So the lessons began, and for a month she wondered why she or anybody else should ever have suffered from a momentary delusion that she could sing. She knew enough Italian by that time to understand well enough that Maestro Gambone had nothing but faults to find with her voice.
“Have I made any progress?” she found the courage to stammer out one morning.
“Progresso? Ma che progresso? Non sa encora camminare.”
Certainly if she did not yet know how to walk she could not progress. But when should she know how to walk? In her halting Italian Nancy tried to extract from the maestro an answer to this.
“Quanda camminerà? Chi sa? Forse domani, forse giovedì, ma forse mai.”
Perhaps to-morrow, perhaps on Thursday, but perhaps never!
Nancy sighed.
When she got back to the pensione she sat down and wrote to her patron.
Pensione Arcucci,
Via Virgilio 49.