As we walked I held him tight, but he did not respond to me in any way, and his arm swung lifelessly by my side. I realized that he was not taking any notice of me and I understood that I mustn’t speak, and that I had to be extremely careful with him. He came upstairs with me to the door of our room but then left me and went off to the study, as he had done recently.

It was already nearly light outside; I heard the birds singing in the trees. I went to bed. All of a sudden I realized that I was overcome with a feeling of immense joy. I had no idea that somebody’s death could make you so happy, yet I didn’t feel guilty for it at all. I had not been happy for some time, and for me this was a completely new feeling, which amazed and transformed me. I also felt full of foolish pride for the way I had conducted myself that night. I knew that my husband could not think of it now, but one day, when he had composed himself a little, he would think of it again, and perhaps he would realize that I had performed well.

All of a sudden a shot rang out through the silence of the house. I got up from my bed screaming and went down the stairs, screaming all the way. I burst into the study and shook his large body, which lay motionless on the armchair; his arms were hanging down lifelessly. There was a little blood on the cheeks and lips of that face I knew so well.

Afterwards the house filled up with people. I had to speak and answer every question. The children were taken away. Two days later I accompanied my husband to the cemetery. When I came home I wandered around the rooms in a daze. That house had become dear to me, but I felt as though I didn’t have the right to live there, because it didn’t belong to me, because I had shared it with a man who had died without uttering a single word to me. Yet, I didn’t know where I should go. There wasn’t a single place in the world where I wanted to go.

‘Mio marito’

Written in 1941 and first published (under the pseudonym A. Tornimparte) in 1942 in the journal Lettere d’oggi (IV, 2–3, March–April), then included in La strada che va in città e altri racconti (Einaudi, 1945).