Suddenly the scene had lost its magic. I turned, melted into the darkness and went home. I didn’t even feel like finding an open trattoria. I made myself a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. What am I doing here? I asked myself. This is madness. Better to face my mother’s displeasure, the village gossip, my aunt’s scorn than find myself trapped in a place where I had no family, nobody.

December 3, 1939

Winter has definitely arrived, but I’m still here despite it. We’ve had wind and blustery rain ever since the festival. At night I boil a kettle to fill the stone hot water bottle I have bought and cuddle up against it, hoping to get warm in bed. The first signs of Christmas are appearing: nuts and tangerines are now for sale in the Rialto market; there are hot-chestnut sellers on the street corners. I am so tempted by the smell every time I pass, and I always buy a little bag and put it in my pocket to keep my hand warm.

My landlady said that Christmas officially starts with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, which is a holiday here. I was rather confused about this: How could Mary conceive on the eighth and give birth three weeks later? But it turns out it is Mary’s birth they are celebrating, not Jesus’s. This religion is so complicated. And of course there is a saint for everything. My landlady prays to a different saint for her aching back and another for the success of her baking. She sees them as Jesus’s little helpers.

“Why should we bother the Lord with such small trifles?” she said. “That is what the saints are for.”

So I wonder which saint is in charge of childbirth. I might need the help of him or her. This is a reality that is only beginning to dawn on me: women die in childbirth. It is incredibly painful. And where will I have the baby? Will someone be with me? I glance across at my landlady over dinner. What will she think when she finds out? I’ve realized that one of the hardest things is not having someone to talk to. No relative, no friend of my own. Not that I could ever have confided in my mother, but perhaps my sister, Winnie, if she hadn’t gone to India. And here, Imelda or the contessa came to mind, but I just can’t see myself opening up to them, burdening them with my worries. I suppose it comes from years of loneliness.

December 8: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception