The following year I gave birth to another child. It was a boy again, and we called him Luigi. My sister had got married and gone to live in a city far away and my aunt never left her home, so nobody helped me when I gave birth except for my husband. The wet nurse who had fed the first child left and so a new one came – she was a tall and shy girl who got on well with us and stayed even after Luigi had been weaned. My husband was very happy to have the children. When he came home they were the first thing he asked about, and he would run to see them and play with them until it was bedtime. He loved them, and no doubt thought that I loved them too. It was true that I did love them, but not in the way that once upon a time I had thought a mother ought to love her children. There was something subdued inside me when I held them on my lap. They tugged my hair, pulled on my necklace, wanted to search through my little workbox, and I would get irritated and call the wet nurse. Sometimes I thought that maybe I was too sad to have the children. ‘But why am I sad?’ I asked myself. ‘What’s the matter with me? I don’t have any reason to feel this sad.’

One sunny autumn afternoon my husband and I were sitting on the leather sofa in the study. ‘We’ve been married now for three years already,’ I said to him. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said, ‘and it’s been just as I thought it would be, hasn’t it? We have learned to live together, haven’t we?’ I remained silent and stroked his lifeless hand. Then he kissed me and left. After a few hours I went out as well, crossing the village roads and taking the path that ran alongside the river. I wanted to walk a little beside the water. Leaning on the wooden parapet of the bridge I watched the water run, still and dark, between the grass and the stones, and the sound made me feel a little sleepy. I was getting cold and was about to leave when all of a sudden I spotted my husband scrambling up the grassy ridge of the slope, heading for the woods. I realized that he had seen me as well. He stopped for a moment, uncertain, and then carried on climbing, grasping at the branches of the bushes as he went, until he disappeared in the trees. I returned home and went to the study. I sat on the sofa where just a little while ago he had told me that we had learned to live together. I understood now what he had meant by this. He had learned to lie to me, and it didn’t bother him any more. My presence in his house had made him worse, and I too had got worse by living with him. I had become dried up and lifeless. I wasn’t suffering, and I didn’t feel any pain. I too was lying to him: I was living by his side as if I loved him, when really I didn’t love him; I felt nothing for him.