Pearl Harbor enters the narrative as both a turning point in the war and the event that reverses Marilee’s attempt to return to the United States. Its news closes off the ordinary choice she had just made: instead of leaving Italy, she agrees to stay and marry the count, at the request of an American official working covertly in Rome.

Background and Marilee’s Decision

Before hearing the news, Marilee had refused the marriage proposal of the count, the only man who had proposed to her. She thanked him for a happiness she had never known, but understood the proposal and the document concerning his estate as a signal to wake from her dream and return to the United States, where she had no home. The following morning she was excited about going back, though the political atmosphere in Rome felt to her like rain and sleet at midnight.

News and Diplomatic Response

Marilee heard the radio report that a surprise Japanese attack had sunk a major fraction of American warships at Pearl Harbor. The attack left the still-pacifistic, antimilitaristic United States no choice, as Rabo’s retrospective account puts it, but to declare war on Japan and its allies Germany and Italy. The United States Embassy in Italy, still operating while the two countries were technically at peace, announced plans to transport home as many as possible of the roughly seven thousand Americans living in Italy. The Italian government said it would facilitate their departure, while arguing against a mass exodus and invoking the countries’ shared history and blood ties.

The Covert Appeal

Against that public offer of repatriation, a workman arrived at Marilee’s residence ostensibly to investigate leaking gas pipes in her bedroom. After checking the walls, he spoke to her privately in American English and identified himself as an agent of the United States War Department. He explained that the United States then had no separate spy organization and said it was his duty to ask her, for her country’s good, to remain in Italy and continue cultivating the favor of Mussolini’s government. Marilee said that this was the first time she had considered democracy and fascism; she decided democracy sounded better and asked why she should stay.

Marriage and Consequences

The agent’s answer tied Marilee’s personal decision to the American mission: if she had any love for America, she should marry the count. She accepted, becoming the Countess Portomaggiore. Her marriage thus followed not from the return to the United States she had planned, but from the government’s request that she remain in Italy and maintain access to its ruling circle. Pearl Harbor’s significance in this episode lies in that reversal: a declaration of war makes her proposed departure newly consequential, and turns a refused proposal into a wartime commitment.

Narrative Significance

The episode is recounted later through Marilee’s story to Rabo, rather than presented as a direct battlefield scene. The public news, the Embassy’s offer, the Italian government’s response, and the private approach at Marilee’s home place her intimate choice within the political consequences of the attack. The account also gives the marriage two sharply different meanings: to the count it had been an offer she declined, while to the American agent it became a means of service. The attack therefore marks both a national change of course and the moment when Marilee’s life in Italy acquires a purpose she had not previously considered.