Strange. The evening of the Thursday before Lent when father was growing worse just before dying, I cried with anger and I hated him, thinking of the holiday I was losing. Only mother understood me that evening, teased me and told me to get out from under her feet and go and cry in the yard with Carlotta. But I was crying because the fact that Papa was about to die terrified me and kept me from letting myself go at the carnival.

The telephone rang. I didn't move from the tub, because I was happy with my cigarette. I thought that it was probably on just that distant evening that I told myself for the first time that if I wanted to accomplish something, or get something out of life, I shouldn't tie myself to anyone as I had been tied to that embarrassing father. I had succeeded, and now my whole pleasure was to dissolve myself in warm water and not answer the telephone.

It began to ring again, apparently irritated. I didn't answer, but I got out of the bath. I dried myself slowly, seated in my bathrobe, and was rubbing face cream around my mouth when someone knocked. "Who is it?"

"A note for the signora."

"I said I'm not in."

"The gentleman insists."

I had to get up and turn the key. The impertinent Venetian handed me the note. I looked at it and said to the girl: "I don't want to see him. He can come back tomorrow."

"The signora is not going down?"

My face felt plastered, I couldn't even manage a frown. "I'm not going down. I want tea. Tell him tomorrow at noon."

When I was alone, I took the receiver off, but they answered right away from the office. The voice rasped helplessly on the table like a fish out of water. Then I shouted something into the phone; I had to say who I was, that I wanted to sleep. They wished me good night.

Half an hour later the girl had still not returned. This happens only in Turin, I thought. I did something I had never done before, as though I were a silly girl. I slipped into my dressing gown and half opened the door.

Out in the corridor a number of people—maids, patrons, my impertinent Venetian—had crowded in front of a door. Someone exclaimed something sotto voce.

Then the door opened wide, and slowly, very carefully, two whiteshirts carried out a stretcher. Everyone fell silent and gave way. On the stretcher lay a girl with a swollen face and disordered hair, shoeless but wearing an evening gown of blue tulle. Though her lips and eyelids were motionless, one could imagine her having had a lively expression. Instinctively I glanced under the stretcher to see if there were blood dripping down. I searched the faces—the usual faces, one pursed up, another apparently grinning. I caught the eye of my maid—she was running behind the stretcher. Over the low voices of the circle (which included a woman in furs, wringing her hands), I heard the voice of a doctor; he had come out of the door, drying his hands on a towel and saying that it was all over, to please get out of the way.

The stretcher disappeared down the stairs, as someone said: "Easy now." I looked at my maid again.