To Massimo she said, “What does your wife think about these literary women?” It was the first time she had mentioned his wife.

“I’ll ask her when she gets back.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s at the sea with the children. We have a little place near Ancona.”

“How many children have you?” Marguerite asked.

“Two—one, the girl, is bigger than you.”

“My oldest, Tina, is also bigger than I am!”

He looked startled. “You look so young! You must have been a girl when you married.”

She looked at him quizzically, a half-smile on her lips. Actually they were both the same age, and he, too, looked younger than his years.

“It’s my miniskirt,” she said with a smile.

Later at Rosati’s they sat for a while and looked at the beautiful night and the carnival of passersby. Every so often Massimo greeted someone and presented her: “Signora Morosini.” He asked if she were cold, tired, thirsty, hungry. She felt his attentiveness. She felt something more.

When it happened that the bounds slipped from a conventional encounter into something else she wasn’t sure. How it happened, when, where—nothing could she recall. There was always between them the question of his stories to translate. From his calling her at home every so often, they soon began to telephone each other at preestablished times when Alberto wasn’t around; they met for dinner when Alberto was busy.

In some unfixed instant their interest in each other and feelings toward each other changed. Though Marguerite searched her mind, her diary, her pocket agenda, she could not place the hour or the day. Only the reason.

28. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

The women and children left for the sea first. The writers, intellectuals, artists, and cultural bloc in general started departing after the awarding of the Strega literary prize. By August the shopkeepers, clerks, and civil servants departed, too. Rome was once more in the hands of the outlanders. Tourists bathed their swollen feet in the fountains and huge Rome-by-Night buses passed incessantly, spewing their exhaust fumes and exhibiting the dull stares of old ladies framed in the windows to those who spent the long nights sitting in the piazzas.

Some oases remained. Piazza Navona, with its orangish facades and green ivy, was barred to traffic and turned back to strollers . . . the hippies . . . the kids on bikes . . . the torch-swallowing men.

Massimo was still in Rome, going to his family at the sea only on occasional weekends. Piazza Navona became their scene. Marguerite met him there to go on to the Trattoria Al Antiquariato. Never had summer been so prolonged. Way into September there were days of sun and blue skies for going to the sea at Ostia, near Rome; there were long, mild nights. They walked up and down the stilled summer center of Rome, hand in hand, or his arm around her shoulder. Lovers.

“Are we lovers?” she’d ask.

“No, we’re more than lovers.”