“Of course,” Nardini agreed. “These receptions take the place of the old salons. Who could afford these days, or who has the time for, the open houses among the writers and artists that we used to have? That’s how the Strega started. We used to meet each Sunday at the Bellonci place. Then the gatherings got too large and the Sundays at home were given up, but the prize has become a huge event. When I first came to Rome, just after the war, we used to meet in Mazzullo’s studio in Via Margutta: Clotilde was there, Leone Eccli, Zavattini, Guttuso, Gianni Zanetti, Mario Soldati—everyone. We’d huddle around a wood stove and donate what we could to a hat set in the middle of the floor, and then someone would be sent out to get wine and fava beans and pizza. One of the younger ones, usually, like Massimo Bontelli. He was there, too. Always quiet, always listening.”

“Yes, I can imagine,” she nodded. She could see the beautiful twenty-year-old Massimo just in from the Marche and fascinated by the profusion of Rome and the illustrious names he met, and dreaming of making it as a writer.

Marguerite considered: You have to pretend the truth to children and keep your word to them because they don’t know yet that life is flux; that nothing can be promised; that Absolutes are a mirage for desperate beings; that truth cannot be caught and redelivered, still living, at a future date. For each moment is a different truth, sliding into the next as in a kaleidoscope. Children can’t understand that circumstances change . . . that different external factors act on decisions, relationships, ideas, like the natural forces on the earth . . . that persons act upon persons in a perpetual chain of being. Not because, no longer childlike, we want to be inconstant, changing, mobile; but because we are.

So we must be nimble to bend with the swirl or else we break. Maturity—what else is it but this flexing? We learn not to depend on anything, and with this nondependence comes the final freedom: the sense that all we see cannot be counted on to last.

At first, in childishness, Marguerite had wanted to freeze Massimo’s words and intentions into beliefs. But their future, like everyone else’s, was blank.

Alberto came up to Marguerite and Roberto, looking harassed. “Ciao, Roberto. I need a Scotch, too.”

“Too much béchamel,” Roberto said sympathetically.

“What a scourge on the world, these women writers!”

“This is nothing,” said Marguerite. “Wait till Tina gets back in a few weeks and unleashes women’s liberation on you.”

“Speaking of women,” said Aurelia, joining them, “have you heard the new definition of a virgin? A child of three—but bruttissima.”

The next time Marguerite and Massimo met was the night of the Strega award. She had been unwell in the intervening week, and was pale that evening and strained-looking.