‘Oh no, no!’ Signora Maria burst out in sudden despair. ‘I don’t want to go! My flowers, all my beautiful things – I don’t want to go, I don’t!’ Her mouth trembled, her face contracted as though it were about to fall apart, she was on the verge of consent. Then, with a marvellous effort, she smiled. Her mask of wordliness was intact, her highly sophisticated charms unimpaired.

‘I’ll always remember it,’ said Massigher, suddenly cruel, hating her with all his heart. ‘I’ll always remember your villa. It was so lovely on moonlit nights.’

‘Get a coat quickly, Signora,’ said Martora firmly, turning to her. ‘You get something warm too, Stefano. Let’s go before the lights fail.’

Signor Gron was quite genuinely unafraid. He seemed devoid of all emotion and was clutching the leather wallet containing the papers. Fedri was pacing round the room, paddling in the water – he had completely let himself go. ‘It’s all over, then, all over,’ he kept saying. The electric light became weaker.

Then there came a long, resounding thud, more awful and much nearer than anything that had preceded it, a sound of catastrophe. Fear held the family in its icy grip.

‘Oh no, no!’ the mother shrieked again suddenly. ‘I won’t, I won’t!’ Very pale, her face fiercely set, she began to walk anxiously towards the billowing curtain. But she was shaking her head, as though to say that she didn’t allow it, that she was coming in person and that the water could not dare to come any closer.

They saw her pushing aside the flapping edges of the curtain with an angry movement and disappearing into the darkness, as though she were going to disperse an irritating band of beggars the servants had been unable to drive away. Did she hope that her aristocratic disdain could keep tragedy at bay, could intimidate the yawning abyss?

She disappeared behind the curtain and, although the frightful rumbling sound seemed to swell, there was a feeling of silence.

At last Massigher said: ‘There’s someone knocking at the door.’

‘Now really,’ said Martora, ‘whom do you imagine that could be?’

‘No one,’ replied Massigher. ‘Naturally, no one, at this stage. Yet there definitely is someone knocking. Probably a messenger, a spirit, a warning soul. This is a noble house. I think the powers that be sometimes take this into account.’

‘Eppure battono alla porta’

First published in the literary supplement La lettura, XL, no. 9, September 1940. It was later included in I sette messaggeri (Mondadori, 1942) and Sessanta racconti (Mondadori, 1958).