There’s No Turning Back

But their joy was an effervescence that quickly vanished. Soon they all returned to their problems. Vinca had received a letter from her father, saying that Spain was peaceful again, so there was no longer any reason for her to study in Rome: “I was terrified at the idea of leaving. I blamed my stepmother. You can’t understand, but it’s terrible to see a girl of my age sleeping with him, where my mother slept. But then I realized it’s not because of her, it’s because of Luis. Yesterday when I told him ‘I’m leaving’ he said: ‘Lucky you! I didn’t think you’d abandon me so soon. But you’re right to leave.’ While he was speaking, I decided to go home: ‘It doesn’t matter to him at all,’ I thought. Instead, coming back here, I wrote to Papa that I’d prefer to stay in Rome, and I felt a profound rage, a violent rebellion at the fact that I was unable to act as I want. I don’t recognize myself, I’m not me anymore.”

When lunch was over, they lingered, talking, in order to put off the approach of an empty afternoon. What can those who are alone in a city on Christmas Day do? Sister Lorenza came over and proposed: “Let’s sing.” After Xenia’s flight she had stopped feeling that she possessed them; she understood that all of them, at heart, wished only to leave. Every evening she came down to be sure that the gate was carefully locked; and at night she stayed awake for a long time, ears straining. Once it had seemed to her that footsteps were cautiously descending the stairs, reaching the front hall: she had dressed in a hurry and gone down, wrapped in her shawl, without even the coif on her head. But the halls were deserted, behind the doors of the rooms she heard not a breath.

They sang sitting down: Sister Lorenza, standing in the middle, beat time. They sang religious songs that reminded many of processions in their own villages. Suddenly Anna said, “That’s enough! It’s making me homesick.”

Emanuela suggested: “What about going out?” But it was a pale day; the snow was already melting and the streets were dirty.

They ended up in Augusta’s room. At five they ate dried figs from Silvia’s basket, drank wine from Anna’s farm, sent out for roasted chestnuts. Animated by the wine, they talked, made plans for the future, gave each other advice.

Vinca described her house in Cordova, its big patio overflowing with jasmine, and the sadness that in those days both she and Luis, far from Spain, were feeling. “I’m used to it, it’s the third year, but he . . .”

Valentina interrupted to ask her: “And how will it end, for the two of you—will you get married?”

“How should I know? Sometimes I’m convinced that Luis adores me, other times that he’s amusing himself with me and is in love with that other woman.”

“What other woman?”

“Sol, someone who’s in Spain.”

“What lovely names you have there. Sol . . . Have you ever heard a more beautiful name?” Vinca was silent, annoyed. Valentina resumed: “I would know if he loves me.”

“How?”

“If he loves you, he marries you.”

“Really? And if he loved me and married the one his parents want? I have nothing and, if I go on studying like this, I don’t promise to earn much.”

“And is Sol rich?”

“How should I know? Who knows her? Of course she must be. When do parents ever like a poor girl?”

Milly said: “What does the future matter? The important thing is to love. I don’t understand you.”

Silvia observed: “How could you understand?”

Valentina was surprised that Vinca, on a day like this, hadn’t gone out with Luis.

“There, good for you, try to figure out if he loves me! He said that today he had to go out with the architecture people.”

“Each of us has a different way of thinking about love,” said Milly. “Some of us,” Augusta said, to be precise, “don’t think about it at all.” “That’s not true,” Vinca replied. “Only there are some who admit it

and some who don’t.”

“Why? You think one can’t do without it?” Silvia interrupted. “Augusta’s right.”

But Vinca insisted, shaking her head: “Hypocrisy! You were complaining, until yesterday, that no man ever looked at you, and now you’re trying to convince yourself that it’s you who despise love and, naturally, the instinct, the senses. But work for you is a substitute. When you came to tell us that Belluzzi had chosen you to work with him, you had an expression . . .”

“It’s true, very true!” Valentina laughed.

“And when you come out of your room, after working on your thesis, you look exhausted, with dark circles around your eyes, like me when I come out of the movies with Luis!”

“Vinca!”

“Why are you offended? As children we were always in love: with our teacher, with a friend, with a tree, maybe. I wrote the name of one classmate, Bellita, with a pin on the skin of one arm. I never told her.”

“We’ve all done something similar,” Augusta admitted.

And Valentina made an effort to laugh: “There’s the stink of the confessional in here!”

Anna exclaimed: “But it’s nice to talk like this, among ourselves, all women. If there were a man here, we wouldn’t dare to be sincere. I wouldn’t know how to be even with my father—in fact with him less than with others. Women are sincere only among themselves. Isn’t it true? When my father leaves the house, my mother and I take another tone. I have no idea why, but there’s always a certain hostility toward men.”

“The hostility of not being able to do without them, if only to be born,” Augusta murmured.

Silvia was playing with a pencil, slowly sipping her wine, and finally she said: “You know, Vinca? At first I was offended by what you said. I would have liked to hit you, or at least get up and leave. But no: you’re right. The only thing for me is work. Besides,” she added, “I consider that what’s essential in life is to choose a path and follow it to the end, provided you have faith that it’s the right one.”

And then Emanuela realized that she wasn’t following any path: she went here and there, indecisively. It seemed to her that she was a spy everywhere, but camouflaged so well that the others have no suspicions, in fact they welcome her into their tent, to their table, they reveal their secrets, they tell her they’re afraid of the battle. To live with such companions, you have to be similar to them: girls from the provinces, still pure, inexperienced, coming to Rome to study. That morning, on the pretext of bringing holiday greetings to a relative, she had gone to see Stefania. The child grabbed the toys and ran away, scarcely saying “Au revoir, Maman.” Emanuela was disappointed: “You’re not even giving me a hug? You won’t say thank you?”

But Stefania looked at her in surprise: “Didn’t you tell me that Baby Jesus sends them?”

So, thanks to lies, she had disappeared, she no longer existed.

In her place, two characters played each her own part: the girl who lived in a residence for students, the mother who visited her daughter’s boarding school. Was Stefania really her daughter? “In reality,” she thought, “what belongs to us is only what life, and people, recognize in us. If we have a million under the mattress and we don’t spend it and no one knows about it, it’s like being poor.”

“You’re not saying anything?” Anna asked her. “I’m listening.”

“It’s a strange Christmas.”

“No,” Silvia said. “It’s the only one appropriate for us. A Christmas without traditions, without precedents or future. This isn’t our home and we won’t all be here next year. It’s as if we’re on a bridge. We’ve already departed from one side and haven’t yet reached the other. What we’ve left behind we don’t look back at. What awaits us is still enveloped in fog. We don’t know what we’ll find when the fog clears. Some lean too far out, for a better view of the river, and they fall in and drown. Some, tired, sit down on the bridge and stay there. The others, for good or ill, go on to the other shore.”

“Excellent!” Emanuela said, laughing. “Top marks in literature.”

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From There’s No Turning Back by Alba de Céspedes, translated by Ann Goldstein. English language translation copyright © 2025 by Ann Goldstein. Reprinted by permission of Washington Square Press, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.