The House of Serenades - By Lina Simoni Page 0,114

love me anymore.”

“Things are not as they used to be,” Caterina said. “I still love you, but the tragedies that unsettled my family affected me as well. I’m not the same person, Ivano. My heart is not the same.”

“You must set yourself free from the past,” Ivano insisted. “Your return to your parents’ home was necessary, I know, but it’s not necessary for you to remain here. Why do you insist on staying in this big empty house filled with sad memories? These memories are keeping you away from me. They are pushing us apart, don’t you see?”

“You may be right, Ivano,” Caterina said, “but I can’t leave my mother alone.”

“Why?” Ivano exclaimed. “She left you alone for over two years! How can you feel obliged towards the mother who imprisoned you in that convent?”

“My father was responsible,” Caterina stated. “My mother did what he told her to do.”

“That’s no excuse. How can you sacrifice your happiness to hers? You already sacrificed so much of your life! Don’t you think it’s time for you to be happy?”

“What would make me happy, in your opinion?” Caterina asked.

“Being with me.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Caterina, I wish to marry you. I am asking you, right here, right now. Be my bride. Leave that house of sorrow. Let’s start our lives over.”

With her fingers, Caterina grazed his cheek. “My place is with my mother at this time. The time will come for us to be together, I promise. Please, understand. There have been so many changes in my life and in the lives of others in such a short time. I caused a tempest in my family with my return. I need to see the tempest off before I can devote myself to you.”

“Don’t do this,” Ivano begged as Caterina turned away from him.

“I told you how I feel, Ivano,” Caterina said, reentering the house. “I won’t change my mind.”

The tempest Caterina had alluded to was far from over. One day, somehow, the tale of Giuseppe’s love affair reached Matilda’s ears, despite Caterina’s efforts to spare her mother the embarrassment and the pain. Perhaps Viola and Guglielmo had talked to each other too loudly, or perhaps one of Matilda’s former lady friends had visited and told her everything, unable to pass up the opportunity to hurt her. On the evening Matilda learned that her poorly-born husband had also been Francesca Barone’s lover of a lifetime and that the two had likely conceived a child, she said to her daughter, “I love you, Caterina. Goodbye.” Caterina waved at her without seeing the hidden meaning in her mother’s words, interpreting them as a different way of saying good night. Without turning back, Matilda climbed the staircase to the second floor, the hem of her long silvery dress gliding over the steps as she walked. In the morning, Viola opened her mistress’s bedroom door and, as usual, placed a tray with coffee and milk on the bedside table.

“Good morning, Madame,” she murmured, pouring half a spoon of sugar in the espresso. And then she saw her, lying still amidst the disheveled linen sheets, white foam dripping from her mouth. A doctor was called, who explained that Matilda had committed suicide by ingesting a large quantity of rat poison she had likely taken from the kitchen during the night. She was buried in desecrated land, as the Church stated that suicides shouldn’t be awarded the privilege of Christian burial: no Mass, no Requiem Aeternam, no other prayer.

17

IF CATERINA HAD SHOWN ENOUGH strength and willpower to survive her reclusion and the discovery of her father’s true identity, her mother’s death sent her into an agony too strong for her to fight. She had become close to Matilda after her return. They had conversed often while strolling in the garden during the daytime or seated in the blue parlor in the evening while Matilda embroidered her handkerchiefs. In the solitude they had experienced after acquaintances and relatives had unanimously pronounced Matilda an accomplice in Giuseppe’s scheme and hence as guilty as he was of her daughter’s death charade, united by their roles of victims of the same tyrant, Caterina and Matilda had shared the parts of each other they didn’t know. Caterina had spoken at such length about her time in the convent and with such precision of detail that Matilda had felt as if she had lived there herself for two years. And Matilda had described so accurately for her daughter the life of the family