November 7th, Turin, Italy, No 44

Martina woke up in a bad mood. Untangling herself from Carlo's arms and legs of Carlo who, she felt, almost kept her prisoner in the bed, she went to the shower. He slept, oblivious to her departure.

The dark marmoreal floor of the bathroom contrasted vividly with the honey-brown one of the hallway separating the bedroom and the bathroom. Carlo's apartment in Turin, was located in Corso Vittorio, not far from the shore of the River Po, at the foot of the magnificent hills separating the town from the vast agricultural region at the south. The house was an old piemontese baroque mansion which belonged to an old man, a count linked to the Savoy family. The elderly man reluctantly divided the mansion into apartments in order to keep up with at least the most important aspects of his lifestyle. Galloping inflation, new taxes, and a lack of new resources had made it difficult for the very inner circle of the old patrician society to stay alive with the decency formerly afforded by their class.

Even with the help of the soothing warm water caressing her taut body, Martina ached with depression.
She'd spent long hours thinking about the reasons for her pain, and the process had been very unpleasant because, by habit, she was not given to introspection.
Her life up to now had been simple.
Her professional life was far from boring, providing her with intellectual stimulation and an outlet for creativity.
Her private life, though superficially happy, was, she realized, at least content.
But now she was miserable.
Since Zeno had met that woman, Irina, her life had filled with constant irritants.
Martina's emotions vacillated erratically, as first she cursed Zeno, then his brother, then the Russian bitch, as she called the intruder, then herself.
She knew she needed to sort out the shit that was clogging her brain.
Uncomfortable in her own skin, she was furious that she couldn't see through the irrationality of this emotional noise, but deep inside she was floundering, incapable of sorting through the muddle of feelings.

Then, suddenly, shocked as if by a revelation, she began to reach across her own multiple defenses, the protective barriers she'd built in her brain to help her live a simple and agreeable life.
Her arms fell along her body and she stood there, immobile, as rivulets of water streamed over her hard body.
Listening to her inner soul, she finally let go and unpacked deeply inner secrets.
She had forbidden herself to love Zeno, the man that had really captured her hart, because, she rationalized, she didn't want to jeopardize their professional ventures. Now, as she stood there squeezing her eyes shut against the spray, Martina realized there were other, abstruse reasons for not allowing herself to admit she loved him -reasons that painfully defied words.

Having constructed such a shield between herself and Zeno had generated two side effects. The first was that she had launched into a relationship with the man that most resembled Zeno, his brother Carlo, and the second was that Zeno, with the typical lack of sensitivity she thought most men had, was going through life sampling lovers and totally ignoring her.
Up until now, she'd been unaffected by this aloofness or by his recreational affairs, and had found a kind of vicarious pleasure in watching, because Zeno's affair had never lasted long enough to take him from her.
But this time Martina sensed that the opportunistic Russian bitch would steal him away for good.

Zeno could actually be in love with another woman.

The though was too much for Martina.
She turned the shower to an icy jet, and with it her resolve.
Barriers restored once again, she decided that she needed to put even further distance between herself and Zeno -not so much to move on in her life, seeking the pleasure of new solitudes, but to truncate any further anguish.