Umbertina took the heart but looked at him with a kind of defiance. “It is not a pledge,” she said. “I take it only for courtesy, not to offend you.”

“It is for you,” he repeated.

It both pleased and displeased her. She liked it that Giosuè had made the heart for her, but she was also wary. She wore the heart at her waist from then on to hold her needles. Then, when she knitted, it was natural to think of Giosuè. Nothing more had been spoken between them. But when in the hills or along the paths that led down to the valley Umbertina heard the faint strains of songs, like all the other girls of the village she could imagine they were being sung to her.

What would happen, she sometimes thought, if Giosuè spoke to her father? Would she go from being a poor goat girl to someone even poorer, without goats? The only thing certain was that Giosuè would soon be taken for the army and nothing could be settled until he returned.

But even as she kept the heart at her side, she felt that what she wanted was something very different. She was not one to speak aloud her thoughts, either in her family or among the girls at the fountain. Still, she had formed ideas over the years. She learned from Nelda, the priest’s housekeeper. Each week when she brought Nelda goat’s cheese in exchange for eggs, she learned something of life from the old housekeeper.

The only different world Umbertina could imagine from Castagna was a village all of fine houses—like Don Antonio’s, where everyone had chickens and flowers in the yard, or like those in Soveria Mannelli, which belonged to the pharmacist or barber or shopkeepers.

Once she had been there on the feast day of Corpus Christi and she had seen the fine bedspreads and cloths that had been hung out the windows and from the balconies in honor of the procession and to show everyone the importance of each house. And when Umbertina saw those spreads, so brilliant with color and the designs of flowers and leaves, she knew that they were part of what she wanted, too. For her the New World they spoke of as a kind of paradise would be a place where everyone had such spreads and enough to eat each day.

And yet what had she to expect but what she knew and the place in life to which God assigned her? She knew of the struggle to eat, and the occasional joy of a feast day. She knew the patterns of life; everything was as ordained and set as the square kerchief she folded over her head and the black felt caps her father and brothers wore—these were their badges, as the hats of the gentry were theirs. Men were over women in her world, and the rich over the poor. Over everyone was God, and His minister was Don Antonio. It was God’s will that girls should marry and work for their husbands and bear children, so that life could be endlessly repeated.