story—a story that discredited one of the most respectable families in town. He personally accompanied Ivano to Piazza della Nunziata, where he asked Corrado if his son had his mind in the right place. Corrado confirmed that his son had indeed lost his reason and had been acting crazy since the day Caterina had died. He told the policeman about the days his son had spent seated on the bakery floor, about his disappearance, and about the mandolin and the love songs.
“You’d better keep an eye on your offspring,” the officer told Corrado, “because we’re busy down at the police station. We’ve no time to look after the delirium of some enamored bum. The next time your son bothers us with his fantasies, I will inform the Berillis. They’ll press defamation charges against him. He will end up jailed.”
In vain Ivano begged his father and the policeman to believe him. The policeman left, and Corrado gave his son a sad look. “It’s all right, son. I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”
At his father look of pity, Ivano’s anger exploded. He let out a long, loud shout, sustaining it until his lungs screamed for air. While he was still shouting, Corrado rushed out the bakery, fearing for his life.
After that episode Ivano’s thoughts began to follow unchartered paths. Giuseppe Berilli was the key to Caterina’s false death, he reasoned, the one hiding the truth from everybody, and if the lawyer refused to see him and tell him what he had done to Caterina then he’d have no choice but to scare him into talking. He figured that if he managed to bring Giuseppe to a high state of fear, the lawyer could lose his composure and talk. Anonymous threatening letters would be a good way to start his scare tactics: they would protect his own identity, and Giuseppe, with his dirty conscience, would hardly dismiss them as a prank. Not only the letters would frighten the lawyer, but they might also prompt the police to intervene. In order to avoid being identified as the writer, he’d write the letters with his left hand, which he could use for several tasks and produced a handwriting completely different from his right-handed one. In his bottled-up fury, Ivano didn’t stop a single moment to consider the consequences of his plan. Before he had time to reconsider, he had sent Giuseppe threatening letter number one. He had written its text joyously, his frustration fading with every pen stroke. The final touch had been the drawing of the horse with its mane in the wind, a symbol of the freedom he wanted for Caterina. As it turned out, Ivano had nothing to do with Giuseppe’s horse accident on Piazza San Matteo. When he read about the mishap in the newspaper, however, he thought some saint up in heaven must finally be on his side.
“Thank you,” he murmured, staring the sky, “for making my letter so much scarier.”
Two days went by. Then he wrote the second letter, gloating at the frightening power of its words. The following evening, while he was returning home late from Taverna del Marinaio, he spotted a cat lying still by a street corner. It had died recently, Ivano concluded after examining the animal, because there was fresh blood around a wound on its abdomen. Life was tough for stray cats in the caruggi, he brooded, and this cat was likely the victim of the animals’ fights for survival. Suddenly, as he stared at the dead animal, he remembered a practice he had become acquainted with during his time with the underworld. One day a Caribbean woman named Clotilde Pereira had arrived in Genoa from South America on a cargo ship. She was a black-magic expert and, upon her arrival in town, had given free public demonstrations of her art and sold her special services to those who wanted to hurt their enemies or punish their unfaithful spouses. During one of her public demonstrations, Clotilde had explained that hanging a dead cat to a door would cause evil winds to blow into the house, bringing along ill luck and great affliction lasting three years. In order to aim the evil winds at one specific member of the household, Clotilde had added, one had to pronounce that person’s name three times while dipping a finger into the cat’s blood and then use the wet finger to write the word morte—death—on the door. Whether Clotilde was right or wrong, Ivano had no idea, but