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By Root 680 0

in her cold, toneless voice, said: “Offer Signor Dino some more,” and Rita, who all this time had remained standing with her back to the dresser behind my mother, took up the dish and came over and handed it to me. I helped myself with one hand only, leaving my mother hand where it was, resting on the edge of the table. Then I felt the hand with which Rita was supporting the dish press lightly upon mine, in a way that might or might not have been intentional. I did not stop more than an instant to consider this possibility, but resumed eating. Finally I asked my mother, in a tone of slight amusement: “What do you do all the time?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say: what do you do all the time?”

“Oh, my life is the same as ever, you know.”

“Yes, but in all these years that I’ve been away from home I’ve never asked you what you did. Now, perhaps because I’m on the point of coming back, I’m curious to know about it. Why, it’s quite possible that everything’s changed.”

“I don’t like changing anything. I like to think that I live now as I lived ten years ago, and as I shall be living in ten years’ time.”

“But, all the same, I don’t know how you live; let’s see now, what time do you wake up in the morning?”

“At eight o’clock.”

“As early as that? But I’ve often telephoned at nine and been told the Signora’s still asleep.”

“Yes, sometimes I sleep later because I’ve been up late the evening before.”

“And when you wake up, what do you do? Do you have breakfast?”

“Yes, of course.”

“In your room or in the dining room?”

“In my room.”

“In bed or at a table?”

“At a table.”

“What do you have for breakfast?”

“Tea and toast, as I always did, and orange juice.”

“And after breakfast what do you do?”

“I have a bath.” My mother answered my questions in a tone which was slightly resentful and at the same time both dignified and surprised, as though I had been seriously in doubt as to whether in fact she breakfasted or washed.

“A bath or a shower?”

“A bath.”

“Do you wash yourself or do you get the maid to help you?”

“The maid sees to the temperature of the water, puts in the bath salts, and then, when the bath is ready, helps me to wash the parts of myself that I can’t reach.”

“And then?”

“Then I get out of the water, dry myself and dress.”

“Does the maid help you to dress too?”

“She helps me to put on my stockings. But not my clothes; I prefer to dress myself.”

“Do you talk to the maid while you’re having your bath and dressing?”

My mother suddenly started laughing, unwillingly, it seemed, with a kind of nervous irritation. “Do you know, you’re very odd, with all your questions? After all, I might not wish to answer them. My private life has nothing to do with anyone but myself.”

“I didn’t ask you what you think but what you do. Do try and understand me. I’m coming home after an absence of almost ten years. It’s quite right that I should want to reacclimatize myself. Well then, do you talk to the maid?”

“Of course I talk to her; she’s not an automaton, she’s a human being.”

“When do you put on your jewelry, before or after dressing?”

“I put it on the last thing.”

“In what order—that is, which pieces first and which afterwards?”

“Do you know what you remind me of? A policeman in a detective story, investigating a crime.”

“The fact of the matter is that I have to investigate something too.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, something or other. Well, in what order do you put on your jewelry?”

“First my rings and bracelets, then my necklace and then my earrings. Now are you satisfied?”

“After you’re dressed, what do you do?”

“I go downstairs and give the cook her orders for the day.”

“You mean you write down the menus for her—for lunch and dinner?”

“Exactly.”

“And then?”

“Then I go into the garden, I pick flowers and bring them into the house and put them in vases. Or I walk about and talk to the gardeners. In fact, I busy myself in the garden.”

“After the garden, what then?”

I saw her look at me for a moment, and then she answered, almost solemnly: “I go into the study and attend to the management