Costanza is a single mother from Messina with a degree in medicine and a specialization in anatomical pathology. Unemployed, she wins a competition for a one-year research fellowship at the University of Verona in paleopathology.
> Utterly ignorant of everything concerning the Holy Roman Empire, the *Signorie*, and pre-Columbian mummies, (...) the truth is that I am interested in this grant neither more nor less than as an ATM
. The novel presents itself as a historical mystery, very much in vogue today: archival and laboratory research carried out on human remains from the 1200s belonging to a high-ranking knight. In reality, there are three narrative strands that coexist uneasily. The dominant plotline concerns the experiences of a young mother: settling her daughter into a nursery school in Verona, her guilt toward the child—born of a casual encounter and forced to grow up without a father figure—and the search for the father (a wealthy Milanese architect) who, once tracked down, rekindles Costanza’s desires. It is a banal tale sustained by juvenile writing: it escapes monotonous ordinariness only when Costanza speaks of her erotic dreams,
> which cannot be told to anyone, not even to one of those psychotherapists obsessed with the unconscious mind’s subliminal messages
. A little courage, please! Dear Costanza, do not merely tell us that upon waking you are confused and bewildered; in any case, we shall turn to Patrizia Valduga:
> in this cursed dark night/I was assailed by a temptation/whose shame still lingers in my heart./I, so modest, so proper,/saw a man come softly toward me/and embrace my waist almost greedily;/another came, and with his hand/oh delicately he opened me;...
(From *La Tentazione*, 1985). The second narrative strand is more strictly a detective story. Starting from locks of red hair, Costanza and her colleagues trace their way back to Biancofiore, daughter of Frederick II, who lived in a French monastery where she purportedly extracted a perfume from roses, traces of which were identified in the human remains found in Verona. How did a princess of imperial rank—normally destined to be wed into houses advantageous for alliances—end up in a convent? The author imagines that Biancofiore was lame, and therefore useless for matrimonial purposes, and that she had furthermore fallen in love with a Guelph knight who betrayed Frederick II and was subsequently murdered. With the third narrative strand, we move to the 1200s, to the court of the Emperor and then to that of the Lord of Verona: the cruel Ezzelino. First, there is Selvaggia, a natural daughter of Frederick II, given in marriage to Ezzelino, who supposedly murdered her according to legend—though in reality, she died in childbirth. Then unfolds the sorrowful tale of Biancofiore, ultimately the protagonist of the detective plot.
How do these three narrative strands come together? It is difficult to say. Straining one’s imagination, one might say that Selvaggia and Biancofiore bear a slight resemblance to Costanza; still in love with her daughter’s rediscovered father, she too must accept that he is marrying another woman. Together, the three young women can do nothing but resign themselves to fate, accepting it:
> I will show no disappointment, I will show no disappointment. I will show no disappointment. (...) But inside I feel liquefied. My hidden hopes, liquefied. The small, great, draining infatuation, liquefied
.
The writing is far too puerile to support a plotless story, which would require an articulated style capable of lending depth to the characters and context.
Why not read it? It is simply too banal.
