The Narrator Gives Nina the Hatpin

Leda’s gift of a hatpin to Nina acquires a sharp reversal: first a token of kindness that Nina wears and shows to others, it later becomes the weapon with which she stabs Leda. Its passage from gift to instrument of injury links the two women’s uneasy intimacy to the violent break that ends their encounter.

The Gift and Its Reception

The gift itself is not shown being presented, but Gino tells Leda that it is beautiful and that Nina was grateful for her kindness. His report also makes clear that Nina showed him the pin. Leda is irritated that the two have seen each other, yet pleased by the praise and by Nina’s apparent appreciation—a mixed response that already complicates the gift’s role as a simple act of generosity.

When Nina arrives at Leda’s apartment, she is wearing a new hat. She removes the hatpin and lays both hat and pin on the living-room table. Leda notices the black amber and the long, shining shaft, and thinks Nina may have worn the hat to show that she was using the gift. The pin is thus made visible again as an object of exchange: Nina brings it into Leda’s home, and Leda reads its presence as a sign of acknowledgment, though that interpretation remains her own.

The Offer of the Keys

Nina has left Elena with Rosaria, giving the excuse that she needs to buy nose drops for the child’s stuffy nose. At Leda’s apartment, she is agitated and declines the invitation to come inside further. The hat and pin rest on the table while the conversation turns to the keys to Leda’s apartment, which Nina has come to ask for.

Leda tells Nina to take the keys, explaining that she is leaving that night and that the house will be empty until the end of the month. She turns toward the window because she cannot bear to watch Nina’s rage and murmurs an apology. The offer places the gift’s earlier meaning beside a new act of accommodation: Leda is willing to let Nina use the apartment, but the exchange does not restore trust or settle the tension between them.

The Pin Becomes a Weapon

Leda does not hear the door close and briefly thinks Nina may have taken the keys. Instead, she hears Nina behind her, hissing insults in dialect that recall the terrible expressions used by Leda’s grandmother and mother. As Leda is about to turn, she feels a sudden burning pain in her left side and sees the pin’s point emerge above her stomach, just below her ribs. Nina’s voice lasts only an instant; then the point disappears.

Nina throws the pin onto the floor. She takes neither the hat nor the keys, but runs off with the doll and closes the door behind her. The gift has changed function without ceasing to be the same object: its shining shaft, previously displayed as evidence of Nina’s gratitude, now marks the bodily cost of the encounter. The doll, not the keys or the hatpin, is what Nina carries away.

Aftermath and Significance

The wound proves slight. Leda sees a tiny drop of blood that darkens and clots, and the burning sensation fades. She sits cautiously, looks from the hat on the table to the blood on her skin, and turns on the light before slowly packing her bags as though gravely injured. The pin’s physical effect is limited, but its change from keepsake to weapon gives the gift a lasting place in the scene’s rupture.

The episode also makes the gift’s meaning unstable. Nina had apparently used the hatpin and shown it to Gino, while Leda took that use as a sign of appreciation; at the apartment, the same object is present when Nina refuses the keys and leaves with the doll. The sequence does not establish what Nina intended when she first wore or displayed the pin. It does show how an apparently affectionate exchange becomes entangled with anger, access to Leda’s home, and the struggle over the doll.