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."You have to dress.You're right.The world is made for you."All on our feet now, we watched him holding his cup.His wife, heavy and patient in her turquoise velvet, waited.I realized that he was an old man, tolerated, and that only his work meant anything to the women.I also saw that he knew it and was grateful to us for having let him talk.27Rosetta told me that she didn't understand her father."I understand him," Momina said."He's one of those men who used to wear beards.Then one night some woman would cut it off and they would spend the rest of their lives trying to redeem themselves.""However, he made a Rosetta," I said."Probably he didn't know how to make her or not to make her."Momina slowed down, stopped beside the portico, and none of us moved."Anyhow, Rosetta resembles him," she said."Weren't you a good student, Rosetta? I'll bet your father is one of those who say: 'If I were a boy, I'd begin all over again.'"Rosetta said, over my shoulder: "All young people are fools.And the old men, and the old women, and the dead.All of them wrong.Oh, Clelia, teach me how to earn a little money and get away to California.They say that there you never die."I saw Becuccio through the door and signaled him.He crossed under the portico and bent down to the window.While I talked with him, Momina asked Rosetta why we didn't go up into the hills.Becuccio told me the cases hadn't arrived yet."You've got time for a drive," Momina said.We set off.I saw Rosetta's face in the rear-view mirror.She sat there silent, sulky, stubborn.Sometimes I thought of her as very young, a little girl, the kind you try to persuade to say "thank you," but they won't do it.If you thought about it, it was terrible to have her with us this way and talk this way, terrible but also ridiculous, comic.I tried to recall what I was like at twenty, at eighteen—how I was during the first days with Guido.How I was before, when my mother used to tell me not to believe in anyone or anything.Poor thing, what had she got for it all? I would have liked to know what advice her father and mother gave to that only daughter of theirs, so crazy and so alone.Momina jogged me with her elbow as we were going up Sassi.Just then it struck me that Momina was the real mother, the elder sister, the demanding and evil sister of Rosetta—Momina, who threw stones openly without even trying to hide her hand, who— like me with Becuccio—had nothing more to lose."Rosetta," I said, "do you have any friends besides Momina?""What's a friend?" she said."Not even Momina is my friend."Momina, absorbed in the curves, said nothing.It occurred to me that every year someone breaks his neck on the Superga road.We were going fast, under the high trees.When the ascent began to flatten out, we could look off at the hills, valleys, and the plain of Turin.I had never been to Superga.I didn't know it was so high.Some evenings from the bridge over the Po you could see its rising black bulk sparkling with lights at the top, like a necklace carelessly thrown on the shoulders of a beautiful woman.But now it was morning, it was cool, and an April sun filled the sky.Momina said: "We can't go any farther." She stopped by a heap of gravel.The radiator was steaming.Then we got out and looked at the hills."It's beautiful up here," Rosetta said."The world is beautiful," Momina said, coming up behind us."If only we weren't in it.""We are the others," I said, looking at Rosetta."It's enough to do without them, keep them at a distance, then living becomes a possibility.""It's possible here," Rosetta said, "for a moment, for the time it takes to drive up.But look at Turin.It's frightening.You have to live with all those people.""You damn well don't need to have them in your house," Momina said."Money means something."There was a hedge along the road and a heavy mesh fence behind it; farther down a group of trees and a large concrete tank, a swimming pool full of muddy water and leaves.It looked abandoned; the little iron ladder for climbing in and out was still there."Whose villa is this?" Momina said."Look at the shape it's in.""That's it," I said."Fix this place up and invite anyone I liked.Go down to Turin in the evening and perhaps visit someone.That's how I would live if I were you.I'd have lived like that since I was a girl.""You could do it," Rosetta said."Better than we could.Perhaps you would enjoy it
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