But one day, the frightful Aunt Scolastica opened her eyes for her.

“Haven’t you noticed, silly, that he’s off to Le Due Riviere all the time?”

“Yes, he goes for the olive harvest.”

“It’s one olive in particular he’s after, one olive, idiot!”

My mother then gave me a real lecture, saying I should guard against committing a mortal sin and leading a poor girl into temptation and perhaps ruining her for ever, etc., etc. But there was no danger of this. Oliva was a good girl, whose virtue was unassailable, rooted as it was in the knowledge of the harm she would have done herself by giving in. This self-awareness actually ridded her of any silly shyness and false modesty and made her warm and uninhibited.

She had a wonderful laugh, cherry lips and beautiful teeth. But I never had one kiss from those lips; she occasionally nipped me with the lovely teeth, as a punishment, when I grabbed her arm and refused to release her unless she let me kiss her hair. That was all.

Now, there she was, so beautiful, so young, so fresh, and married to Batta Malagna. Who could turn their backs on such a twist of fate? Oliva even knew how Malagna had become so rich. She had criticised him for it in conversation with me one day, then, precisely because of this wealth, she married him.

A year went by from the wedding, then two; and there were no children.

Malagna, who had decided long ago that he had had no children from his first wife because of her sterility or continuous ill-health, did not even begin to suspect that it might be his fault. He started to sulk with Oliva.

“No signs?”

“Nothing.”

He waited another year, the third, in vain. So he began to insult her openly; and finally, after another year, by now despairing of ever having a child and at the height of his frustration, he started to curse her without any self-control, shouting that with her apparent florid health she had deceived him, deceived him; that it was only in order to have a child by her that he had elevated her to that position, a position once held by a lady, a real lady, whose memory, if it had not been for this wish of his, he would never have affronted in this way.

Poor Oliva did not reply, she did not know what to say. She often came to our house to unburden herself with my mother, who comforted her with kind words and told her to keep hoping, as she was, after all, very young.

“Are you twenty?”

“Twenty-two…” Well then! There had been more than one instance of women having children after ten or fifteen years of marriage.

“Fifteen years! But what about him? He was already old when…”

Oliva has suspected right from the beginning that there was something lacking on his part rather than hers, although he kept on denying it. But how could it be proved? On marrying, Oliva had vowed to be faithful and she did not want to fall short of her vow, even for the sake of peace of mind. How do I know this? I have said she used to come to pour out her troubles in our house. I have said I had known her since she was a girl. Now I had to watch her weeping over the unworthy behaviour and idiotic presumption of that hideous old man … need I say more? Anyway, the answer was no, so I will leave it at that.

I soon got over it. I had lots of things to worry about, or thought I had, which comes to the same thing. I also had money which, apart from anything else, gives one ideas one might not otherwise have. However, Gerolamo Pomino Junior was damnably good at helping me spend it, as he never had enough, owing to his father’s wisdom and parsimony.

Mino was our shadow, attaching himself to me or Berto in turn; and he would alter personality with the most amazing imitative skill, according to whether he was dealing with Berto or with me. When he was clinging to Berto, he instantly became a fop; and his father, who also had an elegant streak, would loosen the pursestrings a little. But it never lasted with Berto. When he realised even his way of walking was being copied, my brother immediately lost patience, perhaps fearing ridicule, and would illtreat him in order to get rid of him. Then Mino would attach himself to me; and his father would tighten up the pursestrings again.

I had more patience with him because I enjoyed exploiting his dependence. Afterwards I would regret it. I would be aware of having exaggerated on his account in some undertaking, or gone against my nature, or pretended to more sentiment than I actually felt, in order to enjoy confusing him or getting him into some fix whose consequences I naturally had to suffer later on.

One day, whilst we were out hunting, Mino mentioned Malagna, whose performances with his wife I had recounted to him. He said he had spotted a girl, the daughter of one of Malagna’s cousins in fact, for whom he would do anything, even turn to crime.

He was quite capable of it; all the more so in that the girl did not seem unwilling; but until now he had not even been able to find a way of speaking to her.

“You just haven’t had the nerve!” I said, laughing. Mino denied it, but he blushed too much through his denial.

“But I have spoken to the maid,” he hastened to add, “and I found out some amazing facts, you know. She told me that your Malagna is always hanging around the house and that her guess is that he’s planning some trick, plotting with the cousin, who’s an old witch.”

“What kind of trick?”

“Well, she says he goes there to whine about his bad luck at not having any children. The old woman, who’s hard and surly, tells him it serves him right. Apparently, when Malagna’s first wife died, this old woman took it into her head that he should marry her daughter, and tried everything to make it happen. When she was thwarted, she had plenty to say about him: he was an animal, an enemy of the family, traitor to his own blood, etc., etc.