The House of Serenades by Lina Simoni Page A

only a few moments.”
    Giuseppe coughed. “Sit down, Antonio. This will take longer than a few moments.”
    Antonio pulled up a chair. “I’m listening.”
    Giuseppe breathed deeply. He ran his tongue on his lips twice. “Do you remember what I told you this afternoon about Ivano Bo?”
    “I remember.”
    “I’ll now tell you the rest of the story.” He paused then spoke with vehemence. “I want you to find him and put him in jail. I’m sure this was his idea—”
    “Calm down, Mister Berilli,” Antonio urged him, “or we’ll have to postpone this conversation.”
    “No, it must be tonight,” Giuseppe wheezed, “because he’ll try again. He’ll keep trying to kill me until he succeeds. He wants to see me in a coffin, Antonio. You must stop him before it’s too late. I want you to know everything about him, so you can put him away for good. He’s a dangerous individual. Dangerous and mad.”
    “Mad? How?”
    “Very, very mad. See, Antonio, this afternoon I told you about a woman Ivano Bo claimed to love and who died.”
    “Yes,” said Antonio.
    Giuseppe spoke faltering. “That woman … was my daughter. Caterina.”
    “Your daughter?” Antonio marveled. “I don’t understand. Didn’t she die of tuberculosis? You told me this afternoon that Ivano Bo deemed you responsible for the woman’s death. It doesn’t make any sense!”
    Giuseppe waited several seconds before uttering his reply. “I’ll tell you what happened,” he said, “but, please, I’m asking you from the bottom of my heart, keep what I’m about to tell you a secret.”
    Antonio thought a moment then decided to give Giuseppe the answer he wanted to hear. “All right. I’ll keep it a secret.”
    “Good,” Giuseppe murmured. His voice was barely audible when he began his tale. “Yes, my daughter died of tuberculosis. Mister Bo, however, thinks that Caterina became ill because I prevented her from marrying him. See, approximately three months before Caterina’s death, Caterina told me and Matilda that she had fallen in love with some Ivano and that Ivano’s father was a baker. Caterina was only seventeen, and what she said made no sense at all. No reasonable person of her class would fall in love with the son a baker. Matilda and I couldn’t even figure out how those two had met, let alone come to like each other. We thought he must have seduced her and enslaved her to his will. So I did what any concerned father would have done: I forbade my daughter to see her beau again and kept her under tight surveillance. You understand, Antonio. Caterina was a desirable young woman. Young, beautiful, and rich. I had wedding plans for her already laid out in my mind. I couldn’t let her be involved with such a low-class individual. And I couldn’t let the story of their friendship reach the ears of the public. Our name would have been disgraced.”
    Antonio held back a wry smile. “I understand, Mister Berilli. Please, go on. What happened then?”
    Giuseppe sighed. “Caterina spent days crying and talking nonsense. Imagine, she kept saying that she was deeply in love with this Ivano and wanted to marry him. Matilda and I were horrified and told Caterina she’d better get over her love because she wouldn’t see that scoundrel again.” He paused, caught his breath. “One day, Caterina stopped crying. She became silent. She became pale. She coughed often, and when she started coughing she kept at it for hours. We realized that she was sick and asked Doctor Sciaccaluga to visit her. At the end of his visit, he told us that Caterina had likely contracted pneumonia. Based on her overall condition, however, he couldn’t rule out tuberculosis. He told us it’d be best for Caterina to go to a private clinic specializing in lung diseases. He knew one such place in the eastern Alps where doctors had been successful in curing many cases of respiratory illnesses. ‘There,’ he said, ‘the air is clearer than ice and the scenery