It was on one of those days that Elvira left the workshop at an unusual time, seizing some freedom that otherwise wouldn’t have been granted. The student asked permission to accompany her, and she accepted, walking with him along deserted back streets where in the evenings a gas lamp shone, very faintly (when the fellow passed to light it, they hid behind a column of the portico). It was the first time she’d gone out with a man, and the first time she’d been kissed. Maybe someone knew about her adventure, since everyone looked at her differently the next day. That evening a strong taste of someone else’s saliva and a Tuscan cigar lingered in her mouth, so that when her aunt asked what was wrong, she answered: ‘This food is disgusting,’ and burst into tears, running to her room to lie on the bed. She didn’t see the student any more. She could do without that wan youth, who spit with every word (even though he had the money to buy her a new shawl).

After that, what a long time passed before she went out with a man again! She had proposals, even suitable ones. And rich shopkeepers who would have made sacrifices just to have her as their lover. No, she couldn’t, who knows why, tolerate a man. And there was an occasion when she sank quite low. One winter, a few years after the affair with the student, a cousin of hers, a dancer in the opera theatre in the city of M—, invited her to visit for a few days during Carnival. One evening in the studio of a man who pretended to paint, she, her cousin and another dancer; another evening in an apartment full of photographs of women, belonging to a young man who always paid for everyone, wherever he was. Elvira attended the orgies impassively, affecting to have fun when it was appropriate or being outraged and getting scared when her own safety was at risk. She said to the men, ‘I’m not like my friends,’ and they, laughing, after a few attempts gave up, and in their good humour turned to the other two, who were cheerful and amenable. After all, they just wanted to have some fun, and end the evening. The other girls got what they wanted: to have dinner paid for and receive some gifts, something that, without Elvira, wouldn’t have happened, she being younger and more attractive. Her friends envied Elvira her indifference: ‘Lucky you, you’re so cold, you’re spared a lot of suffering.’

While she waited for her friends in the dressing room of the theatre, she got the idea of making a hat, something she’d never done. Her work at the dressmaker’s consisted of a little basic stitching, buttonholes, sewing on buttons, and so on … It turned out well: a big hat, which was the style then, with an enormous pink ribbon in a bow. When her cousin saw it she wanted it for herself, and her friend ordered one like it. Elvira made this one different: with loops of beads. She went home, in third class, and during the journey she thought of becoming a nun. She lowered her eyes and enjoyed thinking that others were looking at her: ‘Sister Elvira, with well-shod ankles, if you were a lady I would have kissed you’; ‘Hail Mary, forgive us our sins, Lord, Hail Mary’. And meanwhile the spiteful aunt, exasperated, waited for her niece: she hadn’t succeeded in getting her into the life and being rid of her once and for all. Elvira returned: with the rosary in hand and a mad wish to run. The years passed, the aunt grew old, and the hats and the orders and the earnings made Elvira independent, free to go and pick violets one spring day in the meadows, to slip and fall, to raise her skirt. ‘What nice legs, Signora!’ She tore a sleeve of her dress. Tomorrow will be so much better with a new dress!