The Veil

By Gian Luca Caffarena

THE VEIL

About the Author and His Work

Gian Luca Caffarena lives and works as a journalist and writer in Turin. He was born and spent his formative years in the port city of Genoa, whose streets and society provide the backdrop for his works of fiction.

The Veil is dynastic noir which traces the waning wealth, influence, and status of a powerful, industrial, Catholic family during the twentieth century. The bourgeois values and moral integrity of the family, underpinned by a strong faith in the ethos of hard work, deference, and tradition, are threatened by social unrest, political protest and the degeneracy of members of its own younger generation. A series of ambiguous deaths leads to the veil of euphemisms and half-truths being lifted to reveal what is hidden below. The religious fervour, convention and decorum of high Genovese society are forced to confront the misery and squalor of the city's poorest and most ancient quarters. Ultimately, the veil falls away to reveal an unimagined reality.

Translation by Tammy Ann Corkish

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Release date: Oct 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9791221427929

Book preview

I

The autumn of 1980 was damp and rainy. Massimiliano, commonly known as Max, and Maria Olivari had moved several kilometres away from Genoa to stay for a short time at their country residence near Savignone. The so called ‘Villa’ was a solid eighteenth century turreted palace of three floors and uncertain style, symbolising generations of wealth and continuity. It was here that the fifty-year-old Maria, in the bosom of her religious faith, unexpectedly left this world, after a few days of agony caused by fulminant hepatitis. It was a Friday, the 24th of October.

Max, having consulted with their son Rodolfo, decided that rather than move the departed to their Genoese residence in Corso Magenta, it was best to prepare a room in the Villa for the laying out, a choice inspired by the profound moral values and ties of affection represented by the beloved family home, itself an embodiment of familial loyalty and cohesion for so many close and distant relatives. Afterwards the loved one’s mortal remains would be brought to the city for the funeral rites, to be finally entombed in the family chapel located in the monumental necropolis of Staglieno.

Consequently the exposition of the deceased, among bright candelabras and black drapery, was consummated on the second floor of the Villa in the room with stained glass windows, normally reserved for celebratory dinners, birthdays, wedding banquets and christenings; where the entire family would periodically gather, among abundantly filled serving dishes and fine architecture, putting aside smouldering atavistic feuds to reassert the old order and find once more in such opulence the common pride of a lasting and renowned splendour.

Maria lay behind a screen in a severe velvet dress with a lace collar over which was positioned an oval cameo: it was commented that she was démodé in death as in life. The murmurs of veiled women spread through the rooms like a monotonous lullaby, along the polished corridors, up and down the marble staircases, through the walls and around the friezes of the vaulted ceilings.

Max roamed lost through these spaces. His imposing figure and thin face were those of his father: the same marked features, the same haughty elegance. Finding himself so abruptly widowed, scenes of previous sorrows, recent and distant, came to his mind, beginning with the loss of his mother Ida, who many years before had passed away from a terrible illness. Now it was his turn, as heir to an ancient tradition, to greet the crowds of contrite mourners flowing through the Villa.

Among the first was Monsignor Guido, a prelate with close connections to His Eminence, intimate friend of poor Maria and faithful spiritual advisor to the whole family. He embraced Max and Rodolfo, then, consolingly shaking hands with those around him, quietly offered words of solidarity: I bring the blessing of the Archbishop. Let us grieve together. Maria is here with us.

Max was pleased to kiss the fresh face of his younger sister Gemma. His sister-in-law Egle, widow of Attilio known to everyone as Titti gave her condolences. Having arrived precipitously from Forte dei Marmi, she was dressed for the occasion in a simple suit of classic navy. Her figure, more pleasing than beautiful, was normally draped in more revealing attire. She had a habit of affecting an air of worldly exuberance mixed with vanity which saddened Monsignor Guido; but on this occasion her demeanour was as serious as the circumstances dictated, although a coiffured golden curl had strategically escaped onto her forehead.

More relatives and friends arrived; nieces and nephews, cousins by blood and by marriage; some had been close, others less so, making them difficult to identify given the intricately twisted genealogical tree. Above sombre neckties floated well-fed faces. The head of the family, Max’s father the patriarchal Cesare, was not present. His pretty second wife Clara, always diligent about his health, had deemed his heart too weak to bear yet another wake.

Everyone gathered in the austerely decorated Red Room: where, among rustic scenes of the Macchiaioli School, the portrait of the family’s progenitor Carlo Alberto held dominion from an enormous canvas that, with dense brushstrokes, exalted the determined features of the ancestral seafarer, whose contribution to the supremacy of Genoa on the seas was unquestionable. Tales of his great fortune and daring commercial ventures in Asia and the Americas proliferated: genuensis, ergo Mercator - Genovese therefore merchant. His effigies, present in infinite varieties in all the family’s factories, offices and homes, embodied a tacit reluctance to delve too deeply into the origins of his riches.

The Villa was beginning to buzz with numerous quiet conversations giving it an air of familiarity. Naturally, the signora would be sorely missed. The priest spoke of her as an invincible heroine of the Faith. There was a degree of speculation about her sudden and premature demise. Her religious fervour, it was well known, had always been employed for the good of the family and the Corporation, and her charitable acts, fortitude and devotion to domestic matters were unsurpassed.

Prompted by her mother little Ludovica, niece of Ottonello the notary, recited an edifying and solemn poem she had learned from the devout sisters of Madri Dorotee: shyness forced an error which made her blush, but she was immediately reassured by her indulgent listeners.

Rodolfo, by now a young manager, spoke with emotion of his mother’s last days. Pressed by those surrounding him and provoking some envy in certain cousins, he also gave a brief overview of his experiences in the family companies and the various plans for expansion favoured by recent financial developments.

The elderly prelate, in a low voice and apprehensive tone, acquainted his listeners with the initiatives of His Holiness John Paul II regarding the nascent unrest in the East. Cigars were lit, whilst the men began to comment on the uncertainties of international and Italian politics, expressing doubt about the prospects of the government and for the stock market. Groups of women exchanged small talk and gossip and Gemma circulated with refreshments. Max’s blonde sister-in-law lauded a camel coat she had seen in the window of Pescetto: A very modern cut, and not even that expensive. In short, although discreet, the murmur of chatter grew louder, while in the next room, the dirge of Hail Marys reached crescendo mingling the sacred and profane into a single sonorous hum.

Max stopped his uneasy walking back and forth, smoothed his fair and well-trimmed moustache and pushed his fists into his jacket pockets, his habit when in need of courage. Cautiously he opened a gap in the semicircle of rosary clutching women and approached the cold lifeless form of Maria: in lamplight the pallor and rigidity of death did not strike him as being any different from her pallor and rigidity in life. Her full lips could not soften her hard features.

Born in Repetto Maria Olivari came from a military family; her father Ruggero being a bemedalled navy captain. As a girl she had been beautiful but endless liturgies and the seriousness of family life had extinguished her zest and vivacity, reducing her by a slow metamorphosis into a sterile and neutral figure. Physical relations with her husband, always rare and devoid of pleasure, had ceased many years ago. She had been famous for the reprimands she gave the housemaids, jealous of their young rustic vitality. Nor could you forget the mystic crises of the deceased and her pilgrimage to Fatima where, after interminable meditations, she was transfixed by a prolonged ecstasy, almost a sublimated orgasm, although it was never clear what the two Marias had said to each other.

Since then, dark obsessions with damnation had begun to torment her and what previously had seemed commonplace albeit impassioned piety, became visionary delirium: the Latin angelus three times a day, penitent fasting, the repudiation of her body which she increasingly covered in veils and dark shawls. Her obsession with the irremediable conflict between Good and Evil was transformed into tirades against the laxness of the times, in particular against certain shamelessly devious courtesans present in supposedly irreproachable institutions and families, who were destined to burn in Hell. Her domestic exactitude was legendary and her fury knew no bounds when dishes and cutlery were not laid with symmetrical harmony on lace tablecloths. There were bolts of lightning every time Rodolfo was caught reading the Espresso, with its images of half-dressed young women. Then there were dress codes and her archaic ways of speech: in the salon she preferred to dress in funereal garments and even her elderly guests found her vocabulary outdated, like the ornaments arranged about the room.

But now, observing her with greater attention and pity, Max’s impressions of his wife’s body softened, and in the white mask of death he noticed a gentler femininity which sweetened her features and gave her a more serene expression. Her habitual tension was placated and a fold, in her mysteriously languid mouth seemed to suggest traces of sweetness. In life a strenuous defender of faith, property and family, Maria was now at peace in solemn inertia. Torn by contrasting emotions, the widower admitted that a grande signora had passed.

Maria’s final days had been excruciating, she had suffered from trembling fits during which she muttered disconnected words, and spasmodic invocations to God and man; sometimes she managed a few indecipherable and febrile phrases. The family doctor, the elderly professor Parodi, specialist in internal medicine, good friend and a luminary in his field, had spread his arms in a gesture of fatalism. Given the type of virus Maria had contracted, he had been curious as to how she was infected. She had often visited the sick, in hospital and at home, where she may have come into contact with toxic substances or infected biological fluids. For obvious reasons sexual transmission was ruled out and soon all clinical hypotheses were redundant as the disease progressed rapidly, from raspingly drawn breaths and violent tremors to the oil with which Monsignor Guido anointed the patient’s forehead and palms. After three harrowing days, her anguish resolved in an immense shudder: a prolonged and sensual sob that told of torments more vital than life, a synthesis and conclusion to the cycle of Maria’s life.

Her room had been closed immediately so that her body could be undressed, washed and redressed according to her own instructions. She had stipulated that the task fall to Santina, a nurse and other pious women. Max opened her door once to be rudely chased away: Out! Out! But in that brief moment, he had caught a glimpse of firm nudity on the unmade bed, fair and almost youthful, a body carefully laid to rest: her form seemed less inert than softly abandoned. It disturbed Max as in the course of his less than jubilant married life, he had never been permitted to enjoy such a vision.

Max remembered voices of women and children echoing through rooms now full of mourning, games in the park and breathless races up the cast iron spiral staircase in the turret.

Thankfully, his father had not come to pay his respects: in a few short years the patriarch had lost his son Titti, and his son-in-law Edoardo or Edy, Gemma’s husband, who truth be told, had never been warmly welcomed. Both had died in cruel and ambiguous circumstances. There had been enough mourning.

Scenes from the past superimposed themselves onto those before him: he remembered Rodolfo as a child climbing onto the big brown leather armchair and playing with boisterous companions; next to the big fireplace a young Egle imitating Marilyn Monroe, all sequins, legs and teasing giggles, seduced Titti. He remembered the patriarchal Cesare, energetic and gallant, carving the turkey, or playing tombola, whilst recalling his youth in the time of Mussolini; the wretched Edoardo playing the dark, handsome hero with poor unfortunate Gemma; in the corner, between one door and another, the servant girls laughed and whispered.

All those decades, all those voices, all those highs and lows of business and sentiment. In the blackened vaults of the ceilings the nereids and mermen seemed to have absorbed the density of time.

The women finally finished their vigil and took their leave. Towards evening a sepulchral silence fell upon the house. The coffin was carried to the hearse. Max and his son returned to the city with the servants. The dark, massive Villa was empty.

The next day, under a dark, heavy autumnal sky, the funeral procession moved slowly and solemnly to the Cathedral where the service was conducted by His Eminence in person before a crowd of relatives, friends and curious strangers. Amongst the rituals of Mass and chants in Latin, the coffin lay in the central nave. Egle was next to Max, Rodolfo and Gemma in the first row of pews, her black dress contrasting the whiteness of her skin; pale and veiled, she managed to sparkle even in mourning.

Beside the city’s dignitaries, were the Corporation’s managers, representatives from collaborators, important employees and even one or two of the lowly workers. More embraces, commiserations, too many wreaths, too much incense, the smell of the church, the muted rays of light through sacred glass.

Then there was the interment at Staglieno, the monumental City of the Dead, where for centuries the Gothic Olivari chapel had welcomed family members passing to a better life; beginning with the progenitor Carlo Alberto, whose martial