Then Mariuccia fainted and we carried her on to the bed. They needed something from the chemist’s and I offered to go myself. When I returned she had come round and had started screaming again. Her cheeks were hot and she struggled around, throwing off the covers. She clung to the headboard of the bed and screamed. The midwife came and went with fresh bottles of water. ‘It’s a terrible business,’ she said in a loud, calm voice. ‘But we must do something,’ I said to her. ‘If my husband is late, we must alert another doctor.’ ‘Doctors know lots of clever words, but not much else,’ her mother said, and she gave me another resentful look, clutching the rosary to her breast. ‘Women always scream when the baby is about to come,’ one of the women said.

Mariuccia was writhing on the bed and her hair was all dishevelled. Suddenly, she grabbed hold of me, squeezing me with her dark, bare arms. ‘Mother of God,’ she kept saying. The sheets were stained with blood; there was even blood on the ground. The midwife did not leave her side now. ‘Be strong,’ she said to her from time to time. Now she was making hoarse sobbing noises. She had bags under her eyes, and her face was dark and covered in sweat: ‘It’s not good, it’s not good,’ the midwife kept repeating. Finally, she received the baby in her hands, lifted it, and shook it. ‘It’s dead,’ she said, and she threw it down into a corner of the bed. I saw a wrinkled face. It looked like a little Chinese person. The women took it away, bound up in a wollen rag.

Now Mariuccia had stopped screaming; she lay there looking extremely pale, and the blood continued to flow from her body. I saw that there was a little mark of blood on my blouse. ‘It’ll come out with some water,’ the midwife said to me. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You’ve helped me a lot tonight,’ she said. ‘You’re a very courageous lady – truly the wife of a doctor.’

One of the neighbours insisted that I should have a little coffee. I followed her into the kitchen and drank a cup of weak, tepid coffee from a glass. When I returned Mariuccia was dead. They told me she had died like that, without having come round from her drowsiness.

They plaited her hair and straightened up the blankets around her. At last my husband arrived. He was holding his leather briefcase; he looked pale and out of breath, and his overcoat was open. I was sitting next to the bed, but he did not look at me. He stood in the middle of the room. The mother stood in front of him, tore the briefcase from his hands, and threw it to the ground. ‘You didn’t even come to see her die,’ she said to him.

I gathered up his briefcase and took my husband’s hand. ‘Let’s go,’ I said to him. He let me lead him across the kitchen, through the murmuring women, and he followed me out. All of a sudden I stopped; it seemed to me right that he should see the little Chinese-looking baby. But where was he? God knows where they had taken him.