to investigate. While Lavinia kept questioning Viola and the cook and instructing them to listen into the Berillis’ conversations, after many days of knocking pointlessly on the Berillis’ door and playing his mandolin, Ivano changed tactics. He went looking for Caterina’s brothers in the hope they’d act differently from their father. First, he went to the law firm and asked to see Umberto. A clerk dismissed him without ceremony. Then he followed Raimondo to a bar and joined him at the counter as he was sipping a yellow liquid from a tall glass.
“Mister,” Ivano said, “I know you are Caterina’s brother. I am a friend of hers. Would you please tell me where she is?”
Raimondo, who was on his third bar of the day and had swallowed several strong cocktails on an empty stomach, looked at him with glossy, absent eyes. “I don’t know where she is,” he slurred as he took another sip of liquor. He set his head on the counter. “Let me sleep.”
Later that day, Ivano returned to the palazzina, without his mandolin this time. He stood in the street and watched. The first person he saw was Guglielmo, who stepped out of the gate with buckets and rags and began washing the family automobile. Ivano approached him, wondering if there was a way to make the butler his ally rather than a wall standing between him and the Berillis’ secrets. He spoke to him kindly. “Good morning.”
Guglielmo nodded as he dipped a rag into the water.
Ivano asked, “Could you help me? Please?”
Guglielmo began wiping the hood.
“Do you realize,” Ivano insisted, “that Caterina is not ill? She has been taken somewhere against her wishes!”
“Please leave,” Guglielmo said.
“I will not leave,” Ivano replied, realizing that the butler would never take his side. He stepped inside the garden and sat on the ground, between a flower bed and the gate. “I will sit here,” he told the astounded Gugliemo, “and wait.”
Nonchalantly, Guglielmo continued to wash the car. Finished, he reentered the palazzina and closed the door.
A half hour later, a policeman arrived. “Mister? You need to go.”
“Why?” Ivano asked.
“This garden is private property,” the officer explained. “You are trespassing, and the homeowner doesn’t want you here.”
“The homeowner is a coward and a liar,” Ivano said. “He’s hiding his daughter and refuses to see me for fear I’d find out where she is.”
“I know nothing about the homeowner or his daughter,” the policeman said. “All I know is that he called us because you are trespassing. If you don’t leave these premises at once, I will arrest you. Do you understand?”
“What I understand is that in this town the police protect the rich and don’t give a damn about us workers,” Ivano rebutted. “Don’t worry though. I’ll leave.” He stood up. “The last thing I need is go to jail.”
A deep sense of defeat clutched him as he slowly made his way back towards the bakery. He was certain that Caterina was not ill, but had no way of proving it. Even the policeman had paid no attention to his accusations. No one seemed to care. What was wrong with that town? How could someone disappear without a trace? Where was Caterina? Was she well? Was she being mistreated?
He arrived at the bakery without realizing it. As soon as he stepped inside, he noticed the customers’ surprised faces and the thicker-than-usual chitchat among them. He picked up the conversation in bits and pieces, and it was nothing new: Caterina Berilli was sick in her lungs and confined to a sanatorium in the mountains. Which one, nobody knew for sure. And who knows, said a fat lady in a hat, if she’d ever return. The secret Lavinia had discovered, Ivano realized, had become public knowledge. Hearing that story told by the bakery customers made Ivano wonder for a moment if it could be real. He knew it wasn’t, so he voiced his beliefs to his father. “They sent her away because she loves me. I hate the Berillis!”
“How can you say that?” Corrado marveled. “The whole town is talking about Miss Berilli’s illness. It must be real. What kind of parents would invent such a story about their daughter?”
Corrado could see that his son was in a state of very high rage. “Calm down,” he told him. “If what you say is true, that Caterina is well, things will return to normal over time. A father’s anger can’t last forever. She’ll be back soon.