Because of their move to Paris, as well as her happiness, Serafina’s figure had returned to a more youthful appearance and she wore her favorite dress, a deep French blue with organdy flounces for the occasion. Loffredo was Loffredo, gorgeous as always in formal attire. To celebrate the longest day of the year, they had invited the Valois family and Levi Busacca, the first dinner guests in their new home, although Busacca had visited on prior occasions and stayed for tea. An old man, aging rapidly after the death of his daughter, he accepted the invitation with pleasure but stated he’d leave soon after the meal. Except for Carlo, the whole family would be together. And Rosa and Tessa, of course.
Serafina hadn’t seen Giulia or Carmela since the afternoon of their arrival nearly a month ago. As she stared at the glass above the mantel, she couldn’t help thinking of Oltramari and Carlo. No word from him, but it was too soon for his reply to the letter they’d written two weeks ago, all of them penning something. She fought the churning pit in her stomach. Perhaps her oldest son had been right. She should have paid Don Tigro his protection money. It was the idea of payment for no services rendered that she found abhorrent, and Loffredo agreed. She couldn’t pay him, wouldn’t do it. But it was also the visit to Paris that drew her away from the increasingly meager joy that life in Oltramari had become.
The mystery surrounding Elena Busacca’s death and disappearance was over as far as the police were concerned. Not to Serafina, however. The absence of one truth continued to nag. “I need to ask him a few questions tonight. I hope you don’t mind.”
As soon as the press got wind of it, the news of Etienne Gaston’s arrest for the murder of a streetwalker made the front page of La Presse. Parisians wallowed in the story for two weeks.
“He was a minor figure with some following, a scholar, known to university professors and the Academie des Sciences perhaps, but he wasn’t generally known by the public,” Loffredo said, “until the journalists got hold of him. They blew him up into a personality, aggrandizing his importance.”
“You mean those inky fingers created Gaston out of newsprint,” Serafina said.
“Precisely. Turned him into someone the public loved to hate. People swore they’d followed his career for years, although a month ago he was unheard of. It was brave of Valois to imprison him.”
“The inspector found it distasteful, I could tell by the way he held his mouth,” Serafina said. “But I’ve grown fond of Alphonse.”
Some of the lesser papers gave juicier accounts of Gaston’s affair with Elena. Others treated it as a cautionary tale, mentioning Elena Busacca’s disappearance and her role in falsifying her own death, her life as a demimonde, her rapid dissolution, and her ultimate suicide.
“When Tarnier told me why he treated her, I knew she was doomed,” Loffredo said. His eyes roamed the walls looking for comfort, finding it, she hoped, in her eyes. They kissed.
“Weren’t you frightened? I mean, she was your wife.” Serafina had longed to ask Loffredo whether he worried about his own physical wellbeing but was afraid. If in a moment of loneliness, he and Elena had taken comfort in each other-only natural, they were after all husband and wife-then Elena may have passed on a disease that might mean her own demise. But Serafina believed there were areas of a person that should remain private even in a marriage, and she wouldn’t invade that part of Loffredo, not ever. She had no hesitation about asking her children anything, their most secret thoughts, for instance, but that was another matter.
“I was frightened for her, not for me. She was my wife in name only. We never… I couldn’t manage to…”
“Not even on your wedding night?”
He shook his head.
“You mean you were celibate all that time until we began to…?”
He nodded. “Over twenty years.”
Serafina felt the hot stirring of her blood. She dabbed her forehead with a linen, not daring to touch him. She consulted her watch. Their guests would be here any minute. Best to fan herself and change the subject.
She rose and kissed the top of his head, contenting herself with drawing a circle round his ear. Lest she take a deeper step in that direction from which there’d be no return, she strolled into the dining room where the table had been set with linen, silver, crystal, and Limoges.
Rosa had settled in. By now she knew half the arrondissement. Her afternoon gatherings were quite the thing, and not just for their tea and delicate sweets. A growing number of guests frequented her apartment to be entertained and to be seen. They listened to her talk with hushed attention, some adding a salacious detail or two they’d picked up, but all realizing that Rosa, with her first-hand knowledge of the more sordid details of society-the Busacca incident for one-had little compunction in telling her tales.
How their lives had changed. Serafina and her family were used to sitting at a plain round table in a familiar setting, the kitchen in their home in Oltramari. But she looked around at the opulence of the dining room, its polished mahogany table, the crystal chandelier suspended high above it, the shiny parquet floors that Toto loved to slide on, the oriental carpets, the damask drapes, and began to feel at home.
Their expenses were far greater here than in Oltramari and she knew they’d increase, but that didn’t seem to bother Loffredo who managed the ledger now that Vicenzu worked for Busacca. In the fall there’d be schooling for Toto and they must engage a femme savante dedicated to Maria’s non-musical education. And of course they’d need more servants-Assunta couldn’t keep the apartment by herself. So Rosa who’d made friends with all of the building’s residents, found Serafina an out of work butler, a parlor maid, and a young maid to help out in the kitchen.
Through Rosa’s new butler, Jacques, they’d found a music teacher for Maria, one who would prepare her for entry into the Paris Conservatory where she would study piano and composition. The school was located in the ninth arrondissement, one of the first conservatories in the world to admit females, but it was a long trek for a ten-year old. Loffredo had taken her there every day, walking with her along the Seine until they reached the Tuileries, then northeast to the far corner of the ninth arrondissement where Maria would stare at the building that housed her new passion. The move had been good for Maria, Loffredo told Serafina. She was no longer a queen bee, but just one of thousands with musical talent, determined to make her way. Soon she knew the route by heart, and they’d take shortcuts and detours, roaming the streets, nodding to the neighborhood, but Maria would always find her way to Rue du Conservatoire. “Closed for the year,” Loffredo told her the first time they’d found it, but he told Maria to imagine the students filing in and out. She told him she could feel the longing in her fingers. Mornings and afternoons she practiced on the grand piano in the second-floor ballroom, never tempted by the breathtaking view of Paris.
But there were moments when Serafina thought they’d made a mistake moving to Paris, a few times when she’d lain awake tossing, turning, smelling again in her mind the charred remains of the apothecary shop or the sweet fragrance of the public gardens. And she’d have a few pangs of regret even in the sumptuous parks of Paris when she’d listening in vain for the sounds of her native tongue on the boulevards and streets. Then the longing for her native land took her breath away and she’d have to sit.
Last week when she began planning the meal, Renata had asked for Serafina’s help with the menu, the wine list, and the seating.
The seating was the easiest part, Serafina told her, “Loffredo and I at either end, seven on each side. We’ll begin with Loffredo’s right where we must seat Busacca.”
Renata nodded and began drawing a diagram. “Opposite Busacca, we must put Vicenzu, and next to him, Carmela.”
“Perfect,” Serafina declared. “Let’s put Teo and Arcangelo close to Busacca as well. He’s a man with many connections in this town.”