In the end, I stopped venturing beyond the confines of our garden. I was pregnant, and I had become big and heavy. I sat in the garden sewing, and everything around me was calm; the plants were rustling and giving out shadows, the male servant hoed the vegetable garden, and Felicetta went back and forth in the kitchen polishing the copper. Sometimes I would think with amazement about the child that would be born. He belonged to two people who had nothing in common, who had nothing to say to each other and who sat beside each other for long periods of time in silence. Since that evening when my husband had spoken about Mariuccia he had stopped trying to come near me and had shut himself off in silence; sometimes when I spoke to him he would look at me in an empty, almost offended kind of way, as if I had disturbed him from some important thought with my ill-chosen words. Then I would tell myself that our relationship needed to change before the arrival of our baby. Otherwise what would the child think of us? But then I would be moved to laughter: as if a little baby would be able to think.

The child was born in August. My sister and aunt came to stay, a party was organized for the christening, and there was a great deal of coming and going in the house. The child slept in his crib next to my bed. He looked quite red, with his fists closed and a patch of dark hair sticking out under his cap. My husband came to see him all the time; he was cheerful and smiling, and spoke about the child to everybody. One afternoon we found ourselves alone. I had lain down on the pillow, wearied and weakened by the heat. He looked at the child and smiled, stroking his hair and ribbons. ‘I didn’t know that you liked children,’ I said all of a sudden. He gave a start and he turned to me. ‘I don’t like children,’ he replied, ‘but I like this one, because he is ours.’ ‘Ours?’ I said to him. ‘He’s important to you because he is ours, you mean yours and mine? Do I mean something to you then?’ ‘Yes,’ he said as if lost in thought, and he came to sit on my bed. ‘When I come home and know that I will find you here, it gives me a feeling of pleasure and warmth.’ ‘Then what happens?’ I asked quietly, looking him in the eye. ‘Then, when I’m in front of you, and I want to tell you about what I have done during the day, what I have thought, and I just can’t do it, I don’t know why. Or maybe I do know why. It’s because there is something in my day, in my thoughts, that I have to hide from you, and so I can’t talk to you any more.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s this,’ he said, ‘I’ve been meeting with Mariuccia in the woods again.’ ‘I knew it,’ I said. ‘I’ve known for a long time.’ He knelt down in front of me and kissed my bare arms. ‘Help me, I’m begging you,’ he said. ‘What am I going to do if you won’t help me?’ ‘But how can I possibly help you?’ I screamed, pushing him away, and burst into tears. Then my husband picked up Giorgio, kissed him, gave him to me and said, ‘Everything will be easier now, you’ll see.’