The Only Daughter


 
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Contents
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 About the Author
 About the Translator
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 
 
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 Guide
 
 Cover
 Contents
 1
 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 
 
 For Sara 
 
 
 
 
 
 1
 
 The teacher doesn’t hear the knock on the door. The students, captivated by the story, ignore it. This is the last lesson
 before the Christmas holiday, and the last of the autumn leaves flutter past the big windows. The students in the upper grades,
 reluctant to part from one another, congregate in the schoolyard, alongside parents who have come to pick up younger pupils.
 But for the teacher Emilia Gironi this is the final lesson before retirement. She won’t dismiss class before further immersing
 the youngsters in the humanistic precepts of Edmondo De Amicis. 
 
 
 Only Andrea, intrigued by the boy who cares in the hospital for a dying stranger instead of going home with his recovering father, hears the knocking and cuts the story short: Teacher Emilia, he says, someone’s at the door. With her copy of Cuore open in her hand, she walks to the door. Cicillo! She greets a graduating senior who has stepped in straight from the pages of the story to inform the teacher that the student
 Rachele Luzzatto should come to the principal’s office with her bookbag and coat. 
 
 
 In the middle of the classroom a tall, pretty, curly-headed girl stands up, as if expecting urgent news. She stuffs her books
 and notebooks in her bag, and quietly makes her way to her coat. But the teacher, finding it hard to part from a beloved student,
 ties a silk ribbon around her thin wrist. Ask your father, she says, to get you a copy of Cuore, and finish reading this story on your own, and maybe other stories as well. But we read all of Heart in elementary school, grumbles Rachele, why read it again? Because you might forget, says the teacher, so you have to read
 and remember, and in the new year come tell me what you felt and what you thought, and if you were sad and even cried, whom
 did you cry over? The stranger who is ill? Or Cicillo, who refused to leave his bedside?
 
 
 But how can I tell you? You won’t be here anymore, you will no longer teach us. That’s true, smiles the teacher, not here,
 not at school, but at my home. Here, this silk ribbon will remind you of me. She carefully lays a hand on her curly head,
 and sends the girl and the boy into the dark corridor dappled by light seeping from empty classrooms. 
 
 
 You don’t have to show me, I know the way. But the messenger isn’t ready to let go of the radiant beauty. The principal sent him to get her, and that’s what he will do. Rachele studies the fair-haired boy, three years her senior. Is he really called Cicillo? No way, he laughs. Then why didn’t you correct her? Because I know this teacher, I was her student, and I remember that she loves to nickname her students after characters in the stories she’s teaching. Then what’s your real name? Enrico. Enrico? smiles Rachele, that’s the protagonist of the entire book of stories Cuore. Maybe, I don’t remember, but even if that’s his name, so what? I’m Enrico too, and I’ll stay that way. We’re here.
 
 
 The principal is not in her office, and the devoted messenger is happy to lead Rachele to the Teachers’ Room, where faculty
 and staff have gathered around a huge panettone cake, crowned by a cupola studded with raisins, bits of dried fruit, and sugared
 citrus peel, to celebrate the coming New Year. So as not to lose the girl in the crowd, Enrico holds her delicate hand and
 clears a path to the principal. Here’s the student you asked me to bring to you, and if need be I can also take her to the
 rehearsal.
 
 
 But Rachele will not take part in the play, and won’t even sing in the choir, because her father will not allow it. Her father? Enrico is surprised. Why? The principal ignores his question, takes the girl into her office, and tells her that her grandfather’s secretary called to say that Rachele should not go home but to his office, because her father and mother are delayed at the hospital in Venice. 
 
 Does the girl know the way to the office, or does she need an escort? No, she