There's No Turning Back E-Book

Alba de Céspedes

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 503

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The young women studying at the Grimaldi yearn for new kinds of life. Monitored by the nuns who run the college, eight of them form a close group, sharing confidences and hopes for the future. But each, too, has her private secrets - a child from an early love affair, frustrated artistic ambitions, burning desires and petty jealousies. With the passing months, their paths begin to diverge, as each woman struggles towards her own idea of freedom. A virtuosic group portrait, There's No Turning Back broke radical new ground in representing modern women's lives when it first appeared in 1938, facing immediate censorship by the Fascist authorities. Published in a new translation by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein, it is a powerfully moving story of women coming of age in a turbulent world.

Leseprobe

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There’s No Turning Back

ALBA DE CÉSPEDES

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY ANN GOLDSTEIN

PUSHKIN PRESS

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Contents

Title PageTranslator’s NoteIIIIIIIVAbout the AuthorAbout the TranslatorAVailable and Coming Soon from Pushkin PressCopyrightiv

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Alba de Céspedes’s There’s No Turning Back was published in 1938. She had previously published story collections, a book of poems, and a short novel, and had written for various newspapers and journals. Arnoldo Mondadori, the publisher of There’s No Turning Back, had decided to launch the book with an extensive publicity campaign, directed at critics, often personally solicited; at foreign publishers, appealed to by a list of translations in progress; and, finally, at the public of readers, with posters and flyers, window displays, and other advertising initiatives, including a van carrying a billboard on its roof. In a letter to the critic Pietro Pancrazi, Mondadori wrote:

Recently I published There’s No Turning Back, [a] novel by a very young writer, Alba de Céspedes, in whom I think I’ve found an exceptional artistic temperament. I launched this novel with means I’ve rarely used for young writers, and the welcome of public and critics so far has been what I hoped for. The first edition sold out in a week, and the first judgments have been passionately favorable.

viThere’s No Turning Back follows eight young women living in a convent–boarding house in Rome, most of whom are studying at the university. They come from different backgrounds, have different desires and goals, and make different choices, yet they are united in the task of finding their way in the world. “It’s as if we’re on a bridge,” one of the girls says. “We’ve already departed from one side and haven’t yet reached the other. What we’ve left behind we don’t look back at. What awaits us is still enveloped in fog. We don’t know what we’ll find when the fog clears.”

The story, which covers the period from the autumn of 1934 to the summer of 1936, is told in the third person from eight points of view, switching back and forth among the eight young women. De Céspedes is remarkably skillful at maintaining the consistency and individuality of the different voices as she keeps the narrative going. (Besides the eight young women, one of the nuns, in a briefer role, presents yet another version of a woman’s choice.)

By the time the novel was published, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had been in power for more than a decade. His government promoted the idea that the proper place of women was to be at home and to bear children: sposa e madre esemplare (exemplary wife and mother). While there is no overt mention of Mussolini or Fascism in the novel (apart from a reference to “the Party” and to the war in Ethiopia), none of the young women conform to this female ideal. In fact, in their different ways they are challenging it, even if not intentionally or even consciously. In 1935 de Céspedes herself was arrested and briefly jailed for “antifascism.”

The book was immediately and immensely popular, but, not surprisingly, the authorities found the novel’s breaking of female stereotypes and suggestion of other possible pathways for women offensive. “Who can forget having been master of herself?” another of the young women says. “In our villages … those who remained, who passed from the father’s authority to the husband’s, can’t forgive us for having had the key to our own room, going out and coming in when we want.”vii

In 1939, the novel was to win the prestigious Viareggio Prize, but the honor was immediately canceled by an order to the jury from the government. In January of 1940, when There’s No Turning Back was already in its twentieth printing, the Ministry of Popular Culture blocked further editions, claiming that it went against “fascist morality.” (The publisher got around this ban by continuing to reprint the book and simply calling each reprinting the twentieth.) The ban also affected Fuga (Flight), a collection of stories de Céspedes published in 1940. The following year, the censors rejected a screenplay based on the novel, labeling it “depressing” and “immoral.” Rewritten to focus on the more cheerful (“serene and optimistic”) characters, it was accepted, and the film came out in 1945. (Ultimately, one character was eliminated entirely and another given a more conventional ending.)

De Céspedes revised the text of There’s No Turning Back frequently, most heavily between 1948 and 1952, and again in 1966. The last version is the text on which this translation is based. An earlier published English translation, of 1941, was based on the original 1938 text, and, as the scholar Sandra Carletti points out in her 1996 dissertation on the novel, was marred by numerous mistakes and inaccuracies. De Céspedes’s interventions were stylistic, linguistic, and structural; in all her revisions, she was, the Italian academic Marina Zancan notes in her commentary on the text in the Meridiani volume of de Céspedes’s novels, aiming at an alleggerimento, lightening, or snellimento, streamlining, of the text.

In all her novels de Céspedes investigates women’s attempts to both deconstruct and construct their lives and gain a sense of themselves, as she investigated her own life. In Her Side of the Story (1949), a woman who thinks her marriage to an antifascist professor will be a way out of the oppressive patriarchal system she has grown up in is violently disappointed; in Forbidden Notebook (1952), a woman who, in the aftermath of the war, and amid slowly changing conceptions of women’s roles (and possibilities), decides to keep a diary grapples with her own self-awareness. There’s viiiNo Turning Back could be seen as a kind of laboratory for de Céspedes (though her women never become “types”) as she explores the ways in which women go out into the world and the choices and hardships they face. And, even if the world has changed, her characters’ struggles with becoming themselves continue to be familiar.

Ann Goldstein, New York, 2024

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I

As the nun read the last words of the evening prayer, an indolent chorus of girls responded: “Amen.” Silence followed, veined with impatience. Some of the girls stared, transfixed, at the lighted tapers on the altar, others turned toward the back of the chapel, waiting for a sign from the Mother Superior to release them. Eager to leave, they didn’t even talk to one another. Soon afterward they filed out, two by two; in a compact column, they crossed the wide hall, where daylight lingered on the opaque glass of the front door.

They were grown-up girls, dressed in a variety of ways; near the stairs, as if at another signal, they threw off their veils and relaxed. Suddenly, the silence became a dense chatter; subdued laughter grew gradually more open and bold.

They talked about the university, the professors, some exchanged whispered confidences. One of the nuns, clapping her hands lightly, said: “That’s enough, girls, enough, go to your rooms.” She was the only sister the girls didn’t dare talk back to. Besides, she wasn’t a sister like the others; tall, slender, and still young, she had a melodious voice, slim white hands. When she spoke, the girls stopped to think, and, involuntarily, obeyed. 

2Right away they started up the stairs; only Vinca delayed, asking as she did every evening: “May I use the phone, Sister Lorenza?”

Her closest friends turned to hear what would happen; Valentina pulled her by the sleeve so hard she staggered.

“It’s late tonight, Vinca; you’ll call tomorrow morning.”

“But I …”

“Tomorrow morning, I said. Now go to sleep or to study. Good night.”

Gathering around, her friends snickered: “Bad luck, you failed.”

“She does it because she’s angry,” Vinca replied, “because she’s shut up in here. It doesn’t matter: I’m sleepy, I’m going to bed.”

“I’m tired, too,” said Augusta. She was at least thirty, the oldest of the students at the Grimaldi: tall but heavy, her curly black hair cut like a mop. She said good night to the nuns, took Vinca by the arm, and they set off.

At the same time a plump blonde moved quickly among the girls, whispering to some of them: “We’re meeting in 63.”

These gave brief, wary nods. Then they faded into the shadows of the long corridors and disappeared into their rooms.

Room 63 smelled of stuffed dried figs; they were sent to Silvia from Calabria in large baskets that she put on top of the wardrobe: anyone who wanted some could climb up on a chair and fish around in the basket. Silvia, lying on the bed, seemed to be asleep. Ever since she arrived at the Grimaldi, three years ago now, she had worn mourning. She had dull black braids wrapped around her head, an olive complexion, and dark, slightly squinting eyes under heavy lids that shone as if they’d been oiled.

Because of the black garments hanging on the walls, mourning clothed the room as well; the girls often gathered there after dinner to study. Really they would have liked to go to bed, to sleep: overcoming that desire took an effort. Only Xenia was always awake. She decreed: “Let’s go,” and the others didn’t dare refuse.

The lamp hung low over the table where Valentina was reading, 3numbed by the cold; it was mid-November, and the weather seemed to predict a frigid winter. Putting down the book, she turned toward the bed and asked: “Are you asleep, Silvia?”

“No. I’m thinking.”

“You were sleeping …”

“No. I was thinking how tomorrow in my village there’s a big celebration: my mother makes a raisin cake, a big log burns in the hearth, and the cousins come to our house to eat.”

“Do you wish you were there?”

“No.” Then she added, uncertain: “That is, I don’t know. Tomorrow, yes. For a few days, maybe. But then I would feel remorseful about all of you and what I have to do. There’s no time to waste.”

“You’re right,” Xenia agreed. “Some nights a kind of yearning grips me: I can’t close my eyes and I get worn out thinking how I’m caged in this cloister of nuns, while outside life is flowing, fortune passing by—who knows?—and I can’t take advantage of it. You have to jump into life headlong, grab it by the throat. I won’t ever go back to Veroli, anyway.”

She was interrupted by Anna, who came in saying: “Did you see what a moon there is tonight, girls?” She went to the window and opened it. “Augusta’s gone to bed, Vinca couldn’t call. I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to know Spanish and understand what she says to Luis every night.”

“What do you think she says?” replied Xenia. “The same things we all say.”

“Or don’t say to anyone,” Valentina specified.

“Isn’t Milly coming? And the new girl in 28?”

“I don’t know,” said Valentina. “I told them.”

“Milly’s tired, she says she’s going to bed, then she’ll read till late. The new girl said she’ll come, but maybe she’ll do what she did last night.”

“I don’t understand what she’s doing here,” Silvia observed from the bed. “She doesn’t even have a book. She wants to study art history, she said—we’ll see, she knows French, English … In other words the education 4of people who know nothing. But she’s not an ordinary girl. She annoys me because she forced herself on us.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true. She’s the only one we invited to join our group as soon as she arrived. When she sat at the table, in the refectory, it was you, Xenia, who immediately said to her, ‘Stay with us in literature.’”

“Are you sorry?”

“No, but …”

“That’s enough,” Anna concluded. “Let’s enjoy the moon.” And before the others could respond she turned off the light.

Through the window, half covered by the shutter, a flood of light poured onto the floor. Valentina, sitting at the table, was struck by it and rose suddenly.

“With this moon,” Silvia said, “everyone in my village will go out and sing.” Because of the shutter, they could see only a narrow rectangle of sky beyond the thick brown treetops of Villa Borghese.

“There are people out walking at this hour,” Valentina said softly. “Yes, free people,” Xenia added.

They were still in the dark when Emanuela entered, and at first she didn’t recognize them; in fact, thinking she’d gone to the wrong room, she said, “Oh! … excuse me,” and was about to leave.

But Xenia called her back: “Come in, come in, it’s us. We were looking at the moon—you can turn on the light if you want.”

Emanuela stood, silent in the shadowy light. Walking through the halls, she, too, had felt a desire to look out; but the big windows were barred and locked.

“What did you come here for?” Silvia asked.

Emanuela was puzzled for a moment, not knowing if the words were addressed to her, but the silence of the others made her certain. Resentfully she answered: “Xenia invited me, and Valentina said I should come up to 63. I’ll leave immediately.” 

5“Silly! I meant what are you staying here at the residence for?”

“What about you?”

“I’m studying. But you can live without doing anything, so why didn’t you stay home instead of coming here to eat cabbage soup?”

Emanuela, as if apologizing, said: “I couldn’t.” And, feeling that they were all waiting for further explanations, she added: “My parents are traveling. In America.”

“In America?” Xenia observed. “They have a lot of money.”

“Now I’m starting to understand,” said Silvia.

“In America …” Valentina repeated, looking at the window, where the curtain was swelling in the night breeze.

Hearing the sister’s voice, they all stirred. They turned on the light, closed the shutters. A voice made monotonous by habit was passing through the halls, crying, “Lights! … Lights! …” Prolonging the ‘i’ like a lament.

Anna moved the chairs, bringing them closer to the table. Valentina took an oil lamp from a shelf that held a little of everything.

“What are you doing?” Emanuela asked her.

“Didn’t you hear? She said ‘Lights.’”

“Why?”

“Well, you’re on the first floor, like Milly; you pay more, but they don’t turn off the electricity. After ten, if we want to study we have to arrange things like this. In a moment this floor will be dark.”

“And the halls?”

“Those, too.”

“Why in the world?”

“Because light costs money and the nuns are stingy.”

“Misers,” Xenia specified.

Emanuela asked: “How will I get downstairs?”

“You’ll learn to walk like us: groping your way. Or we’ll lend you a candle,” Xenia answered. “Now we’re going to study. You take a book, too; wait, I’ll choose something suitable. Here, take this: poets of the dolce stil 6novo. Okay? But sit and pretend to be studying, otherwise she’ll send you to your room.”

“Who?”

Before Xenia could answer, the door flew open as if pushed by a gust of wind. A small nun appeared in the doorway; she was thin and pale, and wore thick lenses that magnified her lashless eyes. The girls began to laugh mockingly: “Sister Prudenzina! Sister Prudenzina!” She examined the room carefully, trying to discover something unusual, or guilty—she even looked under the bed—all without moving, her hand on the doorknob. Emanuela reminded herself that, days before, when she arrived at the residence, that same sister had said to her: “Take that stuff off your mouth,” referring to her lipstick.

“What are you doing up here?” the sister asked her. “I’m turning off the lights here: go to your room.”

“No, Emanuela’s staying with us, she has to study. Go, go on, Sister Prudenzina, guardian of the night. You know what we call you? The light in the fist.”

While the others laughed, Xenia went to the door to harass her. “Turn the lights off, go on: tonight we have the oil lamp, tomorrow, if we don’t have enough money, we’ll have candles. But we’ll go out …”

Silvia interrupted her: “Quiet, Xenia, tonight we’re rich, there’s the moon.”

“Yes, there’s the moon. You can’t turn that out, right, Sister Prudenzina? Go on, try to turn off the moon, too.”

The sister went on staring at them harshly. “You naughty girls,” she said in a good-humored tone, and left.

Emanuela, astonished, turned to Xenia: “Are you crazy? You’re not in prison! Why did you do that?”

“Because she’s a witch. When I first arrived, I sometimes didn’t have money for a candle. To you it may seem impossible, but I didn’t have even that. And she never offered me so much as a stub.” 

7Outside they could hear the cry: “Lights!” The “i” was longer than usual. Then darkness invaded the room, until the oil lamp shed its generous glow on the table, on the books.

Anna said to Xenia: “Calm down now, in a few days you’ll be done: think about preparing, instead.”

Emanuela found her book open to a sonnet by Guido Guinizelli. She had no desire to read. “I wonder why she gave me this particular book …” she thought. She observed Xenia, and the others, who were already studying, backs straight, and lowered her eyes to the book so they would think that she, too, was studying. She would like Silvia to believe her. From time to time she looked at her furtively: but Silvia was sleeping, her body a black patch on the white bedspread.

• • • •

Every night Emanuela resolved, “I won’t go up,” afraid of returning to her room alone. She had never dared ask for a candle: the others wandered like sleepwalkers in the darkness of the halls, the stairs. They avoided the corners out of habit, they knew by heart how many steps there were between one floor and the next, and they went up and down counting them: one, two, three, four …

And yet, when the time came, she joined her new friends, who gathered in one room or another: all the rooms the same, except for their smell. First they talked and smoked, although it was forbidden, then they studied. Now Emanuela, too, studied every night.

But when she left, after a tranquil “Good night,” she was plunged into darkness. The blood burned her veins, causing a surge of damp heat to rise to her neck, her ears. She started walking only because she worried that her friends would open the door and find her still there, stunned by fear. She walked lightly, so that her footsteps wouldn’t raise an echo between the high walls. “Hall to the right, hall to the left; and if a dead man should appear? Here are the stairs, one, two, three, four … and if, suddenly, 8a cold hand rested on my shoulder? Here’s the landing, foot forward cautiously, here’s the new flight of stairs, one, two, three, four …” She held her arm out in front of her to be sure that nothing was coming toward her, trapping her. Then, seized by the fear that her hand would meet a slimy, cold body, she immediately pulled it back. She stopped, eyes wide in the shadows. She felt a cry of horror rising from all her flesh, and her throat turned dry, suffocating her. Her heart seemed to be bursting in her chest. To help herself she tried persuasion: “I’ve done nothing wrong, nothing wrong.” Then she remembered the lie, that terrible lie. She should have talked to the girls, said: “‘I’m not what you think, I’m betraying your trust. Do you know who I really am? Do you know the story of Stefano? I’ve told you a pack of lies.’ I’m part of their group, I know everything about them—and with the others they’re so reticent—while they know nothing about me. On my birthday, there was a big bouquet of flowers in my room: they hid behind the door to witness my surprise. Then they came in with a big to-do, kissed me. They love me, but whom do they love? Who am I, really? Yet I’m not doing anything wrong, nothing wrong.”

In this certainty she began walking again; but, entering the last hallway, she always seemed to hear a footstep or a creak. Flattened against the wall, she didn’t dare go on to her room. “Certainly I’ll find him there, white as a ghost, and he’ll grab me, strangle me.”

She calmed down only after closing the door of her room behind her and turning on the light: she saw the nightgown laid out on the bed, the books, the photographs. Her forehead still damp with sweat, she said to herself: “What an idiot. Spirits don’t exist. Milly’s sleeping on the other side of the wall.”

Milly was studying music. She had a heart ailment, and she sat in a chair to study. Sometimes she didn’t come down to the refectory. “She’s not well,” the nuns said, shaking their heads.

One day Emanuela heard the full, slow sound of the harmonium rising from the courtyard. The girls were all out: some at the university, some 9at the library. She had stayed in her room, lying on the bed thinking. It couldn’t be a sister: it wasn’t sacred music, it was a lied. Surprised, she looked out into the courtyard, red with Virginia creeper, and saw two windows open in the sacristy. Soon afterward she went down to the chapel. No one. Finally, venturing behind the altar, she saw Milly sitting at the organ: she recognized the long blond braids on her shoulders. They were neighbors but had never exchanged a word.

Hearing her, Milly turned suddenly, startled.

“Don’t stop,” Emanuela said.

The other, her face red, asked: “You’re the one in 28, right?” And, to let her know that she, in turn, had overheard her, she added: “Last night you were crying.” Then, signaling her to come closer, she resumed playing.

Now, waking, Emanuela would knock on the wall, and Milly, who had been studying for a while, was quick to knock in response. Milly had always kept to herself; but now she sought out Emanuela, inviting her in: she told her about herself and the reason she had left Milan, where she lived with her father.

“I was in love with the sound of the organ I could hear at the vespers service in San Babila. One night I got up, left the pew, as if I were going to confess: instead I went up a little wooden staircase and found myself in the organ loft. Have you ever been up there? The music is deafening. The organist was gray, all gray, and he wore black glasses. A blind man. But I had seen his hands! So every night I sat next to him while below the people sang. Then they left, the lights went out. Going down, he placed his hand on my shoulder.”

She was staring into space, and, because her eyes were very light, she, too, appeared blind. “One morning in May we went to the Giardini Reali. Do you know Milan? The Giardini? You should go: there’s a pond with a small temple and immense trees all around. They say that Foscolo went walking there. My companion saw nothing, but I told him: ‘Now the sky is all pink’ or ‘It’s dark now.’ As soon as Papa found out about our meetings, 10he made me come to Rome. But I’m not unhappy here: I can play the harmonium and write to him with that device there, which is all holes, in the braille alphabet, made just for blind people. By now I can write well, and he reads my letters by running his fingers over them, like this, see?” She touched Emanuela’s fingers lightly with her own.

That night Milly was in her chair, studying; and, seeing Emanuela enter panting, close the door, and lean against it, exhausted, she asked apprehensively:

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m scared in these halls at night. I’m afraid there’s someone waiting for me in my room and I don’t have the courage to go in. Sorry, I’m a little unnerved.” She sat down on the rug in front of Milly and looked at the open book she was holding. “What are you studying?”

“Harmony. Listen, Emanuela, give up going there at night.”

“I can’t,” Emanuela answered.

She rested her head against Milly’s knees and, letting her caress her forehead, her ears, her hair, she calmed down. In her own room she was gripped by memories: letters locked in the drawers, photographs, clothes reminded her of past days and events. Her recent friendships, instead, attributed to her another personality that she wore like a new dress.

“I can’t do without it,” she repeated. “I feel shut up, imprisoned, I don’t know how to explain, I can’t take it anymore.”

“It’s like that for everyone at first: there’s no air. For me it was different: I was used to living submissively. You don’t know my father and it would take too long to tell you. I breathe better here, even shut in. But you … You shouldn’t spend so much time alone in your room. Go out, go with your friends to the university, go for a walk. I’d go with you, but I’m not well yet. You should go out with Xenia; or with Vinca, who takes everything easily. If instead of coming to me you went to Vinca’s room, you wouldn’t cry.” But Emanuela shook her head: no one could help her, not even Vinca.

• • • •

11Every night Vinca talked on the phone, while Sister Lorenza walked impatiently up and down in front of her, so that she would understand she mustn’t linger. But Vinca, just to annoy her, sat serenely, smoothing her skirt over her knees. She talked in a leisurely manner, smiling, and staring at the sister with indifference: she challenged her, almost, protected by her foreign speech. Finally, when she saw her reach the peak of exasperation, her voice assumed a tone of farewell, and she stood up and said in Italian: “See you tomorrow.” Hanging up the phone, she added contritely: “Thank you, Sister Lorenza,” and left.

She spent the next day, until the hour of her date, getting ready. She went into her friends’ rooms, her hair loose, wearing slippers and an old bathrobe, tweezers in one hand and mirror in the other. Every so often while she chatted, she’d twist her mouth, smoothing her forehead, and, zing!, pull out an eyebrow hair, then resume the conversation. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had beautiful shiny, curly brown hair, a full mouth, and small sharp teeth.

As soon as she got out the door and past the entrance, she put on some lipstick and freshened the pink of her cheeks. Luis was waiting for her nearby; he took her arm and they set off.

They were both Andalusian, from Cordova, but they had met in Rome. Luis was studying architecture. They talked for hours about their country, and the very fact of speaking Spanish consoled them for being so far away.

Sometimes Luis proposed: “Shall we go to the movies?” He always chose a neighborhood cinema that wasn’t crowded in the afternoon. Vinca followed him, annoyed; it seemed to her that everyone must know they went there to kiss. During the intermissions they’d separate conspicuously; she looked in the mirror, powdered her face. And, coming out, in a daze, she would resolve: “I’m not going anymore.” They walked apart, as if they were strangers. He’d light a cigarette, sing softly under his breath. 

12In this way they would reach the neighborhood of the Grimaldi; the cars passed by them silently, people observed them. Finally, at the moment of parting, they’d stop in front of a store selling statues, cold and deserted as a museum. Vinca waited for something to reassure her, a word from Luis or a look, but he appeared lost in thought. She had to ask: “When will we see each other?” hoping he’d promise, “Tomorrow.” His answer was invariable: “Call me.” Then he’d go off, hands in his pockets, smoking. Vinca remained standing in front of the door, watching him go. Meanwhile she thought: “It was worth the trouble to be so late because of him!” And, imagining the harsh reproaches of the nuns, she felt an angry irritation with Luis. Yet she continued to follow him with her gaze until he had turned the corner into the square.

• • • •

Meet in 40.

A room under the terrace, sweltering in summer, cold in these early days of November: through the window came the smell of the leaves fallen from the trees in Villa Borghese. But it was the only room that actually felt lived in: maybe because Augusta had been living there for three years already, and loved her home. She had brought from Sardinia a red and white striped rug. In her village in winter, she said, the servants made rugs with wool from the goats; they’d also made the bedspread and the doily on the nightstand. The table was in the middle of the room, under a lamp with a green shade. When Augusta sat down to study, her large bosom occupied the space that remained between the piles of books.

She, too, was studying literature, but she was six years late with her exams.

On the floor, a turtle Augusta had baptized Margherita moved clumsily. In winter, it hid under the night table and stayed there, in hibernation, as if dead, embalmed. Already its movements had become a little 13lazier. “It’s sleepy,” Augusta explained, as if she were speaking of a child. She polished the shell with a feather dipped in brilliantine, then, holding it out to her friends, said: “Smell it? It’s perfumed now.” But few could overcome their disgust and touch it. Augusta then put it back on the floor: “Go on, go, poor Margherita.”

It was already late when the girls went up to her room; the lights were out. She was writing; but she rose ceremoniously to welcome them, and they dropped boisterously onto the bed as if it were a swing. Silvia sat cross-legged on the floor, on the rug.

“How nice it would be if this room were a big kitchen!” Silvia exclaimed. “Chestnuts on the fire and an old servant telling stories. Ours knows terrible tales of bandits. Really, it’s a pity there are no more bandits: no more adventures. If I’d lived at that time, I would have wanted to marry one.”

Augusta shook her head: “You talk about marriage too lightly.”

Valentina started to say that they wasted all their evenings in amusement and gossip, without achieving anything.

“You’re right.”

And Augusta proposed: “Tomorrow night we could have a séance. We often did it, at home. You take a three-legged table, we all put our hands on it, the table knocks. Every knock is a letter.”

“But it’s forbidden by religion!” Anna broke in.

“A lot of things are forbidden,” Vinca objected.

Augusta decided: “Tomorrow night, then.”

But Valentina rebelled again. “I’m not coming. And you, Emanuela? You’re not afraid?”

Emanuela, after a brief hesitation, answered: “No.”

Now she, too, moved securely in the dark of the hallways and stairs; studying had given her the conviction that her life was similar to that of the others, that the past, buried in her, had vanished. And this conviction 14expressed itself in her appearance as well: like the others, she wore low heels, modest dresses, and, living as she had at eighteen, she appeared to be eighteen.

Silvia observed thoughtfully: “How much longer will we be together? A year, two years. At least if we all left here on the same day, if we didn’t feel the void left by the one who departs as a death … We’re together from morning to night now. And in a few years maybe you won’t even remember my name.”

“Not possible,” said Emanuela.

“Very possible,” Augusta replied. “We’ve chosen one another from among many, out of a certain sympathy. But it’s only intimacy, daily habit, that binds us. Last year a girl left and got married. Someone who shared every hour with us: she didn’t even send a postcard. And yet she’d promised that …”

“Getting married is something else,” Valentina added. “It’s crossing to another shore. What does she have in common with us anymore?”

Silvia said: “I’ll never get married.”

“And the bandit?”

“Precisely—there aren’t any more bandits,” she concluded, laughing.

The door opened softly, and Xenia entered. Valentina asked: “Where were you? I looked for you everywhere, your room was locked.”

Xenia didn’t answer: she was pale and her eyes were wide, red. It was clear she’d been crying.

“Xenia, what’s wrong?” her friends asked. “Why don’t you answer?”

Finally she explained in a lifeless voice: “I defended my thesis today. It didn’t go well.”

“Your thesis?!” Silvia said. “But weren’t you supposed to defend it the day after tomorrow?”

“I lied to you. I didn’t want you to come, I was afraid; I didn’t want to go back to the classroom with you to find out the result. A disaster. You won’t forgive me, right, Silvia?” 

15“It’s not that. We would have wanted to be with you,” Silvia said. “What we can’t forgive is the lie.”

Impulsively Emanuela rushed to hug Xenia.

“Forgive you! With what right? Under what guise? But what did your parents say?”

“What do you think they said? I have to go home,” Xenia answered, and added, crying: “I’ll never go back, never, I’d rather kill myself!”

“Xenia!” Anna exclaimed.

The others said: “Sit down, calm down, there must be some recourse, they’ll let you stay till March.”

Xenia shook her head: “It’s impossible, they don’t have any money, not a cent. In order for me to study my father mortgaged the vineyard. ‘Well worth it!’ they’ll say in the village, and laugh. But I’m not going back, I won’t give them the satisfaction.” She started crying again. “I did as much as I could. In the morning when you were sleeping I got up at the nuns’ first bell … You should have seen Trecca today, caressing his mustache: ‘We’ll expect you back in March, Signorina Costantini.’ I didn’t make it: I wouldn’t at the next sessions, either.” Sobs choked her. “I have to go. I can’t stay even one more day: my parents have eaten potatoes all year to support me here. It’s my own fault,” and she hit her forehead with the palm of her hand: “My own, mine …” Then, recovering herself, she murmured: “Forgive me. I’ve disturbed you. What were you doing? Studying, right?”

In that question there was so much regret that Augusta answered: “No, we were chatting. Take my chair, sit here with us.”

Xenia refused politely: “No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to chat; I just came up to give you this great news. I’m better now, I’m going back to my room.”

“Alone?” Emanuela observed. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, please, Emanuela: I need to be alone.” And she added: “Don’t worry, I’m not going to jump out the window. I thought about it: I’m a coward. I’m going to sleep. But maybe now that I can sleep till noon I won’t sleep.” 

16With a wave she said goodbye to all: her face was barely visible outside the circle of lamplight. They all felt they ought to go with her, comfort her, and yet they didn’t know what to say. They sat there thinking, “I’ll go, I won’t go,” each waiting for another to move. During that uncertainty, Xenia had opened the door and disappeared.

• • • •

Until then, none of them had thought their thesis could fail. The next day they were all depressed; in Belluzzi’s class they didn’t even sit together; they met on the way out. Emanuela, seeing them, exclaimed cheerfully, “Look what I got!” and held out a note. They all read it: some on the steps of the university, others at the gate, and they advised her: “You should go.”

Silvia said: “Don’t torture her. She should do what she wants.”

And Anna: “You’re right; I’m just saying that Lanziani is an intelligent person, serious, who’s never fooled around with anyone.”

Walking, Emanuela was almost pushed by the others, who pressed close around her. She was unsure. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she said. “Why should I go?”

“But you want to, confess you want to.”

“What’s the harm?” Vinca insisted. “He’s not a stranger. He’s our friend, he’s a colleague—whenever you came to class the two of you talked.”

The appointment was for the following evening, at six, at the fountain of Moses, on the Pincio: Emanuela would have liked to go, arriving late to make the young man worry a little, let him fear she wouldn’t come. Then she’d appear, fresh in the gray dress, the new one. Augusta always said: “The essential thing in life is to expect something.”

They returned to the Grimaldi chatting and laughing; their entrance animated the gray refectory, where, through the large windows, a bleak courtyard was visible, decorated with stiff bamboo and dusty palms. Many were already at the table: the subdued sound of voices could be 17heard, the clatter of silverware: at the back of the refectory Sister Lorenza waited to serve.

The friends sat down laughing, not at all intimidated by being late or by the sister’s severe gaze. They unfolded their napkins, poured the water, the wine, talking loudly.

At Emanuela’s place a letter was leaning against the glass: she immediately recognized her father’s crabbed handwriting. She looked around to see if her friends had noticed the postmark, but they were distracted, telling Augusta about the note from Lanziani:

“Emanuela doesn’t want to go, what do you think …”

Meanwhile, she opened the letter and, after glancing at it, quickly closed it again. Her friends mustn’t know that her father was in Florence: Papa’s in America, he’ll be back in the spring.

Valentina asked her: “Well, did you decide, Emanuela?”

“Yes: I’m not going.”

Augusta asked her: “Let me read the letter.”

“Which one?”

“What do you mean which one? The one from Lanziani, no?”

Emanuela handed it to her and afterward, unobserved, reopened the one from her father and reread it. It said: “Sunday, if you want, you can go and see the child.”

• • • •

On Sundays the girls awakened early, as always, and instinctively started to jump out of bed. Then they thought: “It’s a holiday.” But the very day when they could have lingered, idled, habit took over, compelling them to get up.

One by one the windows opened, the girls looked out, called to one another, coming up with a plan for the day even before washing their faces.

Augusta, instead, on Sunday mornings went out early and bought flowers for her room and lettuce for Margherita, then changed the doilies on the furniture and dusted the books. A sensible girl, said the nuns; her 18friends thought that by now—she was no longer very young, she wasn’t going to succeed in her studies—she could become a nun herself. When they said that, in fun, Augusta responded: “I have other things in mind.”

Emanuela was lazy: she ignored the voices calling her insistently. Then she went sleepily to the window. “What are you doing today?” they asked.

“Whatever you are. What shall we do?”

Bewildered by that day of obligatory vacation, they didn’t know how to enjoy themselves in a city where all they were acquainted with was study. Emanuela decided: “Let’s go to the zoo.” Or: “Let’s go to the movies. I’ll pay.”

But that Sunday she said: “Today I’m busy.”

“Did you get another note from Lanziani?”

“Oh! No, a relative.”

Xenia, filing her nails, said: “If you wanted to, you should have gone.”

Emanuela talked purposely about other things; but the day before she had followed in her mind the young man waiting at the fountain of Moses: at first he’d be distracted watching the children play with their boats in the pond; then he would have started looking at his watch, frequently, ever more frequently; finally he would have gone home—wherever he lived—and that evening he probably turned unhappily to his studies.

“It’s always Sunday for me now,” Xenia observed. She was calm: on awakening they’d heard her singing.

The first bell sounded: they all withdrew with quick waves of farewell and from the rooms came the sound of water and pitchers.

Soon afterward, hair combed, fresh-scented, they came blithely down the stairs, drawn by the smell of caffellatte and fresh bread: an irresistible morning fragrance, particular to residences and schools, that, once those years had passed, they would never again know. They poured into the refectory, sat before the white bowls, broke the crusty bread.

All except Anna. On Sunday mornings she left early, caught the tram, and went to the old neighborhoods where there were markets. That was her vacation. Tired of books, she listened to the simple street conversations, 19but was humiliated by feeling she was a foreigner. She bought chestnuts roasted on the coals and lingered, talking to the seller. Then she slipped the chestnuts into her coat pocket and went to eat them looking over the parapet of the Tiber.

The river flowed, slow as yellow mud, between bare, narrow shores. Anna nibbled on the chestnuts, absorbed in her thoughts. One more year, then she would return to her village; she would deliver her degree to her parents and at last resume the life she preferred: going around the farm, talking to the farmers, cultivating the vegetable garden, the flowers.

Thus dreaming, she didn’t notice the passing of time. At noon a great clangor of bells roused her: the market was winding down, the city enveloped in Sunday boredom. Anna rummaged in her coat pocket—not a single chestnut left, too bad—and slowly, along the old narrow streets, she returned to the residence.

That Sunday, coming in, she found her friends plotting. Silvia was saying: “Tonight. In Vinca’s room.” But Vinca was opposed: “I don’t have a three-legged table anyway. And then if the spirit is in my room, how do I get him out? When the spirit possesses the table, he takes refuge in the house and you have to call those women who know the magic words to persuade him to leave.”

“That’s in Spain,” said Augusta. “But here … Anyway, tonight we’ll have the séance. No matter what.”

Xenia repeated, “Tonight,” thoughtful. Then she turned to Emanuela and asked her: “You’re going out today, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh, nothing, I was just wondering.”

Anna offered, conciliatory: “You could come to my room.” And the girls parted ways, saying: “In 58, then, at Anna’s.”

As they went up to their rooms, Milly took Emanuela by the arm: “Why are you going to that séance? Those girls are silly. Afterward you’ll be even more afraid to come down.” 

20Emanuela reassured her: “I’m not scared anymore, you know? It was the first days, as you said.” In her room, she found the window open. Shivering, she went to close it, then began to dress carefully, as she hadn’t done for a while: she chose a black dress and a fur coat, also black, that she hadn’t worn since coming to the Grimaldi. The purse, the money in the purse … She wondered if she should wear the emerald. She looked at it, turned it over: no, better not, it would rouse the curiosity of her friends, the distrust of the nuns. From a packet of papers locked in her suitcase she took a photograph, put it in her purse, and left.

As soon as she was outside, all the lightness of her new life vanished, as if just at that moment she were getting off the train that had brought her to Rome. She had tried many times to imagine the institution that housed Stefania; she feared it would be cold and dark. Instead it was a white villa on Monte Mario, in the countryside. The door opened into a large lobby where there were some sacred statues; at the far end the green of the garden was visible.

“I’d like …” she said, “… could I see the Andori girl?” The reception area was a porch warmed by the sun and brightened by geraniums and begonias. There was no one else; Emanuela was relieved. Then she heard a bell ring and soon afterward an old nun entered and said, with a respectful aloofness: “Hello, signora: you wish to see Stefania?”

Emanuela nodded and her throat was dry, constricted.

“You are?”

Emanuela murmured: “Yes, the mother.”

“We received the letter from your father; the child is happy at the idea of seeing you. She’s grown. She’s clever,” said the nun. And added: “Here she is.”

Stefania appeared in the doorway and stopped, staring at her mother. She was a slender child, with blond braids knotted over her ears, a scowl on her face. When the sister disappeared, Emanuela hugged her daughter, picked her up. The child asked her, serious: “Did you bring me any candy?” 

21“Oh! No, no candy, Stefania …” Emanuela answered, disconcerted.

“Chocolate, then?”

“No.”

“I know, a doll,” she concluded looking around.

“Nothing, I didn’t bring anything today, but next time, you’ll see.”

“The nuns said you’d bring me candy when you came back from America. They told a lie. Even they tell lies. Isn’t there candy in America?”

“Yes, there is …”

“Then why didn’t you bring some? I’ve been good. Très sage.”

“Wonderful, Stefania … Now, do you love me?” The child nodded yes. “You were expecting me, right?” Stefania kept saying yes, touching her mother’s fur coat.

“You’re glad I came?”

“Of course. You’ll come on Sunday?”

“Every Sunday, always.”

“So next Sunday bring me some candy.”

Emanuela promised, and then she didn’t know what else to say. “Are you eating? You feel fine? Are your companions nice?” And so on. Then she opened her purse, took out a photograph and handed it to her, saying: “Stefania, this is a photo for you, of your father.”

“Give it to me.”

She looked at it for a moment and then, stamping one foot on the floor, said harshly: “I want Papa to come here, I want him to come right now.”

Dismayed, Emanuela looked at her daughter. “You love him, right? You love Papa very much?”

“Yes,” Stefania answered distracted. “But my friends don’t believe my father is a pilot: I want him to come, so they’ll see,” and, without giving her mother time to respond, said impatiently: “The girls are playing. I’m going back.”

The conversation was over, Emanuela thought, over. For this, then, she had fought for months, years. I should have brought some candy, she said 22to herself: certainly everything depends on candy, it’s my fault. But she felt like crying. She picked up her daughter and sat her on her lap, caressed her hair, looked in her eyes, which were hard, scarcely childlike.

But Stefania, hearing the voices and laughter of her companions, was anxious to join them. Emanuela let her slide off her lap. “I’ll be back on Sunday,” she said, as her daughter escaped.

Outside the school gates was open country; Emanuela walked slowly in the sun. She thought about her parents, about the villa in Maiano: her room, the bed with the flowered coverlet, the dining room, dinners under the broad lampshade that spread a circle of brightness over the table. Silent, hostile meals: ever since Stefania had been taken from the wet nurse in Switzerland and sent to boarding school in Rome, and she had been unable to see her, Emanuela hardly spoke at all. Good night, Papa, good night, Mamma. And every few days the usual scene. She entered her father’s study around twilight; he sat at the window, a blanket on his knees, contemplating Florence, the hills, the red roofs of the houses sticking out amid the green.

“Papa …”

“Emanuela …”

“You know, Papa …”

“What is it?”

“I want to go to Rome, to Stefania.”

“It’s been decided that you’ll stay here.”

“But Papa, understand me, it’s inhuman, I can’t live without my child …”

“The decision has been made.”

The old man resumed reading or looking out; she left in tears, and her mother didn’t even dare ask how it had gone. Emanuela went up to her room, threw herself on the bed, in the dark. There was no recourse; what could she do? Leaving Florence, without any money, was impossible: all she had was Stefano’s ring. Her mother said: “Your father’s right, 23Emanuela; since then, you know, his mood has changed. It’s as if we’d lost him—you must realize it, too, Emanuela.”

She did realize it, in fact: she went out, alone, for long hours. Sometimes she’d meet a friend: “We don’t see you anymore, what are you up to? You’ve gotten so thin.”

No one knew the truth. She would return to Maiano on foot. Thus the days passed, the months, unvarying. Until one night, entering her father’s study, she asked: “What would you do, Papa, if I left?”

“What do you mean, Emanuela?”

“I meant that I’m leaving, going to Rome: I’ll work, I’ll do something, but I’ve had enough. I know, I’m guilty, I’m a disgrace to the family. But now I’ve had enough,” she continued, determined. “I’ve decided. I’m leaving. I’m twenty-four years old and I’m leaving.” In the shadowy light of the study the old man examined his daughter’s ardent face. She was telling the truth, she would go.

He bent his head, looked at his tremulous hands: “We’ll see. I’ll think about it.”

Emanuela, coming out of the study, said to her mother: “He said he’ll think about it.” And she, too, understood that her daughter would go.

For days Emanuela waited: she said good night to her father more sweetly, and already looked with regret at the old house, the garden, knowing she would soon abandon them. She went out more often, as if she wished to say farewell to Florence. It was late September, no longer hot: on the avenues the fallen leaves formed a yellow carpet that crackled under her solitary steps. Some evenings Emanuela reached the Ponte Vecchio as the lights in the shops came on. She looked at the bridges spanning the river in a leap, all the way down to Carraia; she looked at the houses rising from the Arno, blackened by the persistent lapping of the current. She waited for her father to decide. She could no longer stand the lie that, periodically, he wrote to the Mother Superior of Stefania’s school: “My daughter is still traveling in America.” 24He thought that, gradually, she would forget the child. “I’d like you to remake your life,” he always said.

Emanuela returned barely in time for dinner; the garden was damp, shadowy, the wet earth gave off a familiar odor. The table was ready under the large eye of light. “Good evening, Papa, good evening, Mamma.” She took off her hat, ran a hand over her forehead. The hot soup infused a beneficial warmth. Once, casually, she said: “When I’m in Rome …” Her father didn’t blink, and, before going to bed, she hugged him. She thought again of the humiliating days in Switzerland: her mother had been present, but it was as if Stefania didn’t exist. She remembered when, later, she went to see her at the nurse’s: two hours on the train, a green hill where the tinkling of cowbells echoed through the meadows. The day she heard Stefania say “Mamma” she stopped suddenly, in amazement, thinking, “That’s me,” and yet it didn’t seem true: she saw her only once a month and every time she found a new child.

One night her father called her from the study.

“Come in, Emanuela, close the door, sit down. I’ve thought about it. It’s right for you to go to Rome.”

She slid down to her father’s knees, her face in the blanket: she’d been fighting for a year, and at that moment she shook her head as if she no longer wanted to go.

Mamma was sitting in the dining room, waiting. All three knew it was inevitable; their hearts were heavy. It was easier for Emanuela: she was young, her life could start again.

The light faded rapidly; in the shadows only her father’s bright eyes could be seen. He said it was right for her to go to Rome, he understood, but alone no, and with the two of them it wasn’t possible. “Mamma has the garden here, her friends, at our age you don’t make new friends, and then she suffers because of her kidneys. And for me what I see of the world through the window frame is sufficient, and what I read in books.” Besides, everything that’s happened has distressed him terribly, he’s old 25now, he doesn’t want to struggle and risk dying, how could he die leaving the two of them to confront this problem alone? “No, don’t apologize, you were a victim, too, I won’t say anything else now, I won’t reproach you anymore; but there is the fact, the fact exists, and one has to bear the consequences, including the child, poor thing … Come, don’t cry now … But it was a tremendous blow. Therefore, to Rome by yourself, no; because up to now you haven’t shown that you have any judgment about men, and this misfortune you’ll have to carry for your whole life is enough … But in Rome there’s a kind of boarding house … yes, for young women, what’s it called now? A residence, you go out during the day when you want, to study, at a given time you return … What time? I don’t know, seven, eight … Yes, nuns … And how could they know that you’re going to see the child? You go out and no one asks where you’re going. You’ll say to the nuns you’re there to study until we return from a journey, a long journey, a sojourn in America. And to our friends here we’ll say you’re going to Rome to study, I don’t know, art history, let’s say … I know, it’s painful to lie, but one can’t do otherwise, for me, for my position, one can’t let everyone know there’s a child and a child without a father … Unfortunate, yes, him, too, but he was thirty, a man who flies and is always exposed to danger, may he rest in peace, but he could have considered it.”

It was Sunday then, too. Emanuela, walking back, pondered all that again. She breathed a mild air, families strolled, the women with languid steps, the children stopping at every café, in the hope of going in. It didn’t seem to her that she had been to see her daughter; she recalled only a few words—“Did you bring me any candy?” She had a snapshot of Stefania beside her bed. “Who’s that child?” Milly had asked. She had answered absently: “A niece.” And had intended to hide the picture, so that her friends wouldn’t get any ideas.

She took off the fur coat: what a mild day, really a Sunday warmth. Surely Papa and Mamma had gone out for a walk. She took their name and their money. She didn’t send many letters, and they were short: “Papa, 26I’m well; Mamma, I’m well.” At home, at the Grimaldi, with Stefania—everywhere she played a different role, had a different life, another character. But which was truly her? She needed the strength to summon her friends and say: “Listen, I’ve told you a lot of lies …” But maybe they would all go away if they knew that she was “on the other shore.” They always said: “This is the shore where you wait.” And after that disheartening visit with her daughter, Emanuela feared she had nothing more to wait for.

• • • •

In the Mother Superior’s room the bed was all white and stood in a corner, behind a white curtain. The walls were white, and the prie-dieu; the cushion on the prie-dieu was plumped, untouched. It was clear that no one ever prayed there. The chairs were covered in red, the cloth on the table was red. The room was saturated with the odor of incense and wax, as if she brought a little up from the chapel every day, in the folds of her skirt. The Abbess was old, very old; she had fat, buttery hands, like her face. Her only task now was to come down, supported, into the chapel; her only sacrifice climbing back up the stairs. For the rest of the day she stayed in her room, sitting in an armchair, her feet on a footstool. You didn’t see her when you entered; you heard the rosary jingling, the voice asking, “Who is it?” Guided by the voice, you could see two stony gray eyes in the shadowy light.

When she entered the chapel the girls bowed their heads, as if a dead person hoping for sainthood were passing. Two young nuns supported her, depositing her cautiously in the chair at the back of the chapel, where she dismissed them with a wave of the hand that indicated both condescension and blessing. They fled quickly, swishing their skirts to right and left with gentle curtsies; the Superior crossed her hands on her lap and looked at the altar, as if waiting for a show to begin. When the service was over the two nuns delicately braced her as she struggled up the stairs, panting, but without complaint. They sighed in her stead: at every step, 27while she stopped to rest, one of them rapidly blinked her eyelids over the white of eyes raised to heaven.

In reality, Sister Lorenza was the one in charge. You had only to see her ladling out the soup: she ran her eyes around the room, counting the heads of the girls like a herd of cattle: “All, they’re all here.” And she deeply enjoyed feeling them shut up with her behind the big windows that imprisoned their youth, their nights, their awakenings.

It was she who opened the mail in the morning. Girls wrote from all over Italy, and from abroad as well. She answered in a clear, inviting handwriting, with maternal tenderness; and when she learned that they had accepted, that they would come, she repeated their name many times to herself, caressed it almost, then abruptly transformed it into a number, and repeated name, surname, number. Whenever a new girl arrived and the bell summoned Sister Lorenza to the reception room, she adjusted her veil, looking at her reflection in a windowpane, wondered anxiously “What will she be like?,” went to meet her smiling, welcomed her affectionately. But she never spoke in the first person: it was always “the Mother Superior who … the Mother Superior wants … I’ll tell the Mother Superior that …” letting her imagine that the person in charge here was the Abbess. She was pleased, however, that the new arrival, listening to her, admired her fine hands, her tall, slender figure.

In summer, when the girls went home, Sister Lorenza grew pale, was often unwell. “She’s tired,” said her companions. But when the evenings began to get shorter, she went at sunset to say her office on the terrace: a high terrace over the city, over Villa Borghese. “It’s autumn now,” she thought, huddling in her light shawl. In autumn the girls returned. “Did you have a nice vacation, my child?” But she didn’t want to know anything about their home; in fact she avoided talking about that. At night, she fell asleep happy.

In the Mother Superior’s room a lamp swathed in white was lit. That light endowed things with a fantastic aspect: the Superior’s hands looked 28like ivory. Sister Prudenzina was motionless near the prie-dieu; suddenly she began pacing nervously until, hearing the rosary jingle, she remembered the Mother’s presence and went back to the wall, her hands under her apron. It was already late: she had heard the girls go up to their rooms, talking loudly; worried, she drew from her pocket the watch hanging on a black cord. “I’ll have to go up soon and turn off the lights,” she said. She would have liked to talk to the Mother, but she didn’t respond: she continued to jiggle the rosary in silence, perhaps dozing.

Finally the door opened slowly and Sister Lorenza appeared: Sister Prudenzina stared at her questioningly, and the Mother’s sleepy eyes turned to her as well.

“Nothing,” Sister Lorenza murmured disconsolately. “You were right, Sister Prudenzina. The porter nun says she saw her go out with a bundle under her arm. Maybe she should have asked her …”

“But, Sister, any girl can go out with a bundle!”

The other spread her arms. “It’s true.”