exception. “That Eugenia is like a leech,” she wrote in a letter to her mother. “She clings to her brother and doesn’t let go.”
Eugenia wasn’t fond of Matilda either. “She wants the servants to call her Madame, the French way,” she told her good friend Lucia Della Valle on a Sunday on the way out of church. “How snobbish is that?” She continued with a scornful grimace on her face. “She just arrived and already bosses Giuseppe around. Do you know what she did yesterday? She took Giuseppe’s favorite liquor, a prune grappa, and poured it into the sink. She said, ‘It’s bad for your heart, darling.’ She is bad for Giuseppe’s heart, I say, not the grappa.”
Seven years passed and then the accident came about, taking the lives of Giulia and Filiberto Berilli without warning. Their coach fell off a cliff, smashed on the rocks below, and sank into the sea. The cause of the accident was never ascertained. The police spoke about a defective wheel, but didn’t discard the possibility that something might have scared the horses out of control. In any case, everyone on board was killed, including the coachman and the maid who had accompanied the Berillis on their trip. By that time, Matilda had given birth to two boys, Umberto and Raimondo, then five and two years old respectively. Caterina wouldn’t be born until fifteen years later.
With her mother dead, Eugenia assumed she’d be the one running the house. Matilda didn’t think so.
“I’m your wife, Giuseppe,” she told her husband a few days after the funeral. “I should be the one in charge of the household, not your sister.”
“I was born in this house,” Eugenia fought back. “I belong here. That Torinese cannot rule as and when she pleases.”
For four years Eugenia and Matilda bickered and quarreled daily on every aspect of their domestic life, from the menus to the hiring and firing of the servants, from the color of the curtains to when the windows should stay open or closed, from the floral arrangements in the living room to the house cleaning schedule. If Eugenia said that the living-room floor had to be washed, Matilda stated that the floor was clean and changed the order to the maids. If Matilda thought it proper to invite the Mayor and his wife to dinner, Eugenia criticized her for wasting the family money on useless social events. Matilda replied that such events seemed useless to Eugenia only because she wasn’t married, and then Eugenia rushed to the garden, picked Matilda’s favorite flowers, and fed them to the horses.
In spite of his attempts to dodge the quarrels, Giuseppe was often caught in the middle, like a ship under crossfire.
“Stop it, stop it!” he’d scream halfway through dinner, or at breakfast, or during the Sunday walks. “You’re driving me crazy! One of these days I’ll move my bed into my office, where I can’t hear you arguing.”
One evening, he called his sister to the reading room. “This can’t go on. I’m exhausted,” he said. “I’ve had enough of your senseless squabbles.”
Eugenia lifted her chin and snapped it down. She said, “I agree.”
“I know how you feel about the palazzina, Eugenia,” Giuseppe said in a soothing voice, “but Matilda is my wife and has the right to live in this house and care for it.”
“So do I.”
“True,” Giuseppe agreed, “but I can’t see how you two can continue to live under the same roof, given that you are both more stubborn than mules.”
“It’s not my fault if—”
“Now listen, Eugenia. I have given this matter much thought and this is what I’ve decided to do. I’ll buy from you your half of the palazzina at market value. I’ll also give you a bonus equal to twenty-five percent of the transaction. You’ll have more than enough to buy your own place. Of course you’re welcome to visit any time you want. The palazzina will remain your home for as long as you’ll live.”
She jumped to her feet. “You what?”
“Sit down. Do you think I like it? I don’t, but a separation of households is the only avenue for the three of us to find peace of mind and return to the quiet life we had before our parents died.”
“Never,” Eugenia said, striding out of the room like a general on his way to war.
Giuseppe followed her in the hallway, begging her to consider that resolution seriously. “Everyone will be happier afterwards,” he said. “What’s the point of persisting in an arrangement that