The House of Serenades

by Lina Simoni

  At 6 o’clock sharp, he heard sounds. Through the hole, he saw the chapel door opening and a veiled nun making her appearance. Shortly, the nun began to move forward, along the nave, and behind her, in an orderly line, came her sisters, also veiled and dressed in long black robes. By the altar steps, the first nun kneeled, signed herself, and moved aside. One by one, the rest of the nuns did the same and took their seats on the benches, on both sides. From the hole in the drape, Ivano followed their movements like a hawk. When all the nuns were in their seats, he began to count. He counted five nuns in the first row then his eyes moved on to the row behind it. He hadn’t counted halfway through the second row when suddenly and in unison, as if a signal had been given to them from above, all the nuns kneeled and lifted their veils. Breathless, Ivano watched their transformation. While the nuns, led by one of their own, began reciting litanies and chanting in Latin, he let his gaze wander back and forth along the filled benches in search of the face he wanted to see. Some of the faces, those in the far back, were not clearly visible in the dimness of the gaslights, but Ivano kept scanning the benches slowly, row by row, until he saw, in the third row, all the way to the right, the soft, girlish features of Caterina. His heart jumped. It was true that Caterina was alive! She had been shipped to the convent and kept there. Then the Berillis had told everyone that she had died. He bit his lips, squeezed his fists tight. She was a prisoner, he knew, because however hard he tried, he couldn’t imagine Caterina making such a choice. Besides, had she freely chosen to stay at the convent, he reasoned, why would her family have told everyone that she had died? He swallowed, conscious of the movements of his tongue and throat. His heartbeat was so fast he thought everyone in the chapel could hear it. To calm down, he concentrated on the patterns of the embroidered drape. He moved his eyes along the golden thread, which turned and twirled to form the shape of two leaves and then departed from the leaves’ stems in a curved line to give life to the shape of a lily. He scanned the contour of the lily then shifted his gaze to the leaves and from the leaves back to the lily. Stiff like a mannequin, he continued to shift his gaze back and forth between the lily and the leaves, occasionally bringing his eye to the hole to look at Caterina. He thought of the time past—the funeral, the night in jail, the time spent with the underworld, and the months spent playing the mandolin on Piazza della Nunziata. He tried to imagine how his life would have been with Caterina at his side, and his heart ached at the thought of all the wasted time. She was alive though, and that was all that mattered. He counted: one, two, three. On three, he leaped out of the altar shouting, “Caterina!”

  The nuns’ chant faded as a few of them murmured and others screamed. They all covered their faces in a hurry as Ivano ran down the altar steps towards the bench where Caterina was seated. He stretched his arm towards her. “Let’s go,” he shouted. “Haven’t you had enough of this place?”

  The moment Ivano had jumped out of the altar, Caterina had thought her head was playing tricks on her as usual. But when Ivano called out her name and ran towards her she realized it was no phantom she was seeing. He was real. Her eyes widened and a shriek came out of her mouth.

  “Let’s go!” Ivano repeated, grabbing her by the arm.

  At the contact with him, she stood up. With no understanding of what her body was doing, she let Ivano pull her from the bench. Together, they raced down the nave and out the door. They ran along the gardens, to the grove, and from there to the convent gate. When Ivano pulled the key from his pocket and opened the gate, Caterina sprung to the other side and let out a scream so loud Ivano thought her throat might explode. Then they ran again, faster, faster, stopping only when the first houses of Mirabello were in sight.

  Panting, in the middle of a meadow, Caterina and Ivano embraced each other tightly, their emotion so strong they couldn’t speak.

  “You have no idea,” Ivano murmured several minutes later, “what happened in Genoa after the day your father barged in on us in the oven room.”

  “You have no idea what I went through in that horrible convent,” Caterina said, her voice quivering. “I thought I was going to be there for the rest of my life.” She still wore the black prayer veil over her hair, fastened by strings around her neck. She yanked it from her head and threw it on the ground.

  Ivano picked it up. “We’ll keep it,” he said then finished the sentence with a voice so faint Caterina couldn’t hear him. “In case someone shouldn’t believe where I found you.”

  That’s when Caterina noticed how much Ivano had changed. He was much thinner than she remembered: the skin on the back of his hands was marked by brown spots, and the expression on his face was darker and deeper, like the expression of a much older man. Ivano noticed changes in her as well. Her skin, perfectly smooth in the past, was blemished by fine wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Her green eyes didn’t spark like they used to, and her hair, always perfectly groomed and shiny, was now a duller blonde and in disarray. Those tired features, he thought, were the mirror of a very deep pain. Suddenly Caterina’s shoulders twitched, and she broke into sobs. He held her in his arms for a long time.

  When her sobs subsided, Caterina said, “What do we do now? Do you think we are in danger? Do you think the nuns are looking for us?”

  Ivano shrugged. “Even if the nuns found us here, what could they do?” He paused. “There are other dangers, much bigger than a few religious hermits. I need to tell you things, things you won’t like. You need to know everything before we can make a decision about our lives.”

  Caterina looked at him in puzzlement. “I can see my father resolving to lock me in a convent for some time. He gets enraged often, and for matters less important than our love. But I can’t imagine my mother, my brothers, and my aunt letting him do it. Has no one tried to help me? To find out where I was?”

  “Come,” Ivano said. “You need to sit down.”

  By then the sun had begun to show through the early-morning fog, which was lifting quickly leaving behind a clear blue sky. They found an oak log lying beside a path and sat on it. Choosing his words, Ivano talked of his own incredulity at the news of her illness, of Lavinia’s skepticism, and of his many attempts to talk with her father.

  Then he hesitated, pondering the pros and cons of telling Caterina the rest of the story. When he concluded there was no other way, he reached for her hands and spoke gravely. “At some point, your parents told everyone you had tuberculosis and you were in a sanatorium in the mountains. Then they staged your funeral in the cathedral.”

  Caterina gaped at Ivano. “What?” she exclaimed. “It can’t be true. My family held a funeral service for me? Ivano! Are you making fun of me?”

  “I wish it were a joke,” Ivano said sadly, “but it’s not. As of today everyone in Genoa, except for your parents, thinks you’re dead.”

  “My mother, too?” Caterina exclaimed. “I don’t know if I should believe you. I think you’re making this up for some mysterious reason.”

  “I was the only one,” Ivano said, “who never believed you were dead, the only one who kept looking for you when everyone else mourned you. How can you think I may be lying?”

  “I don’t know,” Caterina murmured. Shadows of confusion lingered in her eyes.

  “Let’s go back to Genoa,” Ivano said. “I realize that the information I gave you is too much for you to accept in such a short time. We’ll talk more on the train. And in Genoa I’ll show you something that will clear all your doubts. And so you know,” he added, “I would never, ever lie to you, especially on a matter of this magnitude.”

  She looked at him with lost eyes. “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Let’s go,” he said. “You’ll have all the time in the world and every opportunity to decide who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.”

  Confused, scared, and mistrustful of Ivano and his tale, Caterina followed him nonetheless to a carriage and then to the train station. On the way to the station, Ivano made sure to dro
p the convent key by Osteria del Gallo Nero. The front door was locked at that early morning hour, so he left the key on the doorstep along with a note asking the owner to return it to Silvio Motta, the nuns’ gardener, with his apologies and his thanks for having unknowingly helped him save the woman he loved. When the owner knocked on Silvio’s door a few hours later and handed him the key and the note, Silvio was astounded. In the evening, tipsy from the excessive amount of wine, he had gone to bed soon after arriving home, without having the time or the opportunity to realize that the skeleton key was no longer in his pocket. As he slowly sobered up throughout the morning, he kept staring at that key over and over, unable to tell then or even days later which parts of that story—the young fellow he had met on the road, the drinking at the osteria, the return of his key—were true and which parts he had instead dreamed.

  The train pulled into the Stazione Principe late at night, screeching as it came to a complete halt. A subdued joy took hold of Caterina as she descended on the platform.

  “I thought I’d never set foot on Genoa’s soil again,” she said. Then she looked about with wondrous eyes, as if she were seeing the station for the first time.

  Next to her Ivano waited, weary from the talking he had done along the way. He had told Caterina about the fake funeral over and over, filling the tale with all the details he could remember: the flowers, the white casket, the mourning people. Then he had spoken about Lavinia, her anguish, her tears, and how, after the funeral, she had left town without letting anyone know her destination. A tender frustration had worn him out: all his explanations, details, and recollections could not get through to Caterina enough to erase her doubts. She had listened, nodded, cried, but her eyes still spoke her disbelief. In his account of the events, he had left out a few details, such as the time he had spent with the underworld, the threatening letters, the dead cat on the door, and the precarious health of Caterina’s father. He gave himself several reasons for omitting those facts. One, Caterina didn’t need more distressing news that day. Two, he wasn’t sure how she would react to finding out that he had been the cause, though indirect, of the worsening health of her father. Three, the mock funeral was, in his opinion and surely everyone else’s as well, a much more dreadful crime than sending a couple of letters and staging the superstitious cat act, all actions he had committed in moments of deep despair. Four, all those actions had been a consequence of the Berillis’ misdeeds; he would have never even dreamed of joining the underworld or writing anonymous letters or picking up a dead cat in the street had the Berillis not misbehaved first. They were the criminals, he had only reacted.

  When they left the station and stepped out into the street, Caterina said, “Where should we go?”

  “I always wanted to show you my hideout in the hills,” Ivano replied. “The time has come for us to go there. Please put this on your face,” he added, handing Caterina the black veil. “I realize that you don’t believe me, but what I told you is true. The whole town thinks you’re dead. The last thing we need tonight is for you to be recognized.”

  Caterina looked at the veil dubiously then did what Ivano asked and wrapped it around her neck and the lower part of her face.

  The streets were dark and quiet when Ivano and Caterina began to walk uphill. They were soon out of the downtown area, following steep back alleys that eventually took them closer and closer to the hilltop. Ivano had thought prudent to avoid public transportations, such as trams, carriages, or any of the funiculars that connected the low city to the higher roads, as the probability that someone would recognize Caterina on any of those was, in his opinion, high. They slowed their pace after a while, when Caterina began to breathe heavily. During the last part of their ascent, they hardly talked. At some point Ivano stopped and pointed to the structure standing alone in the middle of a grassy area.

  “This is it,” he said. “No one will come looking for us here.”

  Caterina looked about, slightly taken aback by the ruined aspect of the building.

  “I always liked the idea that there’s a place in the world only I know about,” he said as she sat on the grass in front of the doorway. “Not even my father knows about this place. Look,” he added, stretching his arm and moving it back and forth in a semicircle. “Isn’t this view it amazing?”

  From the fortress doorstep, looking south, the view was stunning with the city lights twinkling without pause, but by that time Caterina felt so exhausted she hardly noticed the magnificent panorama that lay beneath her eyes. Her eyelids were heavy, falling over her eyes against her will. Ivano noticed.

  “Let’s go,” he said, helping her up and leading the way.

  The depth of the darkness inside the fortress stopped Caterina inches past the entryway.

  “I keep candles in that corner,” Ivano said, pointing at the darkest area of the room, “and matches. It’s been a long time since I last came here, but they should be where I left them.” He groped in the dark for a while. “Here they are,” he said, striking a match. He lit two candles, and a dim flickering light filled the room. Through her dazed eyes, Caterina saw the four bare stone walls and the uneven mud floor. She walked to a corner, sat on the cracked, dusty ground, and whispered, “I’m so tired.”

  He sat next to her and took her in his arms. She stretched her legs and set her head on his shoulder.

  “We’ll find a way to fix things with your family,” Ivano said, caressing her hair. “We could go see your mother—”

  He stopped, because he realized that Caterina had fallen asleep. He began to hum softly, as if he were singing a lullaby, and at the rhythm of that slow melody he mimicked the motions of his hand on the strings of an invisible mandolin.

  14

  THE SUN WAS HIGH WHEN they awoke. Lying on the floor, next to each other, they breathed the warmth of their bodies and the scent of their comingled breaths.

  “Good morning,” Ivano said, caressing Caterina’s hair. “Feeling better?”

  “I’m not as tired,” Caterina murmured, stretching, “but I feel far from well, I can assure you.”

  “This is the first time I wake with you by my side,” he said. “I thought it’d never happen other than in my dreams. I love it. I want to sleep with you forever and ever and ever.”

  “I woke up alone in a solitary convent cell for the past two years,” she said. “Every morning when I opened my eyes I had to face my solitude and the possibility I’d never see any of the people I love. You have no idea how happy I am,” she caressed his cheek, “to find you by my side this morning.”

  They embraced a long time before Ivano stood up.

  “Let’s go,” he said, standing up and helping Caterina off the floor.

  She shook the dust off her clothes. “Where?”

  “To see something that will convince you that I’m not a liar.”

  That was the same morning Matilda had arrived at the convent and discovered that Caterina had run away. She had left the House of Hope in a state of frenzy, ordering the coach driver to rush her to the station. At all cost she had to intercept the nuns’ telegram before someone had a chance to read it. On Doctor Sciaccaluga’s instructions, the servants were to bring Giuseppe no mail, so she wasn’t too worried about her husband reading the news. She was worried about the maids though, and the cook, and the rest of the staff. She knew all too well how curious the servants could be, and with her gone and Giuseppe bedridden it was likely that some of them, even Gugliemo for that matter, would take liberties they’d never dream of taking before. Furthermore, a telegram would not go unnoticed. And what about Caterina? Whom had she escaped with and where was she now? Was she hurt? Was she safe? How had anyone come to know where she was? That baker? The police? Had Antonio’s investigation into the threatening letters and the dead cat led him to suspect foul play? Had he discovered what he shouldn’t have? She trembled at the thought of the scandal and of what Caterina would think or do should she learn of her faked death and funeral from someone other
than her mother. She wanted to push the train, tell it to go faster. “God help me,” she moaned as the train made a stop to a small station on the way.

  While Matilda’s train ride was reaching its midpoint, Caterina and Ivano arrived in Marassi, the neighborhood northeast of downtown that hosted Genoa cemetery. They walked through the cemetery gate and followed a path bordered by dull grass. By then Caterina had stopped asking questions and was following Ivano docilely, as if an invisible thread tied her to him. She began to realize what that visit was about when they stopped in front of the Berilli family tomb, a stand-alone mausoleum with a locked entry gate that reminded both Caterina and Ivano of the gate of the House of Hope: wrought-iron, posts that allowed visitors to see inside.

  “You have no idea,” Ivano said gravely, “how many times I came here to try to find a reason.”

  Hesitantly, Caterina approached the gate, placing her hands on the posts and gazing in. Incense was burning at the foot of a small altar, and the candle smoke was aglow with the bright colors of fresh flowers set in crystal vases. She inhaled, letting the odors fill her nostrils and throat. It was the scent of death, she knew, the pungent, sorry smell that grew like mold out of people’s sorrow and out of the restlessness of the souls. She stood still, letting the odors envelope her, the sadness swell. She turned to the left wall where, she knew, were the tombs of her grandparents, Filiberto and Giulia, whom she had never seen alive. She smiled as she recalled the childhood days when her mother would take her to the mausoleum to pray for the dead, change the water in the vases, and light new candles. She had always wanted to be the one to cut the flowers’ stems and dip them in water. One day she had cut her thumb with a pair of large gardening scissors, and her mother had sung her a favorite nursery song to make her forget the pain. Nostalgically, she shifted her gaze and noticed that the bottom tomb on the right wall was taken. She squinted her eyes: the inscription screamed at her and hit her with a punch.