Giovanna’s first meeting with Roberto

Giovanna’s first meeting with Roberto occurs during an uneasy visit to Pascone to return Vittoria’s bracelet, but the family errand becomes a turning point when she sees him at church. At nearly fifteen, she has never truly been attracted to a boy; Roberto’s appearance brings an immediate, physical intensity that she understands as the beginning of a changed life. The scene binds that new desire to the conflicts already surrounding her: resentment toward her mother, a strained but powerful connection with Vittoria, and an attempt to escape with Corrado and Rosario that ends with her choosing a different direction.

The journey to Pascone

A few days before the visit, Corrado tells Giovanna that Vittoria wants the bracelet back and has instructed him to deliver a stern warning: if Giovanna repeats the sort of presumptuousness she showed in a letter, Vittoria will come to the house and confront her. Corrado presents returning the bracelet as urgent because Vittoria wants to show it at a church event the following Sunday. He also proposes a plan that would conceal his involvement: he and a friend will drive Giovanna to Pascone, leave her in the square, and have her tell Vittoria she came by bus. Afterwards, he expects the three of them to go out together.

Giovanna accepts not because she is eager to reconcile with Vittoria, but because remaining at home has become intolerable to her. She is restless, unwell with a cough, and convinced of her own ugliness. Before school, she deliberately makes herself look disorderly, wanting others to avoid her as she tries to avoid them. Her irritability extends to neighbors, classmates, and teachers, but it is sharpest toward her mother. She resents her mother’s smoking, drinking gin before bed, and habitual complaints, and especially her increasingly conspicuous devotion to Giovanna’s father despite his long betrayal of her with Costanza, her friend and the wife of his best friend.

That resentment breaks into deliberate provocation. When her mother responds submissively to a telephone call from her former husband, Giovanna imitates her deferential phrases in a loud voice, mixing them with insults and obscenities in improvised Neapolitan. Her mother ends the call to spare her ex-husband the scene, then withdraws to cry. Giovanna’s agreement to Corrado’s plan follows this rupture: she would rather face her aunt and the boys’ expectations than stay shut inside what she calls her miserable life.

On the morning of the trip, Giovanna tells her mother she is going to Caserta with classmates. She puts on makeup, chooses her shortest skirt and a tight, low-cut shirt, and slips the bracelet into her purse in case she has to return it. At nine she finds a yellow convertible waiting. Rosario is driving; Corrado sits in the back. Giovanna is impressed by the car and briefly regrets that she is no longer close enough to Angela and Ida to boast about it. When she tries to sit beside Rosario, Corrado tells her to sit with him instead. The car ride is governed from the start by his instructions and by the lie they intend her to tell.

The bracelet and Vittoria’s grievance

At Vittoria’s house, Giovanna arrives prepared to make a firm case that the feelings attached to the bracelet have made it hers. Instead, Vittoria launches into an extended, forceful reproach. The encounter makes clear that the jewelry is only the occasion for a deeper grievance: Vittoria believes Giovanna has turned away from her after learning painful things about her parents, and feels wounded that Giovanna did not call or come on Sundays. She also takes the letter as an insult, because it exposed the difference between her own lack of schooling and Giovanna’s ability to write.

Vittoria’s accusations make the visit a test of allegiance. She tells Giovanna she has no blood connection to her and is a stranger, while also expressing the belief that Giovanna ought to understand what sort of life her father’s behavior has imposed on her. Giovanna reads the outburst as a demand for love and gratitude: Vittoria wants her to recognize her as a guide and a remaining source of support, and to stand by her in the future. The bracelet could have been returned as a straightforward object, but Vittoria’s anger shows that its meaning is inseparable from a relationship she fears Giovanna has rejected.

Giovanna answers by pretending that her parents prevented her from calling. She then describes the bracelet as a cherished reminder of how Vittoria helped and saved her, speaking with what she recognizes as carefully manufactured feeling. Her performance calms Vittoria, and Giovanna notices with unease how effectively she can select words and imitate sincerity. The scene echoes the deception she has used to get to Pascone, but here she deploys it to soothe her aunt and secure an exit. For the moment, she hopes Vittoria will forget the bracelet.

The failed escape and the church gathering

Instead of letting Giovanna go, Vittoria insists that she attend the church event and hear Roberto speak. She praises him as a good, intelligent, sensible young man and says they will all eat afterward at Margherita’s house. Giovanna politely refuses, saying she has to return home, and embraces her aunt as though she loves her—while admitting that she can no longer tell what she feels. Vittoria gives way only to the extent of insisting on walking her to the bus stop.

The walk defeats the arrangement with Corrado. Giovanna does not know where the stop is and anxiously tries to persuade Vittoria to let her go alone. The bus stop turns out to be the square where Corrado and Rosario are waiting in the conspicuous open convertible. Vittoria sees the yellow car and confronts Giovanna about arriving with them. Giovanna denies it, but Vittoria does not believe her; she pushes Giovanna back, heads toward the car shouting, and throws a shoe as Rosario drives away. The boys escape, leaving Vittoria angry and Giovanna caught between the cover story and her aunt’s suspicion.

Giovanna then admits that her mother forbade the visit and that she lied, saying she would spend the day in Caserta with classmates because seeing Vittoria mattered to her. The admission pleases Vittoria, who takes it as evidence of Giovanna’s attachment. She again urges her to come hear Roberto, warning that she will slap her if she learns Giovanna is still trying to join the boys. Giovanna follows reluctantly, praying that Corrado and Rosario will wait and that she will be spared the church. Her mixed response is already apparent: she wants to get away, fears her aunt’s anger, and is nonetheless drawn into the family gathering she had tried to avoid.

On the way, Vittoria keeps an arm around her shoulders and speaks chiefly about Giuliana, Corrado, and Tonino. She describes love as a ray of sunshine warming the soul, a sentiment that feels borrowed and out of character to Giovanna. This gentler side unsettles Giovanna’s earlier image of her aunt as a formidable, vengeful figure. She considers whether Vittoria might instead be a lonely woman who is hard on the surface and tender underneath, but the possibility disappoints her: tenderness seems to her banal beside the harshness that had first fascinated her.

The church is crowded. Don Giacomo stands behind a table at the end of the central aisle, speaking emphatically. Vittoria takes Giovanna to the front rather than the empty back pews, where Margherita has saved them a place. Giovanna sits between Margherita and Vittoria, notices Giuliana and Tonino in the front row, and hears Don Giacomo call Roberto to sit beside him. As Roberto rises and turns toward the gathering, Giovanna registers his height, thinness, unruly hair, beard, and striking blue eyes. The narration marks the limits of her perception: the room’s silence may be an effect of her own attention, not a literal change in the crowd.

The encounter and its immediate consequence

Giovanna is almost fifteen and says that until this moment no boy has truly attracted her—not Corrado and not Rosario. Roberto’s effect precedes any speech or exchange between them. Before he has said a word, she feels a violent pain in her chest and knows, in the language of the moment, that her life is about to change. She wants him with an urgency she treats as unavoidable, although the encounter has so far consisted only of seeing him at the church gathering.

Her response also transforms the meaning of religious practice. She does not claim a settled belief in God; instead, she imagines that she will pray every day and every night if prayer can make Roberto hers. The wish becomes, in her account, the sole hope preventing her from collapsing. The scene thus makes desire both bodily and devotional: prayer is not presented as evidence of religious certainty, but as a form that her sudden longing seizes upon.

After leaving the church, Giovanna feels dazed and indifferent to getting home. Vittoria finds her in the square, explains the route back to San Giacomo dei Capri by metro and funicular, and offers to take her in the 500. Giovanna declines. Vittoria then praises her studies and reading, and her affection prompts Giovanna to reconsider the bracelet. She takes it from her pocket and offers it back, saying it seemed to belong to her but should belong to Vittoria alone. Vittoria had not expected this gesture and initially refuses, saying that Giovanna’s love matters more than the object; she eventually accepts the bracelet but puts it in her purse rather than wearing it.

The return of the bracelet follows, rather than precedes, Giovanna’s encounter with Roberto. Her gesture comes amid guilt toward Vittoria and renewed awareness of the aunt’s desire for affection, so the exchange does not resolve their complicated bond. At the bus stop, Vittoria holds Giovanna close until the bus arrives. Corrado and Rosario have waited nearby and pull alongside the bus, urging her to get off and join them. Giovanna looks at them sympathetically, then signals no to Rosario and mouths that she cannot. The convertible speeds away, leaving the meeting with Roberto as the decisive change in her immediate priorities: the boys’ proposed outing no longer commands her attention.