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the Via Appia, and I looked out for it, half hoping, as usual, that by some miracle I should find it was no longer there, so that I could go straight on to the Castelli and then go back to Rome and return to my studio. However, there the gate was, thrown wide open especially for me, one might have thought, so as to stop me as I passed and swallow me up. I slowed down, turned sharply, and with a gentle, noiseless lurch entered the graveled drive, between two rows of cypresses. The drive rose gradually toward the villa, which could be seen at its far end; and as I looked at the small black cypresses with their dusty, curled foliage, and at the low, red house crouching beneath a sky full of fluffy gray clouds like lumps of dirty cotton wool, I was again conscious of the horror and consternation that assailed me each time I went to see my mother. It was a horror such as might be felt by a man who is preparing to commit an unnatural act; it was almost as though, as I turned into the drive, I were actually re-entering the womb that had given me birth. I sought to rid myself of this disagreeable feeling of retrogression by sounding my horn to announce my arrival. Then, after making a half circle on the gravel in front of the house, I stopped the car and jumped out. Almost immediately the glass door on the ground floor opened and a maid appeared on the doorstep.
    I had never seen her before that day; my mother, who persisted in keeping a staff at the villa which would barely have been sufficient for a five-room flat, was for this reason frequently compelled to make changes. She was tall, with ample, robust hips and bosom and curiously short, badly cut hair, like the hair of a convict or a convalescent, and her pale, slightly freckled face had a sly expression, possibly owing to the huge pair of black-rimmed spectacles that concealed her eyes. I particularly noticed her mouth, which was shaped like a crushed flower and was of a delicate geranium pink. I asked her where my mother was, and she in turn asked me, in a very gentle voice: “Are you Signor Dino?”
    “Yes.”
    “The Signora is in the garden, over by the greenhouses.”
    I started off in that direction, not without first giving a surprised glance at another car which was standing on the open graveled space near mine. It was a sports car, low, powerful-looking, with a top that opened back, and of a metallic blue color. Had my mother then invited someone else to lunch? Turning over this disagreeable doubt in my mind, I walked round the villa, along the brick pathway in the shade of laurels and holm oaks, and came out on the far side of the house. Here was a large, formal, Italian garden, with flower beds in the form of triangles, squares and circles, small trees clipped into spheres and pyramids and cones, and numerous avenues and paths, graveled and box-edged. A wider, straight path, covered by a white-painted iron pergola twined round with the branches of vines, cut the garden into two parts and stretched from the villa to the far end of the property where, against the boundary wall, could be seen the glistening panes of the greenhouses in which my mother grew flowers. Halfway between the villa and the greenhouses, underneath the pergola, I caught sight of her walking alone, her back turned toward me. For a moment I refrained from calling to her and watched her.
    She was walking slowly, very slowly, in the manner of someone who looks around and is pleased with what he sees and prolongs his contemplation as much as possible. She was wearing a pale blue two-piece dress, the jacket very tight at the waist and very wide at the shoulders, the skirt extremely narrow, a veritable sheath. She always dressed like this, in very close-fitting clothes that made her small, fragile figure look even more meager and rigid and puppet-like. Her head was large, on a long, sinewy neck, her hair a crisp, dull blond and always elaborately waved and curled. The pearls around her neck were so big