Margherita looked at me wistfully, and being lucky enough to have a nose with two nostrils I proceeded to blow them in order to keep up my dignity. Then I tried to console Margherita by pointing out the touching detail of her "busy hands." But Margherita only shook her head.

"I never knew the measurements of my father when he was lying down or my mother when she was sitting in a chair," she sighed. "And if I had to describe my father, I'd never think of the width of his moustache. Our children look at us with the cold eye of a surveyor."

"Albertino's a very small boy, Margherita. He has plenty of time in which to develop."

"When he's older and knows more, I suppose he'll write: 'My father has a net weight of so many pounds and my mother a surface of so many square inches....' It's the materialism of this new generation in comparison to the spirituality of the old one. When we die, our children will note: 'My mother's coffin has a capacity of so many cubic feet,' or: 'The depth of my father's grave is so many inches.'"

Margherita was talking quite loudly, and suddenly the door opened, admitting the Duchess, in a pair of pink pyjamas.

"We can't sleep," she said darkly.

"Neither can we," said Margherita, "although I don't suppose it's for the same reason."

"I have work to do tomorrow morning," grumbled the Duchess. "My green handkerchief needs washing."

At this point Margherita said that we must defend ourselves, and in fact even counterattack, and so it was that we decided to take a trip to Venice.

~~~~~

Almost as soon as we got to Venice, Margherita bought 36 postcards, but after she had posted 34 of them, she found that her list was exhausted.

"In a case like this, we think too much of other people and too little of ourselves," she remarked. "Why shouldn't we send ourselves postcards? You send one to me and I'll send one to you. We'll receive them at home and be happy to see that someone has been thinking about us."

After we had gone through this little ceremony, we turned our attention to Venice, and on this beautiful day Venice was eminently worthwhile.

Venice is a city that we all know even if we have never seen it. And no matter how many times we may come here, we can never say exactly what it looks like. In other words, it's a place where we've all been even if we've never actually set foot there, and it seems brand-new even when we come back to it for the hundredth time.

I said that this might be because we receive so many postcards from Venice and as soon as we get there we spend most of our time sending similar postcards to all our friends.

By now, Margherita had her mind on presents for the children. The Duchess is easy to please, in view of her taste for mechanics, and we bought her a foot-long bolt screwed into the appropriate nut. But for Albertino it wasn't so simple.

"We might get a square and a plumb line," I suggested, "so that he can measure us still more accurately for his compositions. And perhaps a thermometer, so that he can record our temperature as well."

"Don't hold it against him, Nino," said Margherita with a sigh. "He's only a victim of this mechanical and uncivilized age, which reduces everything to numbers. 'It took us exactly 22 minutes, 15 and 2/5 seconds to get married. The priest was 5 feet 9 inches tall, the temperature was 80 degrees and the ring weighed three quarters of an ounce.' Probably that's how the poor fellow will describe his wedding."

Here Margherita felt sad over the prospect of Albertino's marriage and said a few hard words about her future daughter-in-law. Then, because we needed a new pot for cooking vegetables, we bought one in aluminum and painted on it in red enamel the words: "Souvenir of Venice."

"That's the way to bring up children," said Margherita. "Teach them to appreciate the thought that goes into a gift rather than its financial value. It's also a way of combating the materialism of the mechanical and uncivilized age in which we are living."

It was dark when we got on the boat that was to take us to the railway station, and the lagoon was shimmering with lights.

"Venice!" Margherita sighed. "We can never leave it completely behind, because a part of us lingers on."

What lingered on was the "souvenir pot," which we left either at the station or in the boat. And so Albertino's present turned out to be a Milanese fruit-cake which was all we could find in the station at Milan. I wrote "Souvenir of Venice" across the wrapping-paper and from a sentimental point of view the situation was saved.

The Duchess was thrilled by her bolt. She tied it up in a silk handkerchief and took it to bed along with Giacomo, the carburetor.

"His name is Gigi," she said, pointing to her new acquisition, "and he's Giacomo's son. He ran away from home, but now he's come back and everybody's happy." This story of the "prodigal bolt" affected me deeply.

Then the Duchess asked me how she had behaved and whether she had spent much money.

"Quite a little," I told her.

Thereupon the Duchess took a parcel from under her pillow, which contained three liras.

"I sold one of my truck wheels," she exclaimed, as she gave me the money, sighing as if her mother's heedlessness compelled her to stand by her father. And aside from the fact that the truck in question really belonged to Albertino, this touched me even more than the "prodigal bolt."

~~~~~

A day later I received a postcard from Venice, and for a moment I couldn't imagine who had sent it.

"I'm always thinking of you, no matter where I may be," said Margherita, and then I remembered the whole story.

"Have you received anything from me?" I asked her.

"Not a thing," she answered.

When I came home for lunch the next day I found Margherita downcast.

"Still no word from you," she told me.

"I can't understand it," I said. "We posted both cards at the same time."

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter ..."

Another day went by, and in the evening Margherita was more and more disconsolate.

"Nothing from Venice?" I asked.

"Nothing at all."

The next two days, which were Thursday and Friday, I spent away from home. When I came back on Saturday morning I realized at once that Venice had not yet been heard from.

"There's nothing you can do about it," I said. "That's the Post Office for you!"

"That's a man for you!" retorted Margherita.

Monday and Tuesday came next, and on Wednesday morning Margherita said:

"Last night I dreamed you were dead. They fished your body out of the lagoon, and on it was a postcard which you had forgotten to post."

"There now!" I exclaimed. "You see that I'm not the kind of 'man' of which you are always speaking so badly!"

But Margherita was very upset, and my blood was flowing cold in my veins.

"Giovannino!" she said anxiously. "Do you think it could be the truth instead of a dream? Mightn't you really be dead there in the lagoon?"

"I was just thinking the same thing," I told her. "But here I am, in flesh and blood."

"Don't you know that there are times when material reality doesn't count as much as imagination? Surely you're not like Albertino, who sums up his parents by their weight and volume. Even if you're here, complete with all your ounces and inches, mightn't I be your widow all the same?"

Margherita is not a reasoning creature and that is why she attains truths that are beyond the reach of reason. After all, reason is a material and mathematical affair. Numbers are bits of matter, or rather, matter is made up of numbers, while the higher level of truth is supernatural in character. When Margherita is talking, there comes a moment when it's impossible to understand her. I left the house, wondering if I was my own corpse, and didn't come back until late that night.

"Nothing doing," said Margherita, and I suffered from nightmares all night long.

The next morning we began to scan the papers to see if they carried the bad news. And we bought up the afternoon papers as well.

"Perhaps we ought to subscribe to a Venice daily," said Margherita. "That's the only way to be sure of getting all the local news."

"I'm pretty well known," I reassured her. "If I were to be drowned, all the papers would carry the news, even those of the extreme left wing."

"That makes me feel better," said Margherita.

Later, Margherita went to look at the letter-box downstairs, and came back to my study waving something in her hand.

"Here it is!" she panted.

Obviously the card had gone to the wrong address and then followed a roundabout route to the right one. We stared at it for some minutes.

"It's as if you'd come back from Siberia," sighed Margherita.

"Thank God, that's over," I said.

"Now we can pick up our lives where we left them," was Margherita's conclusion.

Just then we heard a tremendous racket in the kitchen.

When we reached the scene we found Albertino trying to measure the Duchess.

"I have to write a composition about my sister," he groaned.

"Neither parents nor sisters are to be weighed and measured, that's what I say!" exclaimed Margherita.

And as a result Albertino's composition was unutterably dull.