“Incredible! A real American answer. You’re going to sacrifice Alberto and your daughters and lose your status as Alberto’s wife for something like integrity or whatever you want to call it. The reason you can do this,” Angela said bitterly, her lips tight, “is because Alberto is so good. You know he’ll be standing there like Jesus with his arms open to take you back when you’ve had enough.”

Her home no longer interested Marguerite. From the outside things looked as they always had. She and Alberto even went out together occasionally; they were waiting until the separation was posted before she left and they gave word to their friends and her family.

One night they dined in Trastevere, invited by a wealthy doctor and his wife who liked to collect writers and artists around themselves.

“It’s a vulgarity . . . an obscenity,” Marguerite was saying to Lalla Fonti among the general conversation.

“What’s that? Pasolini’s new film?” Cesare Servi broke in from across the table. “Did you know he is now known as pipi nazionale—in part for his initials, in part for the signature piss-scenes in each of his films.”

“No, no,” said Lalla, “we’re discussing Alberto’s Catholicism. But maybe it’s political,” she said, turning to Marguerite; “maybe he doesn’t really believe it at all.”

“Oh yes, completely! The works. Whatever he is, he’s not a hypocrite.” (“That Alberto Morosini was not born modern,” the poet Montale had written of him, “is known and accepted and irrelevant. More to the point, however, and more interesting is the fact that he’s never lifted a finger to become so—has remained a poet adrift among men.”)

“Then it’s a question of belief,” said Lalla, “and there’s no explanation for that. But how do you two get on?”

“We don’t anymore,” Marguerite admitted.

“Children,” the doctor at the head of the table was saying loudly, “are an indispensable experience in one’s life, absolutely essential to completing one’s being. Without this experience you cannot be said to have had a complete life.”

It took Marguerite’s breath away to hear this assertion that the childless are only half-beings, have only had half-lives. But, she wanted to cry, if I’ve given up a whole part of my life to make and care for children! How Italian, how male Italian to define life and completion in terms of children!