my house!” yelled Margherita’s father once Aunt Genia had explained the situation to him. “Seducing a priest? Our family is disgraced!”
It would take Margherita years to rid herself of the memories of the priest and her unforgiving father. Her love for poetry remained, together with another heritage of her church days: in the peace of the centuries-old library, breathing the pungent perfumes of incense and burning candles, she had learned to associate a man’s touch and display of pleasure with the words of illustrious poets. She could never undo that association. At the Luna, before undressing, she read twelve lines of poetry to her clients. The only place where she could read or write poetry was the brothel. Some of the Luna clients avoided her; others were bewitched. Those who were bewitched loved her routine: she kept incense and candles burning in her room; she had the man lie on the bed fully clothed and with his eyes closed; she sat on the floor, by the bed, her leather-bound book open to a chosen page. Then she read, and as she slowly whispered the twelfth line, she ran a soft hand over the man’s mouth.
That afternoon in the parlor Margherita had been choosing the poetry she would read later on, during that night’s celebration. She stood up and walked toward Madam C, realizing only then that she had smelled an unusual fragrance herself, all day long, in various rooms of the Luna. Meanwhile, a second Luna girl, Stella, appeared at the top of the stairs, her only clothing a shiny blue petticoat. She came down in lazy steps, dragging her feet. “Someone woke up,” Rosa said, glancing at Stella from the stool.
“Barely,” Stella yawned as she reached the parlor and headed for the counter at the north wall. She poured anisette in a stemmed glass, then dipped her lips in the liquor and grazed them with the tip of her tongue.
“Don’t you two smell a strange odor in this room?” Madam C asked.
Margherita shrugged. “Maybe.”
“It must be the wind,” Stella said, setting her elbows on the counter and her chin on her cupped hands. The wind had been blowing since dawn, steadily with sudden gusts, as it often does along the coast of Liguria, enraging the sea and coating the streets with dampness. It was a southwesterly wind, the libeccio.
“The libeccio smells like wet paper,” Madam C said, shaking her head. “This odor reminds me of apples.”
Stella spoke in the grave voice she reserved for her worst omens. “When the libeccio blows, bad things happen.”
Madam C shook her head again. “You and your superstitions.”
“Scoff all you want,” Stella said. “That’s the way it is.”
By the window, Margherita pushed aside the flowered curtain that hid the parlor from the street. “The libeccio blows for three days,” she said, looking outside, “and drives everyone crazy.”
“This hair is driving me crazy,” Madam C said, pulling down the comb stuck in Rosa’s hair.
“Ouch!” Rosa yelped again.
“Don’t complain, Princess Rosa,” Margherita said with a smile. “It’s your big day. I can’t believe you’re sixteen!”
“Does that mean you’re going to treat me like a woman?” Rosa asked, straightening her neck and stretching her legs to touch the floor.
Madam C slapped her softly on the head. “No.”
Smoothly, Rosa stood up and twirled around, making a pinwheel of her topaz-colored pleated skirt of gabardine. “Look at me. Do I look like a child?”
Rosa had looked nothing like a child for the past eight months. At the onset of fall, as the haze of summer had faded, letting in clearer and crisper air, her breasts had sprouted in a hurry, putting to test her corsets; her torso had taken the shape of an hourglass; her facial features had softened; and her slate-blue eyes had turned aquamarine. Everyone had caught sight of Rosa’s changes: Madam C, the Luna girls, and the men and women in the street, who had begun to take notice of Rosa when she walked by. No one had ever spoken of those changes on any occasion. As for Rosa, it was common belief at the Luna that she had only vague notions of her body. They had explained to her when she was little that what men and women did at the Luna was a game, like the one the Romero kids played with three cards out in the street, except that at the Luna the girls were much smarter than the boys and the boys always lost their bets. No one had ever revised that explanation.
“No,” Margherita said. “You don’t look like a child today.”
“Well, then,” Rosa said, “let me do it.”
Madam C looked at her with hard eyes. “We went over this already, and the answer is no.”
With a pout, Rosa sat back on the stool.
“There goes that smell again,” Madam C said, sniffing around. She placed her nose on Rosa’s hair. “Is that you, Rosa?”
Hands on her hips, Rosa said, “Maybe.”
Stella came over from the counter, and she and Margherita sniffed Rosa’s hair three times. “I think it is Rosa,” Stella said after a moment. “How did you get this smell on you?”
“I’ll tell you if you let me do it,” Rosa said, looking Stella in the eyes.
Margherita rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “How did she get so stubborn?”
Rosa shrugged.
“She didn’t take after her mother,” said Madam C. “Angela was a sweetheart.”
“Then she must have taken after her father,” Stella stated with a half smile.
Pursing her lips, Madam C gave Stella a stare. “Who has the guest list for tonight?” she asked.
“I bet her father was a sailor,” Margherita said with dreamy eyes, “who fought storms and sharks and giant whales, and that’s why she’s so stubborn.”
Stella pushed up Rosa’s chin with her index finger. “No way. With this delicate profile, I bet Rosa’s father was a prince. Well, a marquis at least. British.”
“A British marquis? Don’t get your hopes high, girl,” said a laughing Maddalena, the latest addition to the Luna, walking in from the street with a rectangular cardboard box kept closed by a ribbon of pink organzine. “With that shine on your skin and that crazy hair of yours, you have Gypsy blood, like me.” Turning to Madam C, she added, “And there’s a man outside, who wants to come in.”
“Not today,” Madam C said, reaching for a piece of paper with the words Closed for Private Party written on it. “Hang this on the door, Maddalena, and send him away.” She stood still in the middle of the parlor. “This odor…”
“He was a British marquis,” Stella said. “I know it.”
“Let’s drop the topic, please,” Madam C ordered in a dry voice. “Get the rest of the girls down here.” She clapped her hands. “Let’s go.”
Stella didn’t move. “It’s not a good day for Rosa’s birthday party.”
Everybody said, “Why?”
“It’s Friday,” Stella explained, “and last night I had a bad dream.”
“Enough of this witch talk!” Madam C snapped, raising her voice.
Rosa stood up and bowed. “We’re having the party, and my father was a British marquis who sailed around the world and then joined the Gypsies. Happy?”
She had spoken jokingly, but with a tinge of sadness in her eyes. The discussions about her father were not forbidden in that house, though they were normally carried out upstairs, in the girls’ rooms and the corridor, and never when Madam C was in sight. But on that day of mid-April, between the bewitching howls of the libeccio and the excitement for the upcoming party, the tongues of the Luna girls were restless.
“What you call witch talk,” Stella said, “is mere precaution. Dreams come for a reason. And in my dream