you ask personal questions?” she said dryly. “I thought my father hired you to keep me company, not to pry.” Then she went on to talk about the weather and the hydrangeas needing fertilizer and more water.
Looking past the sarcasm, the rudeness, and the idle conversation, Lavinia noticed how Caterina hadn’t found the question unusual or asked why Lavinia had formulated it or come up with such a thought. Caterina had skillfully dodged the topic, confirming Lavinia’s suspicions that something in the girl’s life was not as it seemed.
Lavinia nurtured Caterina and Ivano’s love story for two and a half months. The faithfulness to her employer she had paraded on so many occasions was forgotten, her affection for Caterina being only one of the reasons. The other was Ivano’s music. It had put a spell on Lavinia as well. It was a different kind of spell than the one he had bestowed upon Caterina—it was the enchantment an older woman feels in the presence of a young artist’s display of skills. In all her life Lavinia had never been exposed to classical music or to popular music performed by its composer. She had always thought those forms of art were the prerogative of the rich, not of a working woman. Ever since Ivano’s first performance at the bakery during the rain storm, she had secretly felt thankful for the opportunity to listen to such an extraordinary artiste, and from then on had looked at Ivano’s music as a special treat life was finally giving her after many years of hard work. When he played, she observed his facial expressions and the movements of his hands in wonder, as a baby watches an event for the first time. She marveled at the speed of his right hand and the precision of the left one, registering the tilt of his head, the patterns of his breathing, and the stretching of his vocal chords when he sang. She knew, of course, that he wasn’t playing for her and that he would rather be alone with Caterina, but none of that mattered to her. Every time she heard him play or sing, she was transported to another world.
The encounters between Ivano and Caterina, which couldn’t possibly occur in public venues, took place in the bakery’s oven room, in the afternoon, when Corrado had left for the day and customers were rare. Tony, the hired help, dozed off on a cot behind the counter, awaking briefly when the occasional shopper came in. Of the two entrances to the oven room, one was off the bakery and one off a blind alley bordering the rear of the building. The alley ended with a wall, against which stood several boxes utilized by the local stores to dispose of their garbage. Several times a week Lavinia and Caterina entered the oven room through the alley door and, unseen by customers or passersby, met Ivano. In the privacy of those four walls, Caterina and Ivano talked about their lives and their dreams, he played the mandolin and she listened with her heart racing. She often brought paper and charcoal along, and while he played she drew him, over and over and over. The drawings cast a spell on Ivano, as much as his music cast a spell on Caterina. He looked at the lines and the shadows in amazement, incredulous of the fact that anyone, especially such a young girl, could so faithfully reproduce his features and expressions.
“I’m composing a special song,” Ivano told Caterina one day, during one of their clandestine visits. “I’ll play it on the day your family will accept our love and we’ll begin our life together.”
Caterina turned to Lavinia. “Should I talk to my father?”
Lavinia shook her head, horrified. “Not unless you want your friend banned from this town,” she said, half seriously, half jokingly.
Caterina looked at Ivano with eyes full of sadness.
“Don’t be sad,” Ivano told her, caressing her hair. “I’ll find the way for us to be together.”
He leaned towards her and slowly kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back. It was their first kiss, and after it Caterina felt more in love with Ivano than ever before. When she was not with him all she could do was relive in her mind every moment they had spent together and dream of the next time she’d see him and ease into in his arms. She often imagined how wonderful it would be if her love for Ivano could be made