By now it was dark outside and from the window you could no longer see the tops of the cypress trees. The flowers on the tablecloth had started to wilt. I didn’t understand why we were sitting with that stranger or why we had spent so much money on that dinner, getting all dressed up, decorating the table with those dancing cupids that, ordinarily, were kept in a curio cabinet. There were no more festive occasions for us: not even Lello’s return could really be festive. I wanted to sweep away everything with a gesture, glasses flowers figurines, cross my arms over the tablecloth, bury my head and cry. It wasn’t enough, as proof of civilization, to have manufactured that porcelain or to have written those books squeezed into the shelves that lined the walls of the library. We had to demonstrate once again, to prove, to pass, all forty-five million of us together, a lengthy exam. I suddenly felt great compassion for myself. And the two men of my family overwhelmed me with feelings of pity. I didn’t want them to keep conversing, explaining. To me they seemed to be demeaning themselves through their honest arguments, being beaten, humiliated: maybe because they weren’t very big and Captain Smith was a whole head taller than them. ‘Let’s go away again,’ I wanted to say. ‘Let’s flee, abandon the house and the city once more, let’s go into hiding.’ Only this could be our fate, the experience of the past few years. To flee from house to house, town to town, crouched behind the thickets, watching our backs, plotting, fighting, even dying, but under fake names. How was it possible to go back to wearing nice clothes, to sitting in comfortable armchairs, reading or listening to music? We were not three people like any others who might host a visiting foreigner at their house. We were three of those poor Italians who, basically, despite many shortcomings, one was supposed to help.

We moved to the living room, continuing the conversation. But little by little, I went back to feeling the anguish that had accompanied me for many years now. It hadn’t dissipated even with the return of Lello, so I realized that it would not go away any time soon. It didn’t depend on a house or a person. It was everywhere, in the air. The certainty of being safe and young, and of still having books on the shelves and flowers on the table, wasn’t enough to expel it: and we couldn’t rejoice that the hard times were over, only that we no longer had to face them under false names.

So when the English officer took his leave and said, ‘Goodnight,’ it came as a great relief. He promised to come back before his return to England, which, he added with a smile, would be very soon. I knew we would never see him again. We were old enough to have already experienced many times, at home and abroad, other useless and polite encounters like this one. Captain Smith was a good man, filled with sympathy for our country and for us, as Lello had said. But as soon as the door was closed behind him I said, ‘Goodnight, guys.’ They did not detain me, and headed straight for their bedrooms. I watched them walking down the hall with deep tenderness. And I could not help but notice that the shoulders of my husband’s navy-blue suit were threadbare, really threadbare. And he was quite right to say that, nowadays, there was no sense in getting dressed up for dinner.