Since I did not have any milk, a wet nurse was summoned from a nearby village. My sister and aunt left us and we went back to our old routine; I got up and went down to the garden and gradually took up my familiar old tasks again. But the house was transformed by the presence of the child; little white nappies hung in the garden and on the terraces, the velvet dress of the wet nurse swished through the corridors, and her singing echoed throughout the rooms. No longer a young woman, she was a rather fat and proud person who liked to talk a lot about the aristocratic houses where she had worked in the past. We had to buy her new embroidered aprons every month or pins for her handkerchief. When my husband came home I would go to meet him at the gate, and we would go up to Giorgio’s room together to watch him sleep; after this we would have dinner and I would tell him about how the wet nurse had bickered with Felicetta, and we would talk for a while about the baby, the coming winter, the supply of wood, and I would tell him about a novel I had read and what I thought about it. He would put his arm around my waist and stroke me while I rested my head on his shoulder. Truly the birth of the child had changed our relationship. Nonetheless, I still sometimes felt that there was something strained in our conversations and in his goodness and affection, although I couldn’t focus properly on the feeling. The child was growing up; he had started toddling and putting on weight, and I liked watching him, but at times I wondered if I really loved him. At times I didn’t feel like climbing the stairs to go to him. It seemed to me that he belonged to other people, to Felicetta or to the wet nurse maybe, but not to me.

One day I learned that Mariuccia’s father had died. My husband had said nothing about it to me. I took my coat and went out. It was snowing. The body had been taken away in the morning. Surrounded by their neighbours in their dark kitchen, Mariuccia and her mother held their heads in their hands, rocking back and forth and letting out shrill cries, as is the custom in the country when a close relative dies; the children, dressed in their best clothes, warmed their cold blue hands against the fire. When I went in, Mariuccia stared at me for a moment with her familiar look of amazement, lit up by a sudden animation. But she quickly recovered herself and began mourning again.

She now wore a black shawl when she walked around the village. Meeting her was still very difficult for me. I would return home unhappy: I could still see her dark eyes in front of me, those big white teeth which stuck out over her lips. But I hardly ever thought about her if we did not happen to meet.