Yet when we left the next day nothing had changed at all. We barely said a word to each other, and nothing happened to suggest there was any kind of understanding between us. As a young girl, I had always thought that an event of the kind we had experienced would transform two people, bring them closer or drive them apart forever. I now knew it was possible for neither of these things to happen. I huddled up, chilled inside my overcoat. I had not become a new person.

We arrived home at midday, and Felicetta was waiting for us at the gate. She was a little hunched woman with grey hair and sly, servile ways. The house, the garden, and Felicetta were just as I had imagined them. In the house nothing looked gloomy, as is often the way in old houses. It was roomy and light, with white curtains and cane chairs. Ivy and rose plants climbed on the walls and all along the fence.

Once Felicetta had given me the keys, stealing round the rooms behind me to show me every minute detail, I felt happy and ready to prove to my husband and everybody else that I was competent. I was not an educated woman and perhaps I was not very intelligent, but I did know how to keep a well-organized and orderly house. My aunt had taught me. I would apply myself diligently to this task and, in so doing, show my husband what I was really capable of.

That was how my new life started. My husband would spend the whole day away while I busied myself around the house, took care of lunch, made desserts and prepared jams; I also liked working in the vegetable garden with the male servant. Though I squabbled with Felicetta, I got on well with the male servant. When he tossed his hair back and winked at me, there was something in his wholesome face which made me smile. Sometimes I would go for long walks in the village and talk to the peasants. I asked them questions, and they asked me questions too. But when I came home in the evenings and sat down next to the majolica stove, I felt lonely; I missed my aunt and sister and wanted to be back with them again. I thought about the time when my sister and I would get ready for bed; I remembered our bedsteads, and the balcony looking over the road where we would sit and relax on Sundays.

One evening I started crying. All of a sudden my husband came in. He was pale and very tired. When he saw my dishevelled hair and tear-stained cheeks, he said to me, ‘What’s the matter?’ I stayed silent, my head lowered. He sat next to me and caressed me a little. ‘Are you sad?’ he asked. I nodded. He pressed me to his shoulder. Then all of a sudden he got up and went to lock the door. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while,’ he said. ‘I find it difficult, that’s why it’s taken me so long. Every day I’ve thought, ‘Today will be the day,’ and every day I’ve put it off; it was as if I was tongue-tied, I was scared of you. A woman who gets married is scared of her man, but she doesn’t realize how much a man is also scared of a woman; she has no idea how much. There are lots of things I want to talk to you about. If we can talk to each other, get to know each other bit by bit, then perhaps we can love each other, and we’ll no longer feel sad. When I saw you for the first time, I thought, ‘I like this woman, I want to love her, I want her to love me and help me, and I want to be happy with her.’ Perhaps it seems strange to you that I should need help, but that’s the way it is.’