forgetting to give her a hymen or by letting her hymen break on its own before the set time. Sighing, she wondered, as she had wondered many times before, what her life would be like had the doctors found her capricious hymen in its place and had she married Arnaldo instead of Giuseppe. She had often visions of Arnaldo as she had seen him last, forty-three years earlier, tall and handsome and with the bearing of a prince. She imagined how tender and loving a husband he would have been and wondered what it’d be like to wake up every morning with him by her side. It was too late now to change things. At sixty-two, she was too old. She felt too old. And she felt remote from the man she called husband and from the city she had moved to after her wedding, a city that, she was certain, would ignore her, even snub her, despite her aristocratic lineage, were she not married to Giuseppe Berilli, the lawyer. The Genoese even had a saying for that, she had been told: Mogli e buoi dei paesi tuoi, Wives and oxen from your own land. What a way to welcome out-of-towners. At least once a month, especially after her two sons had moved out of the palazzina, she had considered returning to her native Turin, where she was someone because of her own name and where she owed her social standing to birth rather than to an unloving husband. She had dreamed of taking Caterina along, showing her the castle where she had grown up and introducing her to her cousins and aunts. She had never found the courage to break away or denounce Giuseppe’s lies about Caterina’s death. So many times she had been one whisper away from revealing the conspiracy to her sons. Her tongue had frozen in her mouth on every occasion. Besides, she knew all too well that her family didn’t want her to move back home. Although they didn’t know all the facts, they considered her a living reminder of the shameful rejection her parents had endured at the Della Tessieras’ hand forty-three years earlier and which, many of her relatives thought, had brought them both prematurely to the grave. Matilda knew that she was destined to spend the rest of her life in this ungrateful town, and nothing she could do or say would change the course of the events. She dried her tears and headed to the kitchen to instruct the cook about dinner.
Lunch had been over for an hour when three knocks echoed in the corridors of the palazzina. At that point Giuseppe was in the reading room, where he had returned after the quarrel with his wife. He had kept the fourth poultice of the day on his shoulder for half an hour and was now sipping an espresso with Fernet, his favorite after-lunch digestif. His head felt light from having eaten nothing but a small appetizer.
Guglielmo came in as he was setting the empty coffee cup on the tray. “Mister Antonio Sobrero is here to see you, sir.”
“It’s about time,” Giuseppe muttered. “Bring him in.”
A tall, middle-aged man with a droopy mustache and hollow cheeks arrived shortly. His hair was dark and lustrous, longer than one would expect of a public functionary, but a good fit to his lean built. “Good afternoon, Mister Berilli. I received your message and came as soon as I could.”
Giuseppe stood up and walked towards the Chief of Police with his arm extended. Not soon enough, he thought, but said, “Thank you, Antonio. I appreciate it.”
The two men shook hands, and Giuseppe pointed to one of the leather armchairs.
“Please, have a seat. Coffee? Drink?”
Antonio sat down. “No, thank you,” he said. “Is something wrong, Mister Berilli? Your message talked about a disturbing event you wish to share with me. Is it related to your horse accident?”
“I wish I knew,” Giuseppe lamented. “Before I explain, however, I must ask that you keep our conversation confidential. Do I have your word?”
“It depends, Mister Berilli. Should the event that disturbed you require the intervention of the police force or an investigation, I can’t promise I’ll be the only one to know. I can, however, promise I’ll keep our conversation to myself as much as I can.”
“Thank you, Antonio,” Giuseppe said, thinking, ‘You can do better than this, my man. I supported you throughout the election process, did I not?’ He kept that thought to himself, for he didn’t