on that bed that the marathon took place, a flock of young girls coming and going, with the special participation, at certain times of the night, of the then seasoned Luz, Ortensia, and Matilda. Their good-byes lived up to the occasion. They pampered him with the most audacious erotic practices, including group sex and sex with each other. Before leaving, Luz hung around his neck a round amulet made of fish bones that women on her island gave as a wedding present to their brothers to bring about prosperity and fame; Ortensia gave him a card made of the finest parchment paper with a drawing on it of her moon-shaped birthmark; and Matilda left on the nightstand a tiny heart-shaped box filled with a lock of her hair. The last woman to savor Cesare’s body, at the crack of dawn, as he lay languidly in the wet and disheveled linen sheets, was, of course, his oldest and dearest friend, Madam C. They made love like maniacs, screaming and panting without restraint, and when an hour later Cesare Cortimiglia said with a deep sigh, “I can’t take this anymore. I’m exhausted,” Madam C broke into unstoppable tears.

  “I never thought I’d live to hear this,” she sobbed, holding in hand Cesare’s limp penis.

  Not everything had gone without a hitch that night. Among the girls scheduled to participate in the marathon was Margherita, on her very first week working at the Luna. She had entered Madam C’s room holding her big book of poetry, and as a naked Cesare stared at her from his horizontal position on the bed, she opened the book and read a passage from Il Paradiso:

  “‘Fatto avea di la’ mane e di qua sera

  tal foce, e quasi tutto era la’ bianco

  quello emisperio, e l’altra parte nera,

  quando Beatrice in sul sinistro fianco…’”

  At the sound of Margherita’s voice, Cesare sat up straight. “What the hell is that?”

  “Poetry,” Margherita replied softly. “I read it before making love.”

  “Poetry?” he snapped. “Are you out of your mind?” he shouted. “I hate poetry! My teachers made me memorize it over and over in school.” He cupped his hands over his ears. “I can’t stand it!”

  Madam C, who had heard everything from the sitting room, rushed in. “I’m so sorry, Cesare. Don’t you worry, Luz is here.” She turned to Margherita. “Go!”

  Margherita left the room with a double dose of disappointment, for the failure of her poetry method and for having missed her only opportunity to be the lover of a man who was a legend in that part of town. Later, Madam C took Margherita aside. “Whatever got into your head?” she shouted. “Don’t you know that all he wants is sex? With no preliminaries and no afterthoughts. I should have sent you away with Rosa. That way, you could have read poetry all night long.”

  Rosa, who was eleven years old at the time, had been shipped to Antonia’s house to s
pend the night so she wouldn’t hear the noises coming from the third floor or witness the coming and going of so many people. Madam C had told her that Antonia, who lived alone, wanted a friend over once in a while.

  “Do you really live all by yourself?” Rosa had asked, surprised, as soon as she had stepped into Antonia’s apartment.

  “I do now,” Antonia said. “I used to live with my siblings, but not anymore.”

  Rosa, accustomed to living at the Luna with no less than ten people, felt sorry for Antonia at once. “Why did your siblings leave you here alone?” she asked.

  “Now that you are older,” Antonia said in a grave voice, “I’ll tell you everything about my family.” She went on to tell Rosa the stories of her fifteen brothers and sisters: how some had died at a very young age, how others had run away from home and died afterward in catastrophic accidents or of terrible illnesses that had disfigured their faces. Over the course of the evening, she described the death of each sibling in great detail. The more gruesome the death, the deeper Antonia’s voice became. There was Camelia, whose body parts had fallen off one by one because of the plague, and her twin sister Miranda, who had closed her eyes and stopped breathing at the sight of Camelia’s crumbling body, so that everyone thought she was dead and they took her to the lazzaretto where they ended up burning her while she was still alive. “And you won’t believe this,” she said, brandishing a meat knife. “My brother Patrizio, the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, got the smallpox from his cow and died with ten holes in his face, each two centimeters deep.”

  Rosa listened to each one of those frightening stories with her mouth open, as if under a spell. As Antonia finished up the details of the last death, the thought hit Rosa that there were many dead people around, not just Angela and the person in the coffin she had seen. Later, in her temporary bedroom next to Antonia’s room, she had fantasies about Angela walking around heaven with Antonia’s siblings and wondered if they were getting along or even liked each other. “Angela, be nice to Antonia’s siblings,” she whispered as she fell asleep, “especially to Miranda, who isn’t even supposed to be dead, if you know what I mean.”

  At the Luna, the farewell party wound down as the light of dawn peeked over the eastern promontories. Cesare Cortimiglia left the brothel in a stupor, his body numb, his ears ringing, and his head so heavy it felt as if it were filled with stones. He walked out of the caruggi slowly, without looking back.

  His wedding was as traditional as his good-byes had been outrageous. The ceremony, celebrated in the Cathedral of San Lorenzo by the archbishop, was attended by the members of the Genoese upper class dressed for the occasion: men in their tails, women in lavish dresses of silk and taffeta and hats embellished with fresh flowers. A formal dinner at the Grand Hotel Isotta followed the exchange of vows. A famous French chef cooked the ten-course meal and had it served on silver plates garnished with rose petals. As the bride and the groom left the dinner scene headed for Biarritz, the celebration continued with a rare private performance by members of the orchestra of the Carlo Felice Theater.

  Upon their return to Genoa two weeks later, Cesare and Maria Elena Cortimiglia established themselves in a sumptuous top-floor apartment on Via Assarotti overlooking downtown. They soon became an important couple in the Genoese society, partly because of the two families’ social stature, partly because of Cesare Cortimiglia’s ability to maneuver himself into the right places at the right time. Shortly, he became an active politician representing the Liberals—a conservative party. In 1906, one month after his fortieth birthday, he was elected mayor. His twenty-one years in the brothels were public knowledge all over town, so that many wondered how the city had gotten stuck with a man of such predilections as its first citizen:

  “Let’s just hope he’s done with those kinds of women.”

  “I hear he hasn’t been near a brothel since his wedding day.”

  “You don’t really think that men can give up that habit, do you?”

  “Time will tell. Let’s wait and see.”

  Not only did Cesare stay away from the brothels, but, as mayor, he did only good things for Genoa and its people, driven by a vision for the city that struck a chord in many hearts. He saw Genoa, at the time already in a position of prominence among European cities, as the cultural capital of Europe. From the very beginning of his tenure and even before, during his election campaign, he worked in front of and behind the scenes to improve the infrastructures of the port—the pulsing heart of the city and what, in his opinion, gave Genoa its multicultural connotation and international stature. He brought together entrepreneurs, political leaders, and shipowners on projects to upgrade the transportation system and make access to the warehouses faster and more efficient. His second pet project was the arts. As soon as he took office, he set aside funds from the city budget to increase the number of yearly performances at the Carlo Felice Theater, reopen old theaters, and host famous musical and theatrical performances based in London and Paris. Eventually, the Genoese saw no reason to continue to discuss Cesare Cortimiglia’s old life in the brothels, and the long list of his legendary paid lovers was scratched gradually from the daily gossip.

  He received the invitation to Rosa’s party four days before her birthday, around noon, while the city council was in session. As a city employee handed him the off-white envelope, the mayor had a hunch that the missive could be important and related to his old, libertine life rather than to his political one. One quick look at the back of the envelope was all he needed to know that his premonition had been correct. The color of the wax, a pale yellow, told him indeed that the envelope had come from the chambers of Madam C. Unhurriedly, he slipped the envelope into his pocket and forced himself to pay attention to the council’s proceedings. Boring talk: street closures, traffic diversions, floral arrangements inside and outside City Hall, all in preparation for Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to the town. He pursed his lips to hide a yawn, then smiled at the councilmen who debated the issues. It was past one o’clock when the council adjourned and he was able to lock himself in his office and break the seal. The contents of the letter made him frown. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Rosa is already sixteen?”

  The party at the Luna that night was informal. The food trays and the bottles of wine and liquor were lined up on the counter, next to plates and silverware the guests could freely use. No one was shy. Soon, the tongues loosened under the influence of the alcohol, and everyone was talking, laughing, and having a good time. The only guest who wasn’t having a good time was the mayor. After his gallant kiss on Rosa’s hand, he had been overcome by despair. “My dear Rosa,” he had mumbled. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”

  “Thank you,” Rosa had replied. “Nice to see you, too. I heard a lot about you.”

  “Did you really?” the mayor had said rhetorically, trying to disguise his emotions.

  Now, a half hour later, he felt as if he had been hit by a tram in motion. The scent he had inhaled off Rosa’s skin was still in his nostrils, and none of the smells that lingered in the parlor—food, liquor, women’s perfumes, cigarette smoke—could overtake it or diminish its power. He lit his pipe and breathed in deeply the tobacco smoke, drank glass after glass of full-bodied red wine, talked to the girls, the other guests, and Madam C, but the only thing he could think of was Rosa. From his position in the middle of the crowded parlor, he followed her moves, entranced by her shiny red hair, her fair, flawless skin, and her aquamarine eyes. He watched her as she blew the candles out on her birthday cake, cut the cake into slices, and laid the slices on the plates. All along, he felt his knees melt to the ground. She approached him a few minutes later. “Are you having a good time?” she asked.

  He stared at her with the eyes of a puppy looking for love. “I remember you asleep in that big bed behind the kitchen,” he said, completely at a loss as to how to conduct conversation with her. “You must have been three years old. Maybe four.”

  Rosa looked carefully abo
ut the room. When she was certain Madam C was nowhere close, she said, “It’s still my bed. Would you like to see it?”

  The bedroom smelled heavily of her perfect oil when Rosa opened the door and came in with the confused mayor. “See?” she said. “Here is my bed, like when I was four.”

  He smiled, standing by the bedroom door, realizing that for the first time in his entire life he had no clue as to what he should be doing. “Come in,” Rosa said, closing the door behind him.

  “Rosa…” he babbled. “I don’t think…I should be here.”

  “I want to play the game with you,” Rosa said. “Will you play with me?”

  “Rosa, dear, what are you talking about? What game?”

  “The game, you silly mayor. Like the girls play upstairs.”

  “Rosa,” he mumbled, beginning to sweat and feel dizzy.

  Without hesitation but with slow, deliberate moves, staring at Cesare’s foggy eyes, Rosa unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the floor. He held his breath as Rosa removed her petticoat, corset, and underwear. She stood naked in front of him, not even slightly embarrassed or intimidated, continuing to look into his eyes, watchful for his next move. That was the part of the game she was unclear about. She knew she had to be naked, but she didn’t know what men were supposed to do with their bodies. As the mayor’s breathing became faster, she wondered if she should ask him to show her the money right away or postpone all financial matters until the game was over. She observed him as he placed a hand on his belly and wrestled with something that stuck forward under his gray pants.

  “I can’t take this anymore,” Cesare Cortimiglia sighed. That was when he began to undress, frantically, with no sense of where his clothes were falling, forgetting all about the undressing routine he had followed methodically for twenty-six years.

  Rosa’s eyes followed his movements like a hawk’s, feeling in her belly the same heat she had felt a few days earlier lying on Margherita’s bed. The moment he tossed away his underwear, she stepped back and let out a short scream; the heat in her belly slowly disappeared. She had never seen a naked man before.