The Scent Of Rosa's Oil (10 page)

Rosa held them tight. “Thank you.”

“Someone’s knocking,” Stella said.

Madam C headed for the door. “Let’s see who our first guest is.”

The first guest to arrive was Ildebrando Balbi, balder than ever. He had closed the Carena a wealthy man five years earlier and wed Mariangela, his lover of fifteen years. Ildebrando and Mariangela were followed by some of the neighborhood’s shopkeepers and their families: Mafalda, the woman who had nursed Rosa for two years; five former Luna girls with their respective men; Pietro Valdasco—with whom Madam C had years earlier reconciled—in a wheelchair because of a recent stroke; Michele Merega, an older doctor who had been watching over the health of the Luna girls for nine years; Antonia, the crafter of all the food; Mr. Razzano, the
robivecchi
, with his wife; the two policemen in charge of the neighborhood; and other friends Madam C had fostered during the years.

Rosa, radiant in her white dress, with her shining red hair, was charming everyone with her happy smile. Her eyes glimmered in the light, and the guests couldn’t stop complimenting her on her dress, her earrings, her hair, and, overall, her beauty. By eight-thirty, the party was in full swing. At eight-forty, the mayor arrived.

He made a slow, deliberate entrance, nodding right and left and smiling. “The mayor is here,” Mafalda yelled, joining her hands as if she had seen the pope. Ildebrando Balbi started clapping. Immediately, everyone else joined in. As the mayor waved to everyone with satisfaction, Madam C, ravishing in a long, tight dress of blue silk, rushed toward him with her arms open. “Cesare, Cesare,” she said, sighing. “It has been too long. Let me look at you.” She stepped back. “You look gorgeous. What does that wife of yours do to you to keep you in such wonderful shape?”

“It’s the memories of you, my dear,” Cesare Cortimiglia said, hugging Madam C, “that keep me young.”

“Still smoking, huh?” Madam C asked, pointing at the briar pipe the mayor had in hand. “I don’t recall having ever seen you without it.”

“This pipe is part of me,” the mayor said, “like”—he raised his voice—“this brothel!”

All the Luna girls applauded.

“Come,” Madam C said. “Meet Rosa.”

When the mayor had entered the Luna a few moments earlier, from the opposite corner of the parlor, Rosa had examined him with curiosity, trying to remember if she had seen him before. She saw a six-foot-tall thin man dressed in an elegant dark gray suit. His salt-and-pepper curly hair and the round gold-rimmed glasses he wore halfway down his nose reminded Rosa immediately of Mr. Rabetti, a teacher at Miss Cipollina’s school. She kept staring at him with fascination.

“This beautiful lady is Rosa?” the mayor said, exaggerating his surprise.

Rosa nodded shyly.

With a gallant motion, the mayor bent forward, took Rosa’s hand firmly in his, and kissed it. As his lips touched Rosa’s skin, his nose caught a whiff of her perfect oil. At once, without the slightest hint or premonition, his spine turned rigid, his forehead icy cold. His hairy, masculine fingers softened around Rosa’s thin-boned ones, yet refused to let them go. He remained in that bent position a while, lips on Rosa’s knuckles, head drowned in a thick fog. When he finally rose again and his eyes met Rosa’s, he stood frozen by her, aware only of the scent lingering in his nostrils and the furious thumps of his heartbeat.

T
he long-standing friendship between Cesare Cortimiglia and Madam C had started twenty-six years earlier, on the evening of his eighteenth birthday. As a present, three of his friends had taken him at night to the Carena. One of the friends, Guglielmo, was a regular client of that brothel, so Ildebrando Balbi walked up to the group the moment they stepped into the crowded lounge. “Welcome, my friend,” he said to Guglielmo. “What can I do for you?”

“We need a special treatment tonight, Signor Balbi,” said Guglielmo, a tall redheaded boy with a voice muddled by alcohol. “Our birthday boy,” he went on, placing his arm around Cesare Cortimiglia’s shoulders, “is a virgin!”

The young Cesare blushed as everyone in the room laughed and applauded.

Guglielmo bowed to Signor Balbi. “We entrust him”—he stood up—“to your girls.”

Signor Balbi bowed back. “Only the best for you, my friend,” he said, then gazed about the room and nodded at a tall, dark-haired girl standing in a corner. At once, the girl walked toward him, waving her hips in sinuous motion. She was Clotilde. In front of Cesare Cortimiglia, she ran two fingers over his sweaty neck, undoing the knot of his tie. When the knot was undone, she pulled the tie off him and tossed it into the middle of the room, accompanied by the other guests’ claps and whistles. Cesare blushed even more. He put up no resistance as Clotilde untied his belt and pulled him by the belt’s end to the opposite end of the lounge, toward a green door. The whistles and claps became louder. By the door, in a red and gold corset tighter on her body than a screw, stood Angela. As Clotilde approached, followed by the confused birthday boy, Angela pulled the door open. As soon as Clotilde and Cesare had walked past it, she waved coquettishly to the crowd, then followed the duo into the dimly lit hallway, closing the door behind her.

The two ecstatic hours Cesare Cortimiglia spent that night in the arms of Angela and Clotilde would forever alter his perception of the world and his role in it. He had undergone a revelation: there was nothing on earth, he told himself on his way out of Clotilde’s room and later as he staggered along the
caruggi
in a state of deep bliss, worthier than love. At once, he became a habitué of the Carena and several other downtown brothels, which would remain his playground for twenty-one years. An importer by day in the shipping company of his father, he turned into a relentless lover by night and into the skilled and quick client that was every brothel girl’s dream.

Like a sultan, he had favorites in his harem. There was Luz, the mulatto girl who had arrived on a cargo ship from the West Indies, with her full lips and cinnamon hair grazing her buttocks; Ortensia, tall, with a diaphanous skin and a birthmark across her lower back shaped like a half moon; and Matilda, with chameleon almond-shaped eyes, blue and green in the daylight, purple and hazelnut in the orange glow her Chinese lantern cast on the walls of her cubicle. She kept relics of her favorite clients in a box lined with red velvet. Of Cesare Cortimiglia, she kept a lock of hair she had cut with his consent after his third visit and a shirt button that had fallen off his clothes one night without his knowledge during his methodical undressing routine. It was a bottom-up process: shoes first, then socks, pants, underwear, tie, shirt, and undershirt. A looks-conscious man with a taste for elegant, expensive clothes, he took great care in folding and storing his apparel before making love. He placed the shoes next to one another at the foot of the bed; underwear, socks, and tie on the seat of a chair; his shirt on the back of the same chair; and for his pants, he always requested a wooden hanger with two clips to eliminate all chance that wrinkles could form while he was naked. He never lingered in bed after the fact, for he disliked his own nakedness as much as he relished fancy clothes. “Nakedness is a burden of love,” he’d often say, “and not a condition a man should be in longer than necessary.” So the moment the sexual act was over, he dressed swiftly in the exact opposite order he had undressed, beginning with his undershirt and ending with his shoes. The only word he uttered on the way out of his lover’s room was “Good-bye.”

His generosity matched his hunger for love. For the girls he saw regularly, like Luz, Ortensia, and Matilda, he often brought presents purloined from the warehouses of his father: exotic jewelry bought in Cairo, little mirrors set in engraved silver frames imported from the bazaars of Constantinople, colorful silk cuts manufactured in Bombay. He called the girls “princesses of my dreams,” and they would jokingly bow to him as if he were their king. Of all his princesses, no one was closer to his heart than Clotilde, with whom he’d spent many wild nights at the Carena.

One evening, he arrived at the brothel in a very bad mood.

“What’s the matter, Cesare?” Clotilde asked, as he slumped in an armchair and asked for a glass of red wine. “You’re not your bubbly self tonight.”

“It’s my father,” Cesare Cortimiglia sighed.

She sat on the armrest. “What about him?”

“He keeps annoying me. He wants me to marry and make children, so our breed won’t die.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Clotilde asked.

“Getting married? No, not if one wants to. But I don’t want to. I need to be free.”

“Did you tell your father?”

“Sure I did. He said he’s going to disown me if I continue to spend my nights in the brothels. ‘I’m soiling the family name,’ he says.” He pondered a moment. “He’s obsessed with my marriage. Talks about it every day. It’s a nightmare.”

“Most people have worse problems than this, you know.”

“I guess,” he admitted. “But he did get on my nerves tonight.”

“I know exactly what you need to calm your nerves, darling,” Clotilde said, unbuttoning the front of her camisole.

“I have an idea,” Cesare said with a clever smile. “I’ll tell my father I want to marry you. He’ll have a heart attack, and I’ll be free to spend the rest of my life in the brothels.”

“Get over here,” Clotilde said, standing up and beginning to walk.

Cesare pushed himself out of the armchair and staggered after her past the green door. “What is the meaning of life?” he asked as they walked toward her cubicle.

Clotilde laughed loudly, then cupped her hand against his testicles. “This,” she said, squeezing, “is the meaning of life. But you know that already, dear.”

They had a second personal conversation a few months later, over a glass of anisette in the lounge of the Carena. It was Clotilde who spoke about herself on that occasion. “I’m getting old,” she said, “and I’m afraid. This”—she circled her hand about the room—“is all I know.”

“Have you thought about running a brothel rather than working in one?” Cesare asked after a moment.

“And how would I do that? I can’t even read or write.”

“You’re smart. You can learn.”

“Even if I learned,” Clotilde said with discouragement in her voice, “where would I find the money to take over a brothel?”

“You don’t need money to take over a brothel,” Cesare pointed out. “All you need is a loan.”

Clotilde gave him a dejected look. “Do you think there are bankers out there who give loans to prostitutes?”

“If they had a guarantor, they would. You find a business you want, and I’ll help you get it. Meanwhile, I’ll find you a tutor. To become a businesswoman, you must be able to read and write.”

“Why are you going through all this trouble for me?”

He took her hand. “My dear, you taught me all I know about love, and for that I’ll always be grateful. It’s my turn now to do something for you. But you take this seriously, the tutor and learning to read and write.”

“Of course I will,” Clotilde said excitedly.

Promptly, a tutor showed up at the Carena the following day and kept coming for Clotilde every morning at eight. As she had promised, Clotilde listened and practiced diligently until, two months later, she was able to read aloud without stuttering and write in black ink with fluid motions. “Congratulations,” Cesare told her one night, handing her a set of papers. “Here’s the loan for that Luna business you chose.” Clotilde nodded quietly with grateful eyes.

“I like your new name,” Cesare said when a few days later Clotilde told him she had decided to call herself Madam C. “It’s exotic. I’m already turned on.”

From then on, he never set foot in another brothel. He arrived at the Luna every evening around nine and spent most of the night there with Madam C, Angela, or any of the beautiful girls Madam C hired and personally trained. On the day Rosa was born, he sent Angela an immense bouquet of flowers. “He’s a good man,” Madam C said, as she laid the flowers on Angela’s bed.

“He’s the best,” Angela replied with a fading voice.

Changes came into Cesare’s life eleven years later. At thirty-nine, about the time his father had given up on the dream of a grand white wedding for his son, Cesare Cortimiglia met Maria Elena Cerutti, the twenty-year-old educated daughter of Enrico Cerutti, a wealthy man who had made his fortune in real estate and foreign trading. They married two months later, stunning everyone in town, most notably his peers, who had labeled Cesare Cortimiglia a confirmed bachelor, and the prostitutes, who couldn’t begin to imagine life without the client of their dreams. “You scoundrel,” Madam C said, slapping the white skin of his butt. “You figured out the meaning of life!”

There was a much simpler explanation for Cesare’s drastic change of mindset. During a day-long business meeting with high functionaries in Rome, he had had his very first taste of political power. At the end of the day, he had boarded the train back to Genoa in a state of inner frenzy, completely fascinated by those ruthless, influential men in much the same way he had been fascinated on the night of his eighteenth birthday by the power of physical love. It was on that train that he decided he would marry soon, as he couldn’t possibly rise to power as a bachelor with a double life, one as a businessman, one in the brothels.

He bid farewell to the brothels the night before the wedding with an erotic marathon at the Luna that would be talked about in the
caruggi
for years to come. There was music, dancing, and champagne
a gogo
. In his honor, Madam C made her bed with sheets of French linen, a white embroidered bedspread, and the plushest pillows she had been able to find. It was on that bed that the marathon took place, a flock of young girls coming and going, with the special participation, at certain times of the night, of the then seasoned Luz, Ortensia, and Matilda. Their good-byes lived up to the occasion. They pampered him with the most audacious erotic practices, including group sex and sex with each other. Before leaving, Luz hung around his neck a round amulet made of fish bones that women on her island gave as a wedding present to their brothers to bring about prosperity and fame; Ortensia gave him a card made of the finest parchment paper with a drawing on it of her moon-shaped birthmark; and Matilda left on the nightstand a tiny heart-shaped box filled with a lock of her hair. The last woman to savor Cesare’s body, at the crack of dawn, as he lay languidly in the wet and disheveled linen sheets, was, of course, his oldest and dearest friend, Madam C. They made love like maniacs, screaming and panting without restraint, and when an hour later Cesare Cortimiglia said with a deep sigh, “I can’t take this anymore. I’m exhausted,” Madam C broke into unstoppable tears.

“I never thought I’d live to hear this,” she sobbed, holding in hand Cesare’s limp penis.

Not everything had gone without a hitch that night. Among the girls scheduled to participate in the marathon was Margherita, on her very first week working at the Luna. She had entered Madam C’s room holding her big book of poetry, and as a naked Cesare stared at her from his horizontal position on the bed, she opened the book and read a passage from
Il Paradiso:

At the sound of Margherita’s voice, Cesare sat up straight. “What the hell is that?”

“Poetry,” Margherita replied softly. “I read it before making love.”

“Poetry?” he snapped. “Are you out of your mind?” he shouted. “I hate poetry! My teachers made me memorize it over and over in school.” He cupped his hands over his ears. “I can’t stand it!”

Madam C, who had heard everything from the sitting room, rushed in. “I’m so sorry, Cesare. Don’t you worry, Luz is here.” She turned to Margherita. “Go!”

Margherita left the room with a double dose of disappointment, for the failure of her poetry method and for having missed her only opportunity to be the lover of a man who was a legend in that part of town. Later, Madam C took Margherita aside. “Whatever got into your head?” she shouted. “Don’t you know that all he wants is sex? With no preliminaries and no afterthoughts. I should have sent you away with Rosa. That way, you could have read poetry all night long.”

Rosa, who was eleven years old at the time, had been shipped to Antonia’s house to spend the night so she wouldn’t hear the noises coming from the third floor or witness the coming and going of so many people. Madam C had told her that Antonia, who lived alone, wanted a friend over once in a while.

“Do you really live all by yourself?” Rosa had asked, surprised, as soon as she had stepped into Antonia’s apartment.

“I do now,” Antonia said. “I used to live with my siblings, but not anymore.”

Rosa, accustomed to living at the Luna with no less than ten people, felt sorry for Antonia at once. “Why did your siblings leave you here alone?” she asked.

“Now that you are older,” Antonia said in a grave voice, “I’ll tell you everything about my family.” She went on to tell Rosa the stories of her fifteen brothers and sisters: how some had died at a very young age, how others had run away from home and died afterward in catastrophic accidents or of terrible illnesses that had disfigured their faces. Over the course of the evening, she described the death of each sibling in great detail. The more gruesome the death, the deeper Antonia’s voice became. There was Camelia, whose body parts had fallen off one by one because of the plague, and her twin sister Miranda, who had closed her eyes and stopped breathing at the sight of Camelia’s crumbling body, so that everyone thought she was dead and they took her to the
lazzaretto
where they ended up burning her while she was still alive. “And you won’t believe this,” she said, brandishing a meat knife. “My brother Patrizio, the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, got the smallpox from his cow and died with ten holes in his face, each two centimeters deep.”