Marguerite had her own taste of bitterness. She had wanted to be everything to Massimo—companion and colleague. But their lives were still separate. Sometimes they went four or five days a week without seeing each other, and she made lists of things she had to tell him so that they wouldn’t break the fragile strands that bound them together. (“We never finish a conversation, Massimo; everything is left in fragments, like epitaphs.” . . . “Because we meet to make love, we haven’t time for the rest.”)

Sometimes, discouraged, she asked herself if it wouldn’t be better that he made no demands on her, left her the security of Alberto and her home without wrecking the little permanence she had in life. But instinctively the answer was no—it was better to have the best of both worlds, to divide herself between Alberto and him, to satisfy herself with what both, diversely, could give her.

The very best for her would have been Massimo completely. But it was clear to her now that Massimo would never ask her to leave Alberto for him because he needed Alberto as a friend.

It struck her as absurd that Massimo should care so much about a prize. But then she began to know him, to feel his torments, the weight of his work and ambition, the sense of insecurity that afflicted him in the company of eminent writers, his efforts to make up for lost time and the dispersion of his energy in countless other directions . . . the frustrations and regret that assailed him for having married the wrong woman and set his life in the wrong directions.

Actually, they both wanted the same thing: freedom. Hers was inner, his outer. Massimo’s freedom had to be financial success, which would mean the end of his being tied down to odd jobs and the office schedules that eroded his time and filled his mind with concerns other than his writing.

She would help him get the prize he wanted for his new book. Everyone in Italy played the same game—even those who didn’t need the money, as Massimo did. All he wanted to buy himself was time. A prize would keep him going long enough, perhaps, to produce another book; it would give him the luster to have the American publishers finally take notice of his other work. Then he’d have American dollars. A trip to New York.

“Alberto and I see people all the time,” she told him. “I’ll talk about your book; I’ll mention that some of your stories have been translated in the States. That always makes an impression over here—look at what it did for Alberto.”

“Brava,” he said, pleased.

It was little enough to give him.