The House of Serenades

THE HOUSE OF SERENADES

by

Lina Simoni

In 1910 Genoa, an Italian port city of divided classes and ancient power struggles, the Berillis are wealthy, powerful, and respected—until the day their darkest secrets begin to surface. Once the police intervene and the gossip grapevine is set in motion, the Berillis' demise is unavoidable. But love lives on, and there's a mandolin player in town who is not giving up on the girl of his dreams. Never underestimate the power of music. The House of Serenades is a brilliant portrait of the Italian upper class at the turn of the twentieth century, its habits, and its ways of life. At the same time, the story denounces the abuse and repression of women (sisters, daughters, wives) that was so common in those years.

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CHAPTER 1 (pages 1,2)

MONTHS LATER, removed from the world, her frail, unnourished body ravaged by pellagra and scurvy, her mind muddled with visions of black devils and fire-spitting monsters, in rare moments of lucidity Eugenia Berilli would revisit the events that marked the end of her privileged life and the beginning of her and her family's fall to disgrace. Her memories would manifest in fragments, disconnected images and sounds, snapshots of a time gone by, flashes that struck her in the heart with the suddenness and the fury of lightning bolts. But on that mild mid-April morning of 1910 she, the taller and older sister of Giuseppe Berilli, Genoa's most prominent lawyer, had no reason to suspect or fear. She was henceforth surprised when she awoke in her canopy bed one full hour earlier than usual, drenched in cold sweat. As she eased her feet into padded slippers and wrapped her thin body in a dressing gown, she mulled over her early rising, attributing it to at least three factors: her advanced age, the humidity, and her anxiety over the future of the Berilli law firm, whose reputation had worsened ostensibly over the past weeks. She paced the bedroom back and forth while her discomfort grew. A vague uneasiness had taken hold of her, a throb in the pit of her belly rising all the way to her throat. Her armpits were wet, and the handkerchief she dabbed repeatedly on her forehead couldn't keep the watery beads at bay. In search of cooler quarters, she headed for the den, a small square room with no stove tucked away at the north end of the apartment. Its scarce furnishing-two Louis XV armchairs and matching end table-gave it a stern look. Eugenia found it cozy. The only other object in the room, resting limply on the end table, was a soft pink knitting bag with needles showing. Eugenia took it and sat on the stiff red and gold cushion of the nearest armchair. She rummaged in the bag for her eyeglasses, placing them gingerly on the bridge of her nose. A faint smile streamed across her lips as, by the soft glow of a single lamp, she began knitting a shawl.

It was moments before dawn. The city roused from its slumber. In the port, warehouses opened their doors, longshoremen and coal heavers streamed towards the docks, and loaded cargos towed by agile tenders trumpeted their ways towards the moorings. On land, bordering the port, the downtown streets awoke as well with shutters pushed open and grocers loading fresh produce on kiosks and stalls. Known to the locals as the caruggi, those streets were narrow alleys flanked by a continuous façade of tall buildings scarred by time and sea salt, facing one another so closely the inhabitants could shake hands by leaning out the windows. Starting at the port, cutting through the maze of the caruggi, was Via San Lorenzo, an uphill wider street bordered by a mix of middle-class dwellings and patrician buildings. That's where Eugenia's ten-room apartment was: half-way up Via San Lorenzo, on the second floor of a stately building a short walk from the cathedral. She lived there alone. The many maids she had hired over the years had left her one after the other, put off by her overbearing, dictatorial ways.