Introduction

"De Cespedes' work has lost none of its subversive force”—The New York Times Book Review

"De Céspedes’s melancholy testament to a hidden life feels timeless and vital."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

From the author of Forbidden Notebook, Alba de Céspedes, a richly told novel she called “the story of a great love and of a crime.”

As she looks back on her life, Alessandra Corteggiani recalls her youth during the rise of fascism in Italy, the resistance, and the fall of Mussolini, the lives of the women in her family and her working-class neighborhood, rigorously committed to telling “her side of the story.”

Alessandra witnesses her mother, an aspiring concert pianist, suffer from the inability to escape her oppressive marriage. Later, she is sent away to live with her father's relatives in the country, in the hope she’ll finally learn to submit herself to the patriarchal system and authority. But at the farm, Alessandra grows increasingly rebellious, conscious of the unjust treatment of generations of hardworking women in her family. When she refuses the marriage proposal from a neighboring farmer, she is sent back to Rome to tend to her ailing father.

In Rome, Alessandra meets Francesco, a charismatic anti-fascist professor, who ostensibly admires and supports her sense of independence and justice. But she soon comes to recognize that even as she respects Francesco and is keen to participate in his struggle to reclaim their country from fascism, this respect is unrequited, and that her own beloved husband is ensnared by patriarchal conventions when it comes to their relationship.

In these pages, De Céspedes delivers a breathtakingly accurate and timeless portrayal of the complexity of the female condition against the dramatic backdrop of WWII and the partisan uprising in Italy.

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Excerpt

I wore a short white dress that I would later wear all summer long, and in my hair I placed a small piece of white lace that had belonged to Nonna Editta; when I mentioned the veil, Francesco at first seemed to approve of my romantic intentions. But a little later he said, “Won’t it look theatrical?” I was mortified by his comment: I didn’t understand what he thought about the theater, and above all, about me. Yet on the morning I walked to the altar with my father, Francesco whispered to me for the first time, “You look very beautiful,” as he awkwardly held out a bouquet of gardenias.

In the end, the only thing that moved me during the entire ceremony were those gardenias and the birdsong coming from the peace of a distant piazza and weaving between the notes of the organ. I took them with me on the train. As I was leaving the house, I turned around: “The gardenias!” Everyone kissed me, and Aunt Sofia said, “I like your husband,” looking from him to me as if comparing us. My father was moving to Abruzzo and would travel with her a few days later. He wanted to say goodbye to me alone in his room.

“So, Alessandra?” he said. “It’s over.”

He took my hand and once more I felt the dry warmth of his skin. He always wore a gold ring in the shape of a snake: I saw his hand once more reaching for my mother’s, and I thought of Francesco waiting outside the door. “Are you happy?”

“Yes,” I said, but it wasn’t true. I was just in a hurry.

“That’s good. I thought it would be difficult for you to be happy . . . Indeed. You know very well what I mean.” It was the first time in twenty-two years that my father and I had talked together. Just as Aunt Sofia had, he said, “I like your husband,” infusing me with a vague sense of fear. “I hope you’ll come to Abruzzo soon. I’d like Francesco to meet your grandmother.”

“Of course. Or you’ll come here; you could stay with us.”

“No, thank you,” he replied decisively. And he said again, “It’s over.”

Francesco was calling for me, and we left the house cheerfully and hurriedly.

“Goodbye!” said Fulvia, looking down from the landing.

“Goodbye!” I waved my hand in the empty stairwell. A few doors opened as we went by. The doorman smiled in sympathy and so did the few neighbors at the entrance. One girl from the third floor threw us a geranium plucked from her windowsill.

OUR MISTAKE WAS in having awaited the journey too eagerly. We had spent weeks and months imagining it, but it was over so quickly, one gesture followed by another, minute by minute.

We had decided against Capri and Naples because of the bombings, and had instead chosen Florence. I was glad that it was a city near a beautiful river. When we got there, Francesco became irritated with the porter and I heard him raise his voice for the first time; he was right, and I was infected with his irritation. On top of that, there was an argument as soon as we entered the hotel because they had not booked us a room with a window on the Arno. I had expressed the wish; Francesco had written to the management days before, and he was right to be angry. He argued with the doorman and the manager, not realizing how embarrassing it was for me to witness the dispute. He kept saying, “I wrote clearly: a room with a view on the Arno.” The others protested. I was alone with our bags holding the gardenias. In the end we got the room, and as soon as the door closed we went to look out the window.

“Ah!” he exclaimed in a tone of revenge, yet still too irritated to enjoy the view of the river.

Yes, our mistake lay precisely in having expected too much from that day. Maybe we should have waited for the day to go by. In fact, we didn’t even eat dinner: I myself said, “I’m not hungry” because I wanted nothing other than for the ill-humor and the cold awkwardness to lift. I was waiting to feel happy: I forced myself to be so, smiling and trying to concentrate on the sweet novelty of being alone with Francesco. Help me, I asked him silently. Help me, talk to me. I needed to hear him talk about me, about himself, about our love, in order to return to focusing my attention on the two of us. I couldn’t stop thinking that he was feeling as I did, smiling and kissing me only because he had a pressing duty to do so at that moment. It would have been better if we had gone for a walk along the Arno, trusting in the harmony of our steps. But we stayed in our room, pretending that we couldn’t resist giving in to our desires. I couldn’t get the porter’s arrogant face out of my head, the manager’s rude words from my ears. At the sight of my blue dressing gown heaped on the floor, I thought of Fulvia. The previous guests had squashed two mosquitoes on the white wall.

AFTERWARDS, FRANCESCO FELL asleep. The silence was heavy, and the small alarm clock Fulvia had given me as a present ticked away, measuring the interminable passage of time. The sheets were pulled down to expose Francesco’s bare shoulders and I looked coldly at his skin, which I did not know. He had seven moles on his shoulders, arranged in such a way that they reminded me of the Big Dipper. His neck was smooth, tender and inviting. I called him: Help me, I said internally. Wake up, talk to me, take me in your arms. My answer was the even rhythm of his breathing, and it deepened the silence, rendering my loneliness all the more distressing.

It had all been different from how I had imagined it: I had imagined Francesco would kiss my hands, barely looking at me, and little by little, with loving words, he would coax me to accept his bolder moves. And yet he had barely spoken: maybe he thought that at certain moments, action, too, can be love. But no: he was eleven years older than me, yet I was a woman and I knew that looks and words say more about love than gestures, which also serve to express feelings that are actually different. Usually so tender, he seemed to have suddenly become severe, all rushed moves: no matter which way I turned I clashed with his arms. I pushed him away from me so I could look into his eyes, to feel myself alive and loved in them; but then his arms were around me again and I couldn’t see his face anymore. Francesco, my love, I whispered silently, look at me. I felt like my whole body was pleading in my secret voice, which he had shown so many times that he could hear.

If I’m honest, I have to confess that intimacy with a man did not amaze me; nor had it elicited in me the revolt and surprise of my first kiss with Paolo. At the time, I didn’t expect that kiss or its unsettling novelty: since I wasn’t in love with him, I hadn’t made an effort to fantasize about it. But loving Francesco as I did, I had imagined his every move and already accepted it as love. What did amaze me was that afterwards, he didn’t look at me tenderly, didn’t call me “Queen” or kneel before me. We lay beside each other for a little while. He took a cigarette from the nightstand; my blood was running cold yet he smoked calmly staring at the white ceiling, the old curtains. Uncle Rodolfo, I said silently, Uncle Rodolfo, come here, help me. I saw his eyes again, the day we had breakfast together in Sulmona.

Francesco and I talked as we smoked in an effort to feign mutual nonchalance: he went over some of the day’s details, suggested itineraries for the next day, even recalled his contretemps with the manager, revealing a macho satisfaction with the successful outcome.

The gardenias beside the bed gave off a sharp scent. Whenever I smell their perfume, I go back to that night. As I looked at them, I scolded myself for being unfair and ignorant, for forgetting everything expressed by their presence. I pictured Francesco going into the shop and pointing to the gardenias: I was flattered that he had chosen those flowers with me in mind: smooth, soft, scented.

“Francesco,” I said. “Your flowers spoke to me throughout the entire day. Even now they’re speaking, and they’re a great comfort. I wanted to thank you. It’s very important to me, thoughtful acts of love like this.”

Initially he was quiet. But then he said, “Look, I should tell you the truth. It was Fulvia. I confess: I wouldn’t have thought of it. Maybe it’s something lacking in me, or maybe a man never thinks of these things. Fulvia called me. She asked discreetly if I had already got you some flowers. I said no, I didn’t know—I didn’t know which flowers to choose, which you’d like most. I was stuck. And she very politely offered to help me. She told me that she’d take care of everything and she gave me the florist’s address. All I had to do was go and collect them. She was really thoughtful. You know, I didn’t like her, but after this gesture, I realized how fond she is of you. She was so insistent that I say nothing about it! But I really wanted to tell you because you know her even better, and because now I understand why you’re her friend. Let’s send her a postcard tomorrow,” he added.

It was Fulvia. Yet she’d smiled encouragingly when I’d shown her the gardenias. “Look what a sweet idea Francesco had.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed brightly. When we came back from the ceremony she embraced me, dismayed. “You’re leaving . . . you’re leaving . . .” she murmured. Then, “Goodbye!” She smiled through her tears and leant over the stairwell. She remained at my place to get my father’s suitcase together and put away the glasses we had used to drink spumante.

“Yes,” I agreed, “a beautiful postcard with a view of the Arno.”

Surprised by my voice, Francesco asked, “What’s wrong, Sandra?”

“Nothing. Why should anything be wrong?” I felt nothing, in fact, but bitterness. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. As a child, Alessandra feels neglected by her parents, who are still mourning the sudden death of her older brother. She attributes any bad impulses she has to his mischievous spirit. How does this resentment toward an absent but idolized male figure, combined with her hunger for love and recognition, especially from her mother, set the stage for Alessandra's destiny?

2. From an early age, Alessandra is surrounded by women and develops a keen interest in their emotional and intellectual lives. From Eleonora, Lydia, and Sista in Rome to her grandmother and aunts in the country and Fulvia and Denise during the war, Alessandra monitors them all closely. How do these women's relationships, living conditions, and personal stories contribute to Alessandra's rage over the course of the novel?

3. While focused on telling "her side of the story," Alessandra also profiles two generations of men—her father and uncle's generation, who fought in the First World War, and Francesco, Dario, and Tomaso's generation, who get swept up in the Second World War. How do these generations differ in their political and ethical beliefs and how does that affect their thoughts about and attitudes toward the women in their lives?

4. Upon reading the first draft of "Her Side of the Story", Alba's longtime editor (and friend) Arnoldo Mondadori said he found the ending unexpected and illogical. Alba replied that he didn't understand Alessandra because he was a man: "This confirms, once again, the thesis of the novel: that the congenital difference between men and women elicits a painful misunderstanding that nothing can bridge." How much of the action in this novel is provoked by a man misunderstanding a woman, in spite of her best efforts?

5. When it was first published, "Her Side of the story" was considered experimental, combining, as it does, a variety of genres—coming of age, historical, political, feminist, realist, neorealist, and autobiographical fiction. In her diary, Alba wrote that Alessandra was "the only character in which I expressed myself fully," and while she was working on the book she often signed her telegrams to Mondadori "Alba and Alessandra." How does Alba use these different genres to add depth and complexity to women's lives as they are lived, told, desired?

6. Even as she tells her story, the odds are against Alessandra. Her actions appear as love riddled, though she inevitably saves herself, turning the gun away from her own temple. Is Alessandra’s last act with Francesco an act of passion, mania, or destiny?

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