She could smile without a wrinkle forming on her face. I imagined her in a man’s arms in no other way than with that smile and a soft blush that spread out over her like a cloud, behind which she escaped the onslaught of desire.

Ottavina did after all have a legitimate son, and often without waiting for her, I slipped off to old Mrs. Nevermore’s office to attempt in conversation with the old lady to reestablish my equilibrium with reality. When she moved through the room, she let her arms hang down, with the backs of her hands facing forward; she had the wide back and belly of a matron who no longer attempted to improve upon life. If, driven by the need to know, you asked whether her black cat Michette was in fact a he or a she, she looked at you thoughtfully and responded philosophically: “Oh my! You can’t really say; it’s an it!” In younger years Mrs. Nevermore’s heart possessed a native Roman paramour, Sor Carlo, and whenever you moved in Mrs. Nevermore’s proximity, you could, at the end of a perspective of doorways, make out a seated Sor Carlo. Between Easter and October, you understand; for he was a wreck, and even now, outside the season, he was known to all the guests, but not openly acknowledged, as a ghost. He always sat motionlessly propped up against some wall or other, dressed in a filthy light-colored suit, his legs thick as columns from top to bottom, his proud face with his black-dyed Cavour beard distorted by fat and sadness. Only when I came home at night did I ever see him in motion. When all the eyes that otherwise stood guard over him were shut, then he dragged his gasping self through the corridors from bench to bench, and did battle with his faltering breath. He lived out his life here. I never failed to greet him, for which he thanked me with dignity. I don’t know if he was grateful for Mrs. Nevermore’s charity, or if, out of protest against her ingratitude and because of his injured pride, he seemed to sleep all day with his eyes open. He also revealed nothing of what Mrs. Nevermore felt for her old Sor Carlo. One ought probably to assume that for her the tender equanimity of age long since outweighed the importance that young people place on such matters of the heart. On one occasion at least I found her with Sor Carlo in her office: Sor Carlo sat against one wall and directed his sleepy look through the opposite wall at infinity, and Mrs. Nevermore sat on her table and stared through the open door into the darkness. These two steady gazes, separated by approximately a yard’s width, passed parallel to each other, and just beneath their periphery, beside the table legs, sat Michette, the cat, with the two house dogs. The blond Pomeranian Maik, with the soft balding hair and the onset of arthritis at the back, attempted to perform with Michette what dogs usually do with other dogs, and meanwhile, the fat, rusty-blond Pomeranian Ali good-naturedly nibbled on her ear; nobody tried to stop this, neither Michette nor the two old people.

If anyone would have stopped it, it would certainly have been Miss Frazer; though it is to be assumed that she would not have permitted Maik to start anything like that in her presence in the first place. Every evening Miss Frazer sat with us in the parlor on the edge of an easy chair; with her torso she leaned back straight as a board, so that it touched only the upper rim of the head rest. She stretched her legs out straight so that only her heels grazed the ground; in this position she crocheted. When she was finished, she sat herself down at the oval table in the midst of our conversation and did her daily lesson. This having been completed, with quick fingers she played two rounds of solitaire. And when the solitaire was over, she said good night and disappeared. It was then ten o’clock.

A deviation from the norm only occurred when one of us opened a window in the tropical heat of the parlor; then Miss Frazer stood up and shut it again. She probably couldn’t stand the draft. We learned as little of the source of her aversion to the breeze as we knew of the contents of her daily lesson or the object of her handiwork.