“She guessed it would be exciting, even delicious, like biting into a ripe tomato and letting its juices run down her chin.”

Elisabetta imagines the experience of kissing Marco, her handsome friend, having decided he will be her first kiss. Using a simile, she compares this potential kiss to a tomato, ripe and ready. This simile foreshadows Sandro being the friend who kisses her first, with him later eating a tomato grown by her, a charged moment that culminates in sex.

“He couldn’t read as well as his classmates, but now he knew he possessed native intelligence, as he was descended from these ancients. He was a son of Lazio. Of Roma. And he stood tall, bathing in the moonglow, for a very long time.”

As Marco thinks about his inability to read and write legibly, he explores the excavation of ruins near a Roman forum, connecting with his Roman ancestors. He describes himself as a metaphorical son of Rome (and Lazio, the Italian state in which Rome is located). The use of “bathing” indicates a quasi-baptism, as he falls in with Fascist men who share his fascination with ancient Rome.

“A burden lifted from her shoulders, one she hadn’t realized she had been carrying, and it felt good to let it go.”

After Marco convinces Elisabetta to ride on his bicycle with him, she considers the air sweeping past her. Describing her responsibilities as a sole breadwinner, she compares them to a physical burden that presses down on her.