heard the night before. Ivano’s reaction to the tale of Caterina’s illness was the same as Lavinia’s and the maids’: disbelief.
“The only way to find out what happened to Caterina is to force her father or her mother to speak,” he said. “I will find a way.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, my boy,” Lavinia said. “I, too, want to find Caterina, but we must act cleverly, not out of passion or rage. I have contacts inside the Berillis’ house that can prove useful for our investigation. I’ll be back in three days and let you know if I have learned anything new. Meanwhile, keep knocking on that door. It’ll be pointless, but at least you’ll distract Mister Berilli and Madame from what I’m doing.”
Promptly, Ivano went to the palazzina and knocked. As usual, no one came to the door. The following day, Ivano returned to Corso Solferino with his mandolin and began playing it in front of the Berillis’ gate. He had played for almost an hour when Guglielmo came out.
“Please stop,” he said. “You’re annoying everybody.”
“Good,” Ivano said. “At least I obtained something. You came looking for me and spoke to me instead of hiding behind that door.”
Guglielmo said nothing.
Ivano went on, “Tell your master that I won’t stop playing until he receives me and tells me what he did to Caterina.”
“It will never happen, I’m afraid,” Guglielmo said.
“Then your master will have to keep listening to my mandolin,” Ivano stated, picking up the instrument and plucking away.
Without another word, Guglielmo returned inside, where Giuseppe shouted at him, “How come he’s still playing?”
“He won’t stop, sir,” Guglielmo said calmly, “unless you talk to him.”
“Talk to him? No way! I’ll call the police,” Giuseppe said, infuriated.
“There’s no law, sir,” Guglielmo stated, “forbidding Mister Bo to play his instrument in the street.”
“Aaah!” Giuseppe screamed, cupping his hands on his ears.
Three days went by, during which Ivano kept playing for several hours each day in front of the palazzina, driving Giuseppe crazy, but achieving nothing as far as talking to Giuseppe or discovering something new about Caterina.
At the end of the third day, a dejected Lavinia met with Ivano at the bakery. “Nothing,” she said. “I found nothing at all about Caterina.”
That same evening, Giuseppe summoned his wife, his two sons, and his sister to the reading room.
“I have bad news,” he said, holding a letter in his hands. With a broken voice, he informed them that Caterina had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and no one was allowed to visit her as her illness was deadly and highly contagious. “She’s so sick, the doctors tell me, we wouldn’t be able to recognize her. Sad as it may be,” he added, “it’s better if no one even knows where she is and if we forget about her as fast as we can, as there is no chance she could possibly survive.”
There were whispers, shouts, tears. Then Eugenia spoke up. “I want to know where she is. I want to visit her while she’s still breathing.”
Gently, Giuseppe placed an arm across her shoulders. “I understand how you feel, Eugenia.” he said in a soothing voice. “And, believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more than to rush to my daughter’s bedside. But the doctors have spoken. She’s contagious. We can’t see her. In a month or so, maybe.” He turned to everyone in the room. “I promise to keep you informed as to the progress of Caterina’s illness. God help her soul.”
One month passed, with Giuseppe artfully dodging questions and inquiries from family and friends. One day, out of the blue, he gathered the family and announced that Caterina was in the hands of God.
“She’s at peace,” he sobbed, “and no longer suffering. Her coffin will arrive soon.”
The family reacted with incredulity at first, then with wails of anguish, including Matilda, who was stunned by her own ability to fake grief. A short three days after the announcement, a sealed white coffin was delivered at the palazzina together with a death certificate signed by a doctor from the clinic where Caterina had supposedly died. No one but Giuseppe knew that the coffin had been provided by Mercantino Barbieri, an eighty-three-year-old drunkard who survived on illicit activities and contraband. The false death certificate, instead, had been prepared in secret, upon Giuseppe’s request, by Doctor Sciaccaluga in exchange for something the doctor had wanted desperately every minute of his adult life.
Damiano was the son of Federico Sciaccaluga, a well-respected family doctor who years earlier had become sick with