Petrù arrived in the evening with three large suitcases, wearing a cloth overcoat and felt hat, just like a gentleman. He was the same only much more pale, almost angry, like a living person coming out of a tomb. As for the rest, he hadn’t changed. It was him, with his broad, squared-off shoulders, one slightly lower than the other, and his slow walk.

When he came in he embraced his wife, then threw his hat on the bed just like he’d used to toss his cap.

“So, Venera?” he exclaimed looking around.

The terrified woman couldn’t unknot her tongue. She felt she was dreaming. It seemed that eight years were only eight days and that her husband had never left home. He walked around the room with a sleepy look, as though he were looking for something, as though he didn’t feel he was in his own house.

“Do you want something to eat?” Venera finally asked.

“Yes, I’m hungry.”

Venera knelt down in front of the clean fireplace. She lit the fire and blew forcefully, getting red up to her eyes from the heat and emotion. One moment it seemed that her husband had always been there, at that hour, waiting for his dinner; the next she was trying to make sense that he’d even returned and that from here on out she would have to live together with him. Petrù tasted the soup, then pushed the plate away.

“Don’t you like it? Oh … that’s right, now that you’ve become a gentleman …”

“I haven’t become a gentleman. I’m sick,” responded Petrù.

Venera stared back at him. There was a streak of gray in his thick hair.

“At least … at least you made your fortune?” she ventured.

“Fortune!”

“You were gone for so long! You would have been better off coming home sooner.”

“That much is true. Better than coming back now, old, poor, and sick.”

Venera heard only one word, and she repeated it, taken aback.

“Poor?”

“Poor, absolutely, like the worst of beggars.” He followed his own intimate reasoning that Venera couldn’t grasp. Looking at her coldly, he said: “Don’t make such a face. We’ll have enough to get by.”

They didn’t say anything else because they had nothing more to say to one another. What had gone on in the past and what each of them carried in their hearts like a weight, no, that they could never confess. And they hadn’t yet had time to find something in common that might unite their lives.

Venera washed the dishes in a corner by the fireplace. While her husband got into bed, she lined up the small chairs against the wall. Then she walked around the room for awhile, unsure of what to do, and finally began to undress slowly.