Chapter One

Here comes the cradle covered with white muslin sailing into my room. There's a moment of hesitation, and then the anchor is dropped in the very center so that the little world that was mine now revolves around this newborn sun.

When my sister arrived, there were already three of us-my two brothers, aged seven and nine, and I, who was two. Of the prehistory before she was there I have no mental image; it is before daybreak, everything completely dark.

The next thing I see is my sister in the cradle and a chair next to it on which I'm kneeling, my elbows across the back. I stay there for a bit watching her tiny translucent hands wave in the air. Then I get down and go off to play by myself, waiting for her to grow up.

Not long after that I see an upheaval in our house and a parade of furniture, trunks, and suitcases going down the stairs. Even my little bed is gone, and I'm left alone in the room beside the howling cradle, which is afraid of being alone. There is a frightening emptiness, and the howling cradle resounds in it. I cover my ears and cry.

We are moving to France, to Paris, in Caroline, our fifties Plymouth with gold fins. It's crammed full with our baggage. My father is driving, my older brother beside him. In the backseat there are me, my brother Pietro, and my mother with Clara in her arms.

Our new place was on the ground floor and so dark that my mother dressed my sister and me in bright colors so she could keep an eye on us. Later on, when we'd grown some, she started dressing us in darker colors, but exactly alike.

As we stood in line in the front hall of the