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But they didn’t listen. I stayed in a corner, vexed, while Ilaria, primping, tried on the dress her father had brought her, and Gianni sent a remote-control car speeding down the hall while Otto followed, barking. Time seemed to be boiling over, flowing in sticky waves out of a pot onto the flame. I had to tolerate Ilaria telling in dark colors the story of the bump, and my failings, while Mario kissed her forehead, assuring her it was nothing, and Gianni exaggerating his school misadventures and reading aloud a theme that the teacher hadn’t appreciated to the father who praised him and soothed him. What a pathetic picture. Finally I couldn’t take it any longer. I more or less pushed the children rudely into their room, closed the door, threatening to punish them if they came out, and, after a big effort to regain a pleasing voice, an effort that failed miserably, exclaimed:
    “Well. Did you enjoy yourself in Denmark? Did your lover go with you?”
    He shook his head, curled his lip, replied in a low voice:
    “If you’re going to act like that, I’ll take my things and leave right now.”
    “I’m just asking how the trip was. Can’t I ask?”
    “Not in that tone of voice.”
    “No? What tone of voice is that? What tone should I have?”
    “Of a civilized person.”
    “Were you civil with me?”
    “I’m in love.”
    “I was, too. With you. But you’ve humiliated me and you continue to humiliate me.”
    He lowered his gaze, he seemed sincerely distressed, and then I was moved, and suddenly I spoke with affection, I couldn’t help it. I told him that I understood his situation, I told him that I could imagine how confused he was; but I—I murmured with long, painful pauses—however I tried to find order, to understand, to wait patiently for the storm to pass, at times I gave in, at times I couldn’t manage it. Then, to offer proof of my good will, I took out of the drawer of the kitchen table the bundle of letters I had written to him and laid them carefully before him.
    “See how hard I’ve worked,” I explained. “In there are my reasons and the effort I’m making to understand yours. Read.”
    “Now?”
    “If not, when?”
    He unfolded the first sheet with a look of discouragement, scanned a few lines, looked at me.
    “I’ll read them at home.”
    “At whose home?”
    “Stop it, Olga. Give me time, please, don’t think it’s easy for me.”
    “Certainly it’s more difficult for me.”
    “It’s not true. I feel like I’m falling. I’m afraid of the hours, the minutes…”
    I don’t know exactly what he said. If I have to be honest, I think that he mentioned only the fact that, when you live with someone, sleep in the same bed, the body of the other becomes like a clock, “a meter,” he said—he used just that expression—“a meter of life, which runs along leaving a wake of anguish.” But I had the impression that he wanted to say something else, certainly I understood more than what he actually said, and with an increasing, calculated vulgarity that first he tried to repress and which then silenced him, I hissed:
    “You mean that I brought you anguish? You mean that sleeping with me you felt yourself growing old? You measured death by my ass, by how once it was firm and what it is now? Is that what you mean?”
    “The children are there…”
    “Here, there… and where am I? Where are you putting me? I want to know! If you feel distress, how do you think I feel distress? Read, read my letters! I can’t get to the bottom of it! I can’t understand what happened to us!”
    He looked at the letters with revulsion.
    “If you make an obsession of it you’ll never understand.”
    “Oh? And how should I behave in order for it not to become an obsession?”
    “You should distract yourself.”
    I felt an abrupt twisting inside, a mad desire to know if he might at least become jealous, if he still cared about possession of my body, if he could accept the intrusion of someone