I should play the date of this day at lotto, she thought. All good numbers and a good year—1969. She thought of the New Year’s Day cocktail party where the first 1969 jokes had already been exchanged: “Come on, guys, let’s go!” “Where?” “To St. Peter’s.” “What for?” “To see how the pope will start his sixty-nine.” Ignazio Silone had been there, too, gloomy as Eeyore and predicting that this year would be worse than the last; that there was nothing more to hope for from humanity; that things were in full decline everywhere, the horizons empty of hope, and that it was a useless perversity to continue to write. “Always serene, old Silone,” Alberto said afterward. She laughed; at times like that Alberto was close to her.

Now she had a feeling of remorse as she stood in the dark courtroom. Despite everything, she and Alberto had lived a true, felt, shared human experience together. Marriage and motherhood were to have been her educators, he had thought. But he had not considered the deep frozen block of murk that had remained fixed in her; the matrix of countless hurts in her nature that needed, besides his warmth and affection, the heat of self-torment and conflict in order to dissolve.

Marguerite watched the rat-eyed lawyers and their flunkies running around the corridors. There was a small sad-faced young girl among them, the only person in the whole room who appeared to be feeling deeply what was about to take place. The other women carried shopping bags printed “Piper Market” or “Rive Gauche,” smoked, talked among themselves or to their lawyers. Alberto seemed to be the only husband present, which was typical of his sense of duty and responsibility.

“You swore before God,” he told her, staring at her with a kind of desperation, as if before the door opened to admit them to the separation rites he could stop it from happening. He was becoming flustered. His lawyer slipped the usher a folded bank note and came up to tell them they’d be first.

“But I’m first on the list,” exclaimed another waiting lawyer, looking over the typed sheet of precedence in his hand. “Who is first before me?”

“The last shall be first,” one of his colleagues laughed.

Suddenly Marguerite was standing before two men who asked her if she understood everything in the separation agreement, which lay on the table before them, and if she agreed. “Si, si,” she said and signed her name. Then she went out and it was Alberto’s turn.

Five minutes in all and there they were, divided at last. Alberto’s lawyer patted her on the cheek and said, “Good luck, cara.” Alberto took a cab. She walked across the bridge from the Palazzo di Giustizia and stopped at the first bar that had a telephone.

She called Dr. Verdile. “It’s done,” she said.

“Va bene. I’ll see you Thursday at five.”

25. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen