I went with a fifty-four-year-old (so she told me) and we had a quickie against the wall of the Leone. Since shadows were passing, perhaps voyeurs, I preferred that she do everything, covering her head with an edge of my raincoat. My legs were shaking when I finally got home. That evening my mother-in-law and my mother had come to visit Viola, who is expecting the happy event any day now. They had already had dinner, and when I sat down in front of the bowl of cold soup, they continued their conversation. I thought it best not to say a word, for now, about the stolen car. They seemed happy and excited, all three of them.

They asked my opinion: whether it made sense to call the fourth-born Tito, and to combine the child’s baptism with Cesarino’s First Communion.

‘Il peripatetico’

First published in the anthology L’amore in Italia: antologia di racconti italiani (Sugar, 1961) and later included in Il peripatetico e altre storie (Rizzoli, 1976).

Anna Banti

1895–1985

She was born in Florence with the name Lucia Maria Pergentina Lopresti. In 1916 she sent Roberto Longhi, an art historian who was her teacher in high school, a letter signed ‘Anna Banti’, the name of a relative who intrigued her. The following year she took part in an initiative to fabricate toys made in Italy, an alternative to German imports. These creations were also signed ‘Anna Banti’. She gained a degree in art history and began teaching and publishing essays on art. In 1924 she married Longhi, who was to establish himself as a legendary connoisseur, critic and scholar of Italian painting. In 1930 she sent a short story by ‘Anna Banti’ to a magazine contest. She explained her decision: ‘I was Roberto Longhi’s wife and I didn’t want to expose myself or him with that name. Nor did I want to use my childhood name … so I chose Anna Banti, which is my real name, given to me neither by my family nor my husband.’ Thus was born Anna Banti, author of numerous novels, story collections and critical works whose official profession remained ‘housewife’. Hers was a twinned passion for art and literature. She wrote biographies of Claude Monet, Fra Angelico and Matilde Serao, the first Italian woman to found and direct a major newspaper. Artemisia, her best-known novel, is about the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, whose talent flourished when women had no place in the art world. An enthusiastic translator from both French and English, Banti brought works by Virginia Woolf, William Makepeace Thackeray, Jane Austen and Colette into Italian. In 1952 she won the Viareggio Prize for the collection Le donne muoiono (The Women Are Dying). This story, about a nameless woman, appeared in her last collection. Composed in the third person, but palpably autobiographical, it is essential to understanding Banti’s attitude – divided and doubled – towards her creative formation, her words, herself.