He returned unexpectedly. I went to open the door, thinking it was the doorman with the newspapers, and instead it was him, smiling, holding out his hand, as if he had just left a few hours earlier. There were big hugs, exclamations, chiding; great joy, in other words, together with regret at being caught off guard, denying us the pleasure of looking forward to his arrival. We blamed this on the sense of oppression we still felt inside even though Lello had returned. We immediately uncorked a bottle, as one does on such occasions, and then I showed my brother-in-law a new lamp we had at home and some photographs and two plants in bloom on the balcony. For some reason I couldn’t find anything more to say to him after so many months of his being away and after so much had happened, but, despite myself, a feeling of uneasy melancholy crept up on me. I wanted to cry, not laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘that we don’t have a nice little dinner prepared for tonight. Tomorrow …’

At which Lello said, ‘Tomorrow night, if you don’t mind, I’d like to invite Captain Smith to dinner.’ He explained that Smith was a British captain who had brought him, by car, from Turin to here. On the spur of the moment we agreed, as an expression of our appreciation: we rushed to the telephone and were overjoyed to hear Captain Smith accept our invitation to dinner the next night.

Our house is very big and beautiful. Once upon a time there were always flowers everywhere, matching the colour of the upholstery. Today one can no longer bother with such things, but that night we felt as if we were back in the old days. There were flowers in the sitting room and on the table we laid the sky-blue tablecloth rather than the usual straw placemats used every day to save on soap.

We had everything ready too early. While waiting for our guest, we relaxed on the sofas, sipping vermouth as if we had stopped by for a visit, and I was pleased to observe that my husband had dressed up for dinner, as he used to do before the war. Now the war is over and I thought it would be normal for us to resume our old ways. ‘He’s a very nice man, Captain Smith,’ Lello said, ‘I think you’ll like him.’ I said nothing, but I was happy that our house was so luminous at that hour and I hoped that our guest wouldn’t arrive too much later since the red clouds of sunset were about to fade. I imagined that the British officer, as he left his hotel on Via Veneto, would notice the boys bent over their shoe-shine boxes, certain men standing on the corners, looking around warily, their pockets filled with cigarettes, the girls with eye-catching hairdos smiling at the soldiers and strolling on cork high heels, and the streets littered with paper, orange and lemon peels, and every kind of trash. I realized, however, that to arrive at our house he would have to walk slightly uphill, as if we rose contemptuously above that pocket of misery and could even ignore it. And then, I have to confess, I was pleased with the three of us: my husband’s suit was well tailored – although he had pointed out to me on numerous occasions that the shoulders were threadbare – and his tie had been purchased on Bond Street. I felt, in short, that our appearance, our house, our books and our English would leave our guest with a very pleasant impression of the people from around here.