Giovanna returns to Milan alone to retrieve the bracelet

Giovanna returns to Milan alone to retrieve the bracelet under the cover of a useful errand, but the journey becomes a test of what she wants from Roberto and what kind of person she is willing to become. Her stated purpose is to help Giuliana; her private purpose is to take Giuliana’s place. In Roberto’s apartment, the returned bracelet and an offered bed bring those motives into collision, and Giovanna turns away from the sexual betrayal she had expected to commit.

The return and its cover story

Giovanna knows she wants to go back to Milan almost as soon as she has left, though she says nothing plainly to herself. Instead, she clothes the impulse in reasons that sound generous: Giuliana urgently needs the bracelet, and her fiancé should be told to marry her and remove her from Pascone before it is too late. Giovanna also casts herself as a protective friend who can divert her aunt’s anger. These explanations let her present the tiring extra journey as necessary, rather than acknowledge that she wants to return to Roberto.

She buys another ticket and tells her mother she will stay in Milan an extra day, ignoring the complaint that follows. As the train is about to leave, she realizes she has not told Roberto. Their supposed exchange, in which he offers to meet her and she says she will wait, is later disclosed as a “pretend dialogue”: it is her reconstruction of a tacit understanding, not a dependable record of what they said. The story she gives the reader therefore marks the very concealment at the heart of the trip. The bracelet supplies a plausible reason to return; Giovanna suspects that Roberto understands its other use, as an opportunity for them to sleep together.

A reckoning on the train

On the journey, Giuliana’s distress remains physically and mentally present to Giovanna. She remembers the woman taking her hand and jostling her to secure her attention, and the lock of hair Giuliana pulled free while in despair. Giovanna fears that Giuliana’s suffering has infected her, even as she admits that she has not come back to relieve it. That remembered intimacy makes her supposed errand harder to maintain as the train approaches Milan.

Giovanna finally names the purpose she had been hiding: she means to betray Giuliana, take the place Roberto has offered her, and drive her out of his life. She feels entitled to act partly because Roberto has called her beautiful, praise that has given her a new sense of herself. But that confidence turns into a warning. By betraying Giuliana’s trust, Giovanna sees herself repeating the harm Vittoria did to Margherita, and she draws the comparison onward to her father’s destruction of her mother’s life. Her desire is not simply an opportunity for sexual initiation: it puts her at risk of acquiring the face and conduct she associates with the people who hurt others.

The conflict is sharpened by her conviction that she is still a virgin and wants Roberto to be the person with whom she loses it. She had imagined that doing so would mark her entry into adulthood, but as she gets off the train she is afraid that this is not how she wants to grow up. Roberto’s recognition of her beauty cannot erase what she now sees as its resemblance to the beauty of someone capable of causing injury.

The bracelet and the invitation

Roberto does not meet Giovanna on the platform. He says he thought she was coming directly to his home and has been working on an essay due the next day. She follows his directions by metro. He greets her cordially, kisses her on the cheeks rather than on the mouth, and shares a dinner prepared by the concierge. He speaks about his work without mentioning the bracelet or Giuliana, and Giovanna listens as if she had returned principally to hear him.

The essay concerns compunction, which Roberto describes as training that pricks the conscience, using the image of a needle and thread passing through cloth to make a garment. The subject gives their dinner an uneasy resonance: while he talks about conscience, Giovanna is carrying a betrayal she has just acknowledged. His voice and the intimacy of being among his books, at his desk, and at his table seduce her again. She feels she has become necessary to him, the role she most wants.

After dinner, Roberto gives her the bracelet without ceremony, as if it were an ordinary household object, and says nothing about Giuliana. Giovanna cannot follow his apparent indifference. She pictures Giuliana far from Milan in the dreary Pascone house, beside the large photograph of Enzo in uniform, and remembers seeing her in the bathroom trying to mask her distress, in the restaurant beside Roberto, and clinging to him in bed. The returned object thus cannot close the matter: it brings Giuliana’s absence into the room and makes Giovanna question how easily someone can seem to disappear from the life of a person she cannot live without.

Refusal and unresolved desire

Giovanna tells Roberto, “I’m really tired and scared.” He answers, “You can sleep with me.” Their words pass one another: her fear concerns the exhausting journey, Giuliana’s despair, and the possibility of an unforgivable mistake, while Roberto is referring to the practical difficulty of opening the sofa bed. Giovanna says, “No, I’ll be fine here,” curls up on the couch, and confirms that she is sure. When Roberto asks why she came back, she can only answer, “I don’t know anymore.” He does not lean over or touch her; he says good night and withdraws to his room.

The refusal is not evidence that Giovanna has stopped desiring him. She remains dressed on the couch, unwilling to give up the protection of her clothes, yet soon wants to wait until Roberto sleeps and go to his bed clothed, simply to be near him. She distinguishes this longing from the penetration she had imagined: what she wants beside him is his respect, a conversation about compunction, and room to speak about a God who is sated while creatures die of hunger and thirst. She does not want to be merely a beautiful young body with which a brilliant man can amuse himself.

That desire for recognition does not resolve the danger she has named. Giovanna falls asleep sorrowful, believing that the conversation and respect she wants will never happen. She thinks Roberto would have sex with her even while she slept, and believes he has mistaken her return for that kind of betrayal, rather than the more ferocious betrayal she has contemplated: taking Giuliana’s place. The journey ends with the bracelet recovered but the moral and emotional purpose of the return still unsettled. The object can be handed back; the competing meanings of beauty, intimacy, conscience, and injury cannot.