was busy with personal matters, so he decided to ignore the bell and continue what he had set about: counting money. He concentrated, for he didn’t want to lose count. When the bell rang again, he sighed, “What now?” He hid the banknotes under the pillow, walked to the door, and whispered, “Who’s there?”
“Umberto Berilli,” a voice answered. “Open up.”
The moment he heard the name Berilli, Damiano opened the door wide. He knew right away something must be the matter: Umberto’s face was pale, his eyes fearful.
“Hurry up, doctor!” Umberto exclaimed. “My father fainted in the foyer. With a hand pressed against his heart!”
At that, Damiano knew he should prepare for the worst. Hat in one hand, bag in the other, he rushed out of the apartment, following Umberto across the street, where the Berillis’ roofless automobile was parked with the engine running. Umberto sat at the wheel, Damiano on the passenger’s side. The doctor grabbed the edge of his seat. “Quickly, my boy,” he said, “before it’s too late.”
Soon the two men were heading up steep roads. Umberto kept silent as he drove, concentrating on the streets’ twists and turns, for which Doctor Sciaccaluga was most grateful as he was in no mood for conversation and in great need of calming his nerves and regain his composure. The last thing he had needed that night was an emergency call, but the call had come from the Berillis, and how could he have said no? He cared for the Berillis more than for the rest of his patients. Giuseppe, in particular, was a very special client.
In April of 1908, one short week after Caterina’s death, Giuseppe, who had never had a personal friend in his life, had surprised everyone by inviting Damiano Sciaccaluga, his doctor, a middle-class man without wealth, to dine at the palazzina. In attendance were the Mayor and his wife, the owner of a shipping company with his elderly mother, and a Parisian Countess vacationing on Genoa’s Riviera. They had all looked upon Damiano’s presence at the table as a curiosity, an extravagance very much at odd with the conventional life their hosts were known for leading. Damiano played along as gracefully as his social extraction allowed him, smiling right and left but in reality feeling like a fish out of water. The conversation topics before, during, and after dinner—the Countess’s horses, the Mayor’s wife’s Tuscan estate, the shipowner’s latest trip to a spa in Baden Baden, and the difficulty getting good house help—were far out of his league. His fear of being inadequate was sculpted in the clumsiness of his movements and the awkwardness of his colloquial exchanges. All along, he said very little of his own, limiting his contribution to nodding or murmuring ahs and ohs. No one but Giuseppe ever addressed him directly in any way. After such a miserable performance, Matilda and the guests thought for sure the doctor would never be invited to the palazzina again. Instead, to everyone’s dismay, from that day forward Damiano graced every single social function in the Berillis’ home and accompanied Giuseppe to a number of events reserved for the high society.
Giuseppe’s relatives and many of his peers had disapproved of that friendship from the very start, yet no one dared say more than a few words to Giuseppe, surmising that his daughter’s sudden death was blinding him with pain; that such pain was to blame for Giuseppe’s unprecedented need for a personal friend; and that in his confusion Giuseppe had not realized that by befriending Damiano Sciaccaluga of all people he had cracked open the class boundaries and undermined the power of the upper class in its entirety.
Matilda couldn’t get herself to look at Doctor Sciaccaluga, let alone socialize with him. Over the years he had been at the palazzina many times in his function of family doctor, and as such he had only been admitted to the foyer, the patients’ bedrooms, and occasionally the reading room when the call was about Giuseppe’s heart condition. Never in all that time had he been admitted to the social areas, such as the living and dining rooms, and he had always addressed the lady of the house as Madame and Giuseppe as Mister Berilli or Sir—as was expected of a man of an inferior class. But on the day following his very first dinner invitation Damiano returned to the palazzina with a newly-forged look of superiority on his face. Matilda ran into him in the foyer, and her