And so as Vanna prepared her trunk, they became indignant, insisting that she was in too much of a rush to leave, that no one was forcing her out. They said these things mostly to persuade themselves, since all of them knew they had been too hard on that poor creature, who had only come back to her father’s house looking for a measure of love.

Vanna responded sweetly. “It’s better that he finds me ready. He won’t stay long, you’ll see. And besides, what’s the point of putting things off when we have to say good-bye?”

When no one was looking, she placed some rosebuds from her terrace in among her undergarments. It was something at least, from the places of her past, places that might also change before too long.

She tried to comfort Maria. “You’ll see,” she said, “I’ll be better behaved in the future, and my luck will change after this.”

She truly hoped so. Now that she felt herself being pushed out of her father’s house, she could only cling to her husband. Waiting for him, she forced herself to remember him in his good moments so as to find some reason to believe in the future.

And now, almost impatient for him to arrive, she begged first her father and then her brothers to put a good face on things. The night he arrived she insisted that at least Luigi go to meet him.

He made a wonderful impression on Remigia and Viola, who had not yet made his acquaintance. His black well-trimmed moustache, the monocle he carried attached to a gold chain, his light-colored suit, everything about him pleased the two women, who, without intending to, compared him to Luigi and Nenè, stuffed into their comfortable clothes made of rough, checkered material.

He had no sooner entered the room than he began to explain, as though it were indispensable, that he’d been to the Argentine Theater to hear a celebrated actress who had returned from La Mèrica and that he’d written an article critical of a Milanese lawyer who was in fierce competition with him.

He spoke with emphasis and affectation, almost as if he weren’t addressing relatives, but rather a group of friends gathered together for a brief moment. He seemed to have forgotten the point of his long trip, and he made the others forget, too. Yet if his gaze met that of his wife’s, it would turn hard and cold. And then a painful trembling that ran from her head to her toes seized Vanna.

“Yes,” he said as he made his way to the “cat’s room” to get cleaned up, “being in charge of a newspaper means having weapons at your disposal.”