Ruti appeared at the door and announced with a gloomy air that he was leaving in the car and would not be back until the next day. Ismene kissed him on the forehead, just like when Ruti was still ‘Uncle Rutiliano’ and brought her Christmas presents.

Now Ismene and Billi are sitting quietly across from each other, as if they have nothing to say. Was Billi perhaps embarrassed to find himself in Ismene’s bedroom? She wanted to feel close to Bago, especially now that Billi was in her bedroom.

The loud rumble of an automobile arriving. The crunching of the gravel beneath the wheels. The yanking of the hand-brake in front of the main door.

The alarmed voice of Ancilla in the hall. ‘The signor has come back! The signor has come back!’

Billi jumps to his feet. He’s pale as a sheet. He looks around. Why is Ancilla’s voice so alarmed? What is so dangerous about the return of the ‘signor’?

A howl. A deep howl. More powerful than the most powerful human voice, but completely ‘inside’. A howl that is ‘embodied’ and circumscribed within a tight radius. A howl for local consumption. A ‘domestic’ howl. A ‘cubicular’ howl. A howl ‘for close friends only’.

In that howl, the doors of the armoire burst open. Billi takes a leap and dives inside the armoire, which suddenly closes its doors. Did Billi jump voluntarily inside the armoire or was he sucked into the armoire? The moment the doors of the armoire opened, all of Ismene’s clothes flew out in swarms, and now they were lying scattered all around the room, like laundry day in the countryside.

Ruti appears at the door, gloomier than ever.

‘Impossible people,’ said Ruti. ‘They make me drive one-hundred-and-fifty kilometres and then don’t … What’s this mess? Why are your clothes spread out on the furniture, on the floor? With what a dress costs today!’

Ismene looks at her clothes spread around the room. But are they really her clothes? Now all her clothes are white. Ismene looks at her evening dress draped over the back of the armchair, like a castaway flattened against a cliff. The shape is the same, but the colour is no longer red but white. While Ismene, astonished, looks at her dress and struggles to recognize it, the dress starts to turn red and little by little regains the colour that fear had drained away.

Ismene instead doesn’t regain her colour: fear is still blanching her when Ruti opens the armoire to put back, in his very meticulous way, the scattered clothes.

Ruti says, ‘Neatness is the first quality of a good lady of the house. Remember that.’ And he leaves.

Now Ismene starts to turn pink in the midst of the scattered clothes, which little by little regain their colour: red, light blue, green, orange, violet.

When Ismene has regained her colour, too, she goes to open the armoire. The armoire is empty.

From that day Ismene stayed right next to the armoire. She refused food and the few hours that she did sleep she slept on the armchair next to Bago’s half-closed doors.