are going to act now?”
“I’d give my right hand to find out how they managed to arrange this marriage.”
“Money?”
“No, both families are as rich as Croesus.”
“What else then?”
“We’ll find out, sooner or later.”
No Genoese, however, would ever discover anything more about the reasons for that surprising, sudden marital arrangement. Only Filiberto, Giulia, and Giuseppe Berilli knew how they had succeeded. Even within the Pellettieri family, only Matilda’s parents knew the details of their daughter’s broken engagement to the Count Arnaldo Della Tessiera, the heir to a large empire of land in the southern part of Piedmont. Matilda had been eighteen years of age, close to nineteen, at the time of her engagement, and in order to abide to a condition imposed on the wedding by her fiancé’s parents, she underwent a physical examination by the Della Tessiera’s family doctor to assess her suitability to carry children. Arnaldo was the last descendant of the Della Tessiera’s stock and his parents wanted to be sure their breed would continue to populate the earth after their death. It was during that examination that the doctor discovered that Matilda’s hymen was not where it was supposed to be and reported his finding to the four parents.
“Impossible!” Telonio Pellettieri blurted out.
Osvaldo Della Tessiera, Arnaldo’s father, jumped to his feet. “Are you saying that our doctor is a liar?”
“If he’s not a liar,” Telonio said, “then he must be mistaken. Our Matilda is honest and god-fearing. She would never engage in such shameful acts.”
The doctor, however, insisted that the hymen wasn’t there. Furious, convinced that the doctor’s report about the hymen was part of some scheme the Della Tessieras had conceived to walk away from the wedding, Telonio requested that his daughter be examined by his own doctor and that he and his wife attend the visit. “This way,” he told Osvaldo, “we’ll certainly prove the incompetence of the doctor you chose.”
“Fine,” Osvaldo said, “but I want to be present as well. How do I know that you and your doctor won’t lie to save your daughter’s reputation?”
“We Pellettieris do not lie,” shouted Anna Pellettieri, Matilda’s mother.
“Neither do we, darling,” Elena Della Tessiera said. “Neither do we.”
When she awoke the next morning, Matilda saw her parents standing at the foot of her bed.
“Matilda,” her father said, “there’s something we need to do before we set a date for the wedding.”
Without further ado, he ordered his daughter to remain in bed and let a second doctor investigate the whereabouts of her hymen. Matilda was dumbfounded, but complied with her father’s request without arguing, for she had been taught since childhood that the wish of a father is like the wish of God. She lay on her bed in silence, with a big lump in her chest and throat, and looked at her mother with the eyes of a lamb. Her mother looked the other way.
The doctor Telonio had chosen arrived shortly, carrying a square box wrapped in red velvet. Osvaldo and Elena Della Tessiera entered behind him.
“Good morning, Matilda,” the doctor said. “This will be only a moment.”
With the four parents standing by the bed and supervising the visit, the doctor set out to examining Matilda according to a protocol the four parents had devised and agreed upon ahead of time. He began by opening the box and gazing silently at its contents: a small painting brush, a portable inkwell, a bowl filled with a thick, transparent, greasy fluid, and a metallic object shaped like a phallus. With a flick of his wrist, he dipped the phallus in the bowl while saying to Matilda, “Bend your knees.” Then he lifted her nightgown and placed the phallus greased end against her vaginal opening, sliding it in with repeated pressing motions. When the phallus had penetrated Matilda as far as it could go, he moved aside so everyone could see. Osvaldo Della Tessiera said. “Proceed.”
Nodding, the doctor dipped the painting brush into the inkwell and drew a line around the phallus where it protruded from Matilda’s flesh. Next, he pulled the phallus out of Matilda, placing it under the observers’ curious eyes. Without difficulty, they all noticed that the phallus had penetrated Matilda a good twelve centimeters and come out clean, without the slightest trace of blood.
The Della Tessieras called off the engagement at once despite Matilda’s claim that she had never done anything that was against God’s commandments. “I am a virgin,” she protested, erupting into tears, but no one believed her.
“We don’t deal with second-hand products,” Osvaldo