‘Where?’ I whispered.

‘Over there,’ said the guard. ‘Sitting on the bench.’

The leaves rustled as he said these words; a woman stood up in the dark and started to walk on the gravel. On hearing her footsteps, I closed my eyes.

‘So she had come after all, had she?’ said the guard.

Without answering, I followed after the woman.

‘We’re closing!’ the guard shouted. ‘We’re closing!’

Shouting ‘We’re closing’, he disappeared amongst the trees.

I followed the woman out of the garden and through the streets of the city.

I followed after what had been the sound of her steps on gravel. Or you might say, rather, that I was guided by the memory of her footsteps. And it turned out to be a long walk, a long pursuit, now amidst the crowd, now along deserted pavements until, raising my eyes, I saw her for the first time, a passer-by, by the light of the last shop.

What I saw, actually, was her hair. Nothing else. And fearing that I would lose her, I started to run.

The city in these parts alternated between meadows and tall houses, dimly lit parks and lit-up funfairs, with the red eye of the gasworks in the background. Many times I asked: ‘Did she come this way?’

Everyone told me that they didn’t know.

But a mocking child came up, quickly, on roller-skates, and laughed.

‘Haah!’ she laughed. ‘I bet you’re looking for my sister.’

‘Your sister?’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s her name?’

‘I’m not telling you,’ the girl replied.

And again she laughed, doing a dance of death around me on her roller-skates.

‘Haah!’ she laughed.

‘Then tell me where she is,’ I said.

‘Haah!’ laughed the girl. ‘She’s in a doorway.’

She skated her dance of death around me again for a moment, then sped off up the endless avenue, laughing.

‘She’s in a doorway,’ she called back from afar, still laughing.

The doorways were all occupied by abject couples, but I arrived at one that was abandoned and empty. The door opened when I pushed it. I went up the stairs and began to hear someone crying.

‘Is it her crying?’ I asked the concierge.

This old woman was sitting asleep, halfway up the stairs with her rags in her hand – and she woke up and looked at me.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Do you want the lift?’

I did not want it, I wanted to go to where the crying was, and I continued to climb the stairs between the black, wide-open windows. I finally came to where the crying was, behind a white door. I went in, felt her close to me and turned on the light.

But I saw no one in the room, and heard nothing more. And yet there, on the sofa, was the handkerchief, damp with her tears.

‘Nome e lagrime’

First published in the magazine Corrente (31 October 1939). It then became the title of Vittorini’s first novel, published by Parenti in 1941, and then, the same year, by Bompiani as Conversazione in Sicilia.