“But that’s cruel . . . that’s terrible. Why? Even after all we’d had together? Why?”

“That’s how it would be. Rationally I could understand you and forgive you and accept you, but on a visceral, physical level it would be over between us.”

“You pretend a lot!”

“I pretend everything while we’re together.”

“Yes, and the irony is that you don’t love me; it’s Alberto who does.”

“You did the best thing in going back to Alberto.”

“But, Massimo, I love you . . . I want to be with you.”

“I’m not free, amore. We’re both buried in our separate situations, and this you knew from the start.”

He told her then, as he had told her many times before, that all they could hope for was to bypass the worst part of their separate lives, holding each other by the hand in the brief time they could snatch from the rest. For as long as they could.

Dr. Verdile might be right. And likewise the words of old Maria, who cleaned her room on the roof: Finchè c’è, vive il Re. Quando non c’è più, vive Gesù. “As long as things last, three cheers for the king; when there’s no more, pray to the Lord.”

But a whole new tension had come into being. She had to prove herself to him. She had to get him what he wanted.

31. Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-two

What Massimo wanted was the Strega literary prize for his new book.

Marguerite knew him now. She knew his ambitions and his worries. It was true that he had problems to resolve: whether to give up one or all of his various jobs to concentrate on writing, which offer of new work to take, how to break into television. He was fragmented between all his concerns, tense and depressed with the sense of having worked hard all his life and still not having made it. It bothered him that youth was over and his family (the one of his boyhood) all gone.

Sometimes he came to her with a face that was drawn and grim, his eyes wandering nervously about the studio-room as if looking for landmarks to be sure where he was.

This night he was telling her that, in addition to everything else, just when he was in a fury to push his new book, he was being sent to Monte Carlo to cover the film festival.

“I’ll go with you! I’ll say I’m going to Florence.”

He didn’t even consider the possibility. “It’s impossible. I’m going with other journalists. I’m not going to amuse myself, this is an assignment.”

“Do you have to be with the others every minute? I can take care of myself while you’re busy. We can have some time together—we’ve never been away together before.”

“No . . . no . . . it’s impossible.”