Giovanna’s first meeting with Roberto is a decisive turn in her adolescence: at nearly fifteen, she sees him during a crowded gathering at Don Giacomo’s church and experiences an attraction so immediate that it changes what she wants and how she imagines her future. The encounter begins as an unwanted visit to church with Vittoria, but ends with Giovanna refusing the attention of Corrado and Rosario, who had been waiting for her, and recognizing that her desire now has a different object.

The church gathering

Giovanna goes with Vittoria reluctantly, privately wishing that Corrado and Rosario will not leave before she can see them and resenting the prospect of spending the time in church. The familiar streets on the way there lead into an unexpectedly crowded building. She wets her fingers at the holy-water font and crosses herself before Vittoria can prompt her; the congregation’s quiet commotion gives way to silence as Don Giacomo calls Roberto to sit beside him. Margherita has saved places for Vittoria and Giovanna, and Giovanna also notices Giuliana and Tonino in the front row.

The scene is framed by Giovanna’s divided attention. She has come preoccupied with the boys she hopes to meet, and she is seated between the imposing, soft-bodied Margherita and the tense, thin Vittoria. Yet the arrival of Roberto rearranges the room in her perception: what had been a social and religious gathering becomes the setting for an intensely private experience. The sudden hush around his approach marks the transition, though Giovanna later qualifies her own account, wondering whether she herself cancelled out every sound.

Roberto’s appearance and Giovanna’s response

Roberto rises and walks to the table where Don Giacomo is sitting. Giovanna remembers him as tall, stooping, and thin, with dark, bony features, a mass of unruly hair, a thick beard, and striking blue eyes. Her description is not detached portraiture: she remembers him through the heightened attention that the encounter produces. Even before he speaks, she feels a violent pain in her chest and knows, as she tells it, that her life is about to change.

The immediacy is central to the event. Giovanna says that until then no boy had truly attracted her—not Corrado, whom she is least interested in, nor Rosario, whom she has been hoping to encounter. Roberto’s effect precedes conversation and even the expression of any feeling on his part. She becomes certain that she wants him and imagines that she will pray, despite her disbelief in God, for the wish to come true. In her recollection, the hope itself is what keeps her from collapsing; desire is presented not as a considered attachment but as an overwhelming bodily and emotional certainty.

A speech remembered through desire

Roberto speaks standing beside Don Giacomo, with his back to the altar and a large crucifix. Giovanna admits that she remembers almost none of the talk reliably. She offers several possible subjects—the parable of good and bad trees, the need to reckon honestly with the resources required for a great undertaking, the courage to spend one’s life saving others, and the duty to be fair, merciful, and faithful rather than hiding injustice or infidelity behind convention—but explicitly doubts whether these recollections belong to that Sunday. Time has blurred the words, and emotion has made sustained listening difficult.

One word, however, remains fixed in her memory: “compunction.” Roberto, she recalls, used it repeatedly and gave it an unusual meaning. Rather than treating it as a conventional expression of remorse, he described it as a needle drawing a thread through the scattered fragments of existence, a form of extreme self-vigilance that pricks the conscience and prevents it from falling asleep. The discrepancy between the uncertain list of themes and the persistent memory of this word reveals how the scene is narrated: the speech matters less as a recoverable lecture than as part of Giovanna’s lasting image of Roberto. She retains the ideas she associates with him, but the remembered force of his presence outweighs their exact sequence.

The encounter’s immediate aftermath

Outside the church, Giovanna feels disoriented and indifferent to getting home; she imagines staying in the square and thinking only of Roberto. Vittoria finds her, explains the route back toward San Giacomo dei Capri, and offers to drive her home. Giovanna refuses. Vittoria’s affectionate attention and praise make Giovanna feel guilty, and she offers her the bracelet she has been carrying, acknowledging that it belongs to Vittoria and that no one else should have it.

Vittoria initially resists the return, saying that she had given the bracelet to Giovanna and that being loved by her is enough. She eventually accepts it, but puts it in her purse instead of wearing it. The exchange closes one strand of the visit: Giovanna’s gift is an attempt to answer Vittoria’s affection, while Vittoria’s response makes their bond more important than the object itself. Afterward, she holds Giovanna at the bus stop until the bus arrives.

The boys Giovanna had hoped to see appear beside the bus in Rosario’s convertible. Rosario drives while Corrado calls to Giovanna to get off and join them; they have been waiting and expect her to come along. Giovanna regards them sympathetically but as suddenly insignificant. She silently tells Rosario that she cannot join them and does not respond to Corrado’s insistence. The convertible pulls away, leaving the bus behind. This refusal gives the encounter a visible consequence: Roberto has not yet become a relationship, but the attraction has already displaced the plan and expectation that shaped Giovanna’s journey to church.

Narrative significance

The event is told retrospectively by Giovanna, whose account distinguishes what she can recall from what she can only reconstruct. She doubts the exact sounds and subjects of Roberto’s speech, even as she presents her response to him as unmistakable. That tension—uncertain memory set against absolute emotional conviction—makes the meeting less a neutral introduction than an origin story organized around the narrator’s later knowledge of its importance.

The church setting also brings together religious language and desire without resolving their contradiction. Giovanna is reluctant to attend, yet imagines praying for Roberto despite saying that she does not believe in God. The word she preserves from his talk, “compunction,” concerns vigilance over the self, while the scene itself records her being swept beyond deliberation by attraction. The first meeting thus establishes both the strength of her infatuation and the gap between the ideals she hears attributed to Roberto and the intense, self-absorbing hope that his appearance awakens in her.