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have nothing in common with the girl who was born in Turin. Your family..."
    "Dead."
    "... If they weren't, they'd make you laugh. What would you have in common with them now?"
    She was so cold and distant that I flushed and didn't know what to say. I felt a fool. After all, I thought, she's trying to pay you a compliment. She looked at me quizzically as if she had understood.
    "Now don't tell me, like some people I know, that it's fine being born in a courtyard..."
    I said that it was fine to think about the courtyard, comparing it with now.
    "I knew it," she said, laughing. "Living is so foolish that one gets attached even to the foolishness of having been born..."
    She knew how to talk, no question of that. I looked around at the gilding, the mirrors, the prints on the walls. "This cafe," Momina said, "was put up by a man like you, pigheaded..."
    She made me smile. Are you on the ball because you've lived in Paris, I thought, or were you in Paris because you're on the ball?
    But she said abruptly: "Did you enjoy the party the other evening?"
    "Was that a party?" I murmured, disillusioned. "I wasn't aware."
    "They say it's carnival time," she remarked ironically in a low voice, laughing. "These things happen."
    "And pretty Mariella," I said, "why doesn't she go to these parties?"
    "She's already told you that?" Momina smiled. "Why, you're real friends already."
    "She hasn't asked me yet to run up a dress for her."
    "She will, she will. We're all like that in Turin..."
     
     
    9
     
    I am a fool. In the evening I was sorry to have spoken badly of Mariella after she had defended that girl Vanna in Loris's studio. The bitterness stayed in my mouth. Of course I knew they were only words, that these people—all of them, including Morelli— lived like cats, always ready to scratch and snatch, but anyhow I was sorry and said to myself: "Here I am just like them." The mood didn't last, however, and when Momina asked what I was doing that evening I agreed to keep her company. We went to the hotel for dinner and naturally Morelli showed up and came over to our table to talk, showing no surprise at seeing us together. Halfway through the meal my telephone call from Rome came through. For a couple of minutes in the booth I discussed the Via Po, made projects, and breathed the old air. When I got back, Morelli and Momina told me to forget all that, we were going to enjoy ourselves, we would go out together and end up in Morelli's apartment.
    That evening Morelli wanted to drive. He took us to the wine market, where he tried to get us drunk, as men do with inexperienced girls, but eventually he drank more than we did. And then, as a kind of game, we made the rounds of numberless places, getting in and out of the car; I kept taking off and putting on my fur, one dance and away—I seemed to recognize dozens of faces. Once we lost Momina and found her at the door of the next room, laughing and talking with the doorman. I had no idea there was so much going on in Turin. Momina stopped treating me absently, she laughed in Morelli's face and suggested we make the rounds of the dives along Porta Palazzo where you drink red wine and the whores hang out. "This isn't Paris, you know," Morelli said. "Content yourself with those four fairies over there." In a bar in Via Roma, near the little square with the churches, Morelli pretended to be bargaining for cocaine with the barkeep, they were great friends. He stood us drinks and then the drummer began telling us about the time he played in the Royal Palace. "His Highness ... because for me he is still His Highness ..." To get away, I danced with Momina. I don't like dancing with women, but I wanted to test a suspicion and this is still the quickest way. Nobody paid us any attention; Momina danced, talking into my ear, held me so tight it burned, rubbed against me, laughed and breathed in my hair, but it didn't seem to me she wanted anything else; she made no advances, was just a little crazy and