on his knee.
As Giovanna aged and her mind and eyes began to cloud, she often forgot to cut Sibilla’s hair. Instead, she would place her granddaughter on the floor between her knees and oil and comb and braid her hair for hours on end, humming folk songs. Sometimes, she would part paths into the overall scalp and string the hairs out to the furniture to make a web, Sibilla a placid spider in the midst of it. When Adriana found them like this, she would glare sulkily at them and proceed to make their meagre dinner. ‘Games,’ she would mutter with longing and disgust.
* * *
Towards the end of the war, a resistance army swept into Alba and formed a Partisan Republic against Mussolini. The Partisans – paesani and defected soldiers – took over the wealthier homes and during a drunken brawl at Villa Serra, Signora Lina’s husband ended up skewered on the tip of a dagger. Lina fell into a terrible, self-consuming grief. The domestici drifted away – all but Adriana. She needed the pay and she felt attached to the family: Giacomo wouldn’t admit it, and Lina never mentioned it, but little Sibilla had Gavuzzi blood. So Adriana continued to clean at Villa Serra and to care for Signora Lina until the widow climbed out of her mourning.
After the short-lived Partisan occupation, the Fascists retook Alba and they too invited themselves into the villas for hot food and clean women. Being forced to serve as a hostess once again – for the other side this time – revived Lina’s spirits. She had no political convictions to speak of so she gladly took in the well-heeled Fascists, who lavished her with finery and flattery. When the war ended, she kept on throwing parties at Villa Serra. It was a way to forget. Four years on, Signora Lina lived solely for the taste of whisky and the pleasure of watching strangers desultorily destroy her home every night. Adriana patiently set about resurrecting it every morning, righting overturned furniture, wiping wet puddles, scraping dry ones. Life would have gone on this way if the Signora had not, with a casual remark, upset the balance.
Adriana was cleaning the parlour one morning while Lina swanned around, lazily hunting for a cigarette, the bottom edge of her green robe sending toppled wine glasses rolling in circles.
‘You,’ said the Signora, pausing her perambulation to peer curiously at her maid. ‘You do not smile any more?’
Adriana was tugging open a burgundy curtain and she hid her sigh under the humming cloth and the rattling rail. She considered. When had she last smiled?
‘Your job is the same. You clean.’ The Signora picked up a dirty fork from a table and carried it to another. ‘My job is the same. I make things for you to clean.’ She picked up a dirty plate from the second table and carried it to the first. ‘It is a good system, sì?’
‘Sì, Signora.’ Adriana thought of the rotting duck she’d found in the toilet earlier, the line of ants investigating it, joining one by one a tiny floating raft of their dead comrades.
‘So.’ The Signora plopped herself in an armchair. ‘More mopping, less moping.’
‘Sì, Signora.’ Adriana knelt to wash the window.
‘You are looking fat as well.’ The Signora’s voice sharpened: ‘Did you have a baby?’
‘Sì—’ Adriana paused. Her lower lip folded into her mouth.
Sibilla was now nine years old. It was one thing to pretend the girl was not a Gavuzzi but…The Signora was now murmuring a string of old grievances – that her husband had been killed by those rough men and…Adriana’s arm mechanically wiped the window as she looked out at the valley. It was furry with forest and blocked with houses, half erased by mist. She thought of Sibilla’s eyebrows, which were darker than the rest of the hair on her forehead and the exact same shape as Giacomo’s – and the Signora’s, for that matter. Adriana lowered her arm and closed her eyes. Was it possible that the Signora didn’t know that Sibilla even existed? Unconsciously, Adriana swayed forward and her forehead hit the window with a small thud.
‘Oh!’ said the Signora with surprise.
Adriana opened her mouth to speak but a broken cry came out instead. She began to sob.
‘Oh,’ said the Signora with irritation.
Adriana hastened to apologise but the Signora was already on her feet and stalking from the room, the sweeping train of her robe knocking over a bowl of hazelnuts. There was no