for the second letter, there was no subtlety in its text at all:
Before you know it, Giuseppe Berilli,
you will roast in Hell.
Your home will burn with you
in the flames of eternal damnation.
No drawing accompanied this letter. He stared at the handwriting in silence then clenched his fists, causing the edges of the paper to crumble. “Damn it,” he hissed, angry at himself for allowing those two letters to upset him to the point of insomnia. They were only letters, were they not? So why was he so agitated? Why was he taking those words so literally? Perhaps the letters were a prank, he thought, the joke of youngsters trying to kill their boredom, and he should burn them and forget they ever arrived. Horse accidents happened practically every day in the jungle of the downtown traffic, Giuseppe knew. What happened to him could have happened to any passerby. It happened to him though, and one day before a letter with the drawing of a horse on it had arrived. What if the writer was a dangerous man, someone with a sick mind?
“I’ve got to do something,” he said, “or I’ll drive myself crazy.”
Lots of people, of course, had reasons to dislike him. He was a visible man, with scores of bitter enemies, all envious of his social and professional standings and of the wealth his family had preserved and grown for generations. Perhaps the letters had been written by members of the labor unions, he thought, men of low extraction looking to make a statement against the class the Berillis belonged to. Many a time, he was aware, fingers had been pointed at him with accusations of being an outdated defender of privilege and a promoter of social injustice. He had dismissed the charges without blinking.
“I will not be intimidated by some cheap, demagogic Socialist propaganda,” he had told Raimondo and Umberto, his sons, on the day a group of longshoremen had surrounded the building that hosted Berilli e Figli. For hours the port workers had stood in the street, voicing their anger in repetitive, chant-like slogans. The target of their wrath was Umberto, who earlier that day had represented the shipowners association in a dispute over the longshoremen’s right to a guaranteed minimum number of working hours. Umberto had won the case, causing the longshoremen’s right to be repealed.
But the longer Giuseppe looked at the words the anonymous writer had chosen, the more those words seemed to him the product of fanaticism rather than the rational thought of a political opponent. If that was the case, he had every reason to be concerned about his safety and that of the rest of his household. Frowning, he brought the tips of his fingers to his throbbing temples. Should he call the police? With some luck, the police could find the culprit and put a halt to the harassment, but there would be negative publicity coming from the investigation. Should he show the letters to the police, he’d be forced to discuss his personal
and professional affairs with the officers in charge of the case, and there was plenty he didn’t care to discuss with strangers. There were, nonetheless, other considerations: What if someone got hurt because he had kept the letters to himself? What if he should die at the hand of a mad stranger? Suddenly, Giuseppe was hit by the thought that this might be the last day of his life. He swallowed twice, then took a pill from his pocket and thrust it into his mouth. He knew he had to act immediately, or he would have a heart attack for sure. It was at such trying time that he needed all his stamina and control. He remembered one of his father’s favorite sayings, God bless his soul: “Always think rationally, never out of fear, for he who lets fear be the captain of his ship will suffer shipwreck and will be lost in the waves.”
Easier said than done, he muttered between his teeth as he put the letters back in the drawer. He breathed in then hummed the air out of his shiny nose. A moment later, on the north wall, next to unlit fireplace, the grandfather clock struck noon. With firm gestures, he took a steel-nibbed pen from a pewter tray and plunged it into an inkwell. As always before using fine parchment paper, he tapped the wet nib on the edge of the well and waited for a drop of ink to fall. Three lines were