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living as a maid in several of Genoa’s wealthy households. Shortly after Roberto’s confirmation with Berilli e Figli , Concetta was hired as a kitchen maid in the household of Michelangelo Tassani, the owner of a fleet of cargo ships. On her first day on the job, Concetta made a point of letting the rest of the Tassani’s kitchen staff know that she was about to marry, and marry well, and she’d no longer be working after the wedding, not as a maid or anything else, because she’d be marrying Alessandro Passalacqua, the brother of a famous lawyer with a prestigious position at Berilli e Figli . The news of Concetta’s wedding plans didn’t take long to find its way out of the kitchen quarters. The first cook told the chambermaid, the chambermaid told the dining maid, and the dining maid told the butler. Then the butler told the neighbors’ butler, who told his sister, who told her cousin, who was married to Arcangelo Rossi, barman at the courthouse. In the morning, Arcangelo told Concetta’s story to Marco Costello, the clerk in charge of filing at Berilli e Figli , when Marco went to see him around ten o’clock for his cappuccino. By noon, the news of Concetta’s wedding plans had filtered through the walls of Berilli e Figli , traveling from room to room at the speed of a frightened hare until it reached Giuseppe’s ears early that very same afternoon. He darted into Umberto’s office.
    “Did you hear?” he screamed. “I told you we shouldn’t hire him! I knew it that hiring against our traditions would be a mistake! You insisted. You and your democratic ideas. I can’t believe I listened! What do we do now? How do we deal with this embarrassment?”
    Umberto stood from his chair. He spoke calmly, with the soothing voice he always used when he attempted to calm his father’s fury. “I can see that this matter could cause us some embarrassment—”
    “Some embarrassment?” Giuseppe shouted. “One of our lawyers becoming the brother-in-law of a Sicilian maid? The maid of one of our most prominent, long-standing clients? I say it’s one of the biggest embarrassments we have had to endure since the day your grandfather started this legal institution! What do you think the story of this maid will do for the firm’s name? Everyone’s talking about it! This gossip is never going to stop!”
    Umberto was forced to admit his mistake. “You’re right, father. What can we do to contain the damage?”
    “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll tell that Passalacqua of yours that he’s finished here. That’s what I’ll do.”
    At the end of the working day, Roberto was summoned to Giuseppe’s large, dark, intimidating office, where Giuseppe fired him using a few standard words of dismissal. He told Roberto that business was slow, but Roberto and everyone else knew that the real and only reason for his dismissal was the maid.
    Roberto walked home that evening in a state of confusion that turned into uncontrollable rage once he told his parents that he had been fired on account of Alessandro’s engagement to Concetta.
    “Those damn snobs!” he screamed in the family kitchen. “Who do they think they are, those Berillis? Nothing but a bunch of arrogant, pompous bigots!”
    Roberto’s mother, a short tiny woman with a hairy mole on her chin, sat in tears at the kitchen table. “How could they do this to us?”
    Roberto’s father slammed his fist on the table. “Damn it! I always say it that someone from the working class should take over this city and sweep away all the dirt in it, once and for all. It won’t end here, you can be sure. We’ll show the Berillis who the Passalacquas are and what they can do!”
    The matter of Roberto’s dismissal from Berilli e Figli ended instead there and then. It took Roberto all his strength of character and willpower to get over it, but after a few days went by, he managed to convince himself and his bellicose father that nothing they did would change the