But Aunt Vanna wouldn’t hear of it. So Marietta proposed to her sister: “At least you go out….”

There was a faint tone of annoyance in her voice, but Caterina replied happily,

“What for? I’d rather keep you company.”

Neither one feared in the slightest that their cloistered life would begin again. Marietta put herself to bed in Aunt Vanna’s room, where there was more air. Dr. Saitta, who had cared for their mother, was called, and the frail girl’s new bedroom was kept dark and smelling of turpentine, just as their mother’s room had been kept for months.

Caterina, who was only rarely allowed to enter, would stop in the hallway completely dismayed, listening to every sound, taking in every word, begging them to let her sit at her sick sister’s side.

It was a repetition of those sad, faraway days, an eternal nightmare that hung in the air and that ended very slowly.

One evening the pungent odor of fresh flowers and lighted candles veiled the scent of turpentine, and through the open windows one could hear the mournful ringing of funeral bells…. Like that, little by little, Marietta slipped away.

• • •

Caterina’s heart shattered, worse than when her mother had died. She didn’t cry. And when the time came for the consòlo, and she was there wrapped up shivering in her shawl between her sobbing aunts, she didn’t cry, but she wasn’t quiet either. She rambled feverishly, with eyes that were distraught and wide open; she spoke as if her sister were still there, in the next room.

The female visitors were appalled, judging her grief insufficient. But her father, from his corner, stared at her worriedly, and as soon as they were able, her aunts whispered to her, squeezing her hand, “Be brave … just let it out … cry … it will be better.”

After the three days of official bereavement had passed, the household settled into strict mourning: the windows were shut tightly, with only those that looked onto the courtyard left slightly open. Although it was September, the rooms were soon so cold that the servant prepared the foot-warmers.

Caterina finally did cry, the first time she set foot in the workroom. She wept, seeing herself seated in front of a place that would always remain empty. She sobbed when she found Marietta’s sewing in the basket.

Then she composed herself. She went around the house gathering up everything that had belonged to Marietta: every piece of unfinished work that no one would ever take up again; every object, even her purse, her mass book, her thimble. Everywhere things appeared: here an apron that was hanging; there a tortoiseshell comb. In bed her sister used to pull up her hair, making her look like a little girl again.