All of a sudden the stairs resounded under his heavy steps. He came into the study, took off his jacket without even looking at me, and put on his old corduroy jacket which he wore around the house. ‘I want us to leave this place,’ I said. ‘I will ask to be moved to another practice, if you want me to,’ he replied. ‘But it’s you who should want it,’ I screamed. I realized then that it wasn’t true to say that I wasn’t suffering; I was suffering unbearably and I was shaking all over. ‘Once you said to me that I must help you, and that was why you married me; but why did you marry me?’ I sobbed. ‘Yes, why indeed? What a mistake it has been!’ he said, and sat down, covering his face with his hands. ‘I don’t want you to go on seeing her. You mustn’t see her again,’ I said, bending over him. He pushed me away with an angry gesture, ‘What do I care about you?’ he said. ‘You’re nothing new for me; there’s nothing about you which interests me. You’re like my mother and my mother’s mother, and all the women who have ever lived in this house. You weren’t beaten as a child. You didn’t have to go hungry. They didn’t make you work in the fields from dawn till dusk under the back-breaking sun. Your presence, yes, it gives me peace and quiet, but that’s all. I don’t know what to do about it, but I can’t love you.’ He took his pipe, filled it meticulously, and lit it, suddenly calm again. ‘Anyway, all this talk is useless; these things don’t matter. Mariuccia is pregnant,’ he said.

A few days later I went to the coast with the children and the wet nurse. We had planned this trip for a long time, as the children had been ill and they both needed the sea air; my husband was going to accompany us and stay there with us for a month. But, without needing to mention it, it was now understood that he would not come. We stayed by the sea for the whole winter. I wrote to my husband once a week and received a punctual response from him each time. Our letters contained just a few short and rather cold sentences.

We returned at the beginning of spring. My husband was waiting for us at the station. While we travelled through the village in the car I saw Mariuccia pass us with a swollen belly. She walked lightly in spite of the weight of her belly, and the pregnancy had not changed her childish smile. But there was something new in her expression, some sense of submission and shame, and she blushed when she saw me, but not in the same way as she used to blush, with that happy impudence. I thought that soon I would see her carrying a dirty child in her arms, wearing the long clothes which all peasant children have, and that child would be my husband’s son, the brother of Luigi and Giorgio. I thought that it would be unbearable to see that child with the long clothes. I wouldn’t have been able to continue living with my husband or carry on living in the village. I would leave.