Suddenness
The protagonist, Olga, wasn’t really taken aback. “After all,” it wasn’t Mario’s first attempt to leave her. “The time and the details” came to her mind as she “tossed and turned in the bed.” “Many years earlier,” when they “had been together for only six months,” he had said, “just after a kiss,” that he didn’t want to see her anymore. She was “in love with him.” As she listened, her “veins contracted,” her “skin froze.” She was “cold,” he was “gone.” The woman stood “at the stone parapet below Sant’Elmo looking at the faded city, the sea.” This imagery evokes a feeling of pity. It is difficult not to feel sorry for her. This imagery evokes a feeling of confusion, for Mario’s intentions are unclear.
Despair
Olga remembered how many years ago she had become a witness to great emotional turmoil. Her neighbor’s husband “left home for the love of a woman in Pescara and no one saw him again.” “Every night,” from that day, the “neighbor wept.” Little Olga in her bed could hear “noisy weeping, a kind of desperate sobbing that broke through walls like a battering ram.” She remembered how frightened she was! Of course, there were a lot of gossips. Olga heard how her mother said that a woman who lost her husband was about “to lose everything.” “Female stories of the end of love” were always tragic ones. This imagery evokes a feeling of sadness.
Transparent
Olga was seized with fear. An image of Emilia, her neighbor, kept returning to her. She remembered how quickly Emilia transformed from a beautiful woman into a ghost after her husband had left her. Olga was “eight” when that happened, but even then she was “ashamed for her.” Emilia “no longer took her children with her,” “no longer had that good smell.” Her body became “withered.” She lost all her beauty. “The fullness of her bosom, of her hips, of her things,” “her broad jovial face,” and “her bright smile” were gone. She became “transparent skin over bones, her eyes drowning in violet wells, her hands damp spider webs.” This imagery depicts a sensation of heartbreak.
