Content Warning: Eternal includes antisemitism, war-related violence, and murder (including infant death and genocide).

Elisabetta D’Orfeo kept her son Sandro’s paternity a secret for 13 years. She remembers the years when Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party ruled Italy, when Sandro enters the room, and she asks to talk.

Part 1 begins with epigraphs from Ignazio Silone, about the prerogative to tell one’s narrative, and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Adonais,” describing Rome.

Elisabetta describes her two friends, Sandro Simone and Marco Terrizzi, as she sits by the riverbank of the Tiber after school. While she reads, Marco, a talented cyclist, asks her to ride with him. She demurs, continuing to read a newspaper while her friend Angela goes with Marco. Left alone with Sandro, Elisabetta discusses the current rise of Fascism, and he kisses her without warning—which she enjoys.