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there was a tone of real bitterness in it. ‘It’s in Corsico, in other words, you go to Corsico from the Porta Ticinese, you go all the way along the Ripa di Porta Ticinese, you know I’m going to get completely sloshed this evening, and then you go down the Via Lodovico Il Moro, with the stinking water of the Naviglio Grande beside it, then you take the Via Garibaldi and keep going until you get to Romano Banco, that’s where my fiancé has his butcher’s shop, but he has another one in Ca’ Tarino, and also, and this is where it gets interesting, he also has two shops in Milan and brings the meat in without paying duty on it. They’ve never caught him, he’s made millions like that, hundreds of millions, I think he could buy the Galleria in Milan if he wanted.’
    ‘Am I hurting you?’ he asked. It wasn’t easy to see, in that light, but it was all he had.
    ‘No, I don’t feel a thing, I’d like to have a drink, can I sit up?’
    ‘No, you can’t sit up, and don’t drink for now, it’ll all be over in a few minutes.’
    Her head lay on the hard pillow, surrounded by a halo of black hair, and she waved her arm over it in a desolate, vulgar way. ‘I don’t care if I spend a few minutes or a few hours here. After tomorrow I’m going to have to spend all my life there, the first lady of Ca’ Tarino, just like Jackie Kennedy, except that she got the White House. Can I at least smoke?’
    ‘No. Keep absolutely still.’
    ‘All right, I won’t smoke. Fortunately Silvano is going with me tonight, all the way to Corsico. If it wasn’t for this nonsense we’d make love again.’ Despite the anaesthetic, which was relaxing her and making her talkative, her erotic impulses were still strong. ‘If you only knew what Ca’ Tarino is like in winter, it’s always foggy, you feel soaked through, and in spring it’s worse, with all the mud. When I was a child I played with the other children and all I remember is a lot of mud. To go to Romano Banco I’d have to wear boots, like the men who work in the irrigation ditches. And every season is worse than the last, even when it’s really warm it rains, you can’t go out of the house, and where would you go anyway? When television came the first person to install it was my fiancé, the butcher. The whole of Ca’ Tarino would go to his house to watch it, but he’d pick and choose, he’d invite my parents, so I’d go too, and that’s how we ended up engaged. In the dark he’d put his hand on my knee, then move it up, and as soon as he could he asked me if I was a virgin, and with that hand on my leg and my mother close by I was a bit annoyed so to make fun of him I said, yes, I’d been keeping myself specially for him. And then he told me that if I really was a virgin he wanted to marry me, and that in the meantime he’d send me to Milan, to one of his butcher’s shops, to be a cashier, so did I want to become engaged to him? I didn’t have to think about it a lot, he was the king of Ca’ Tarino, and Romano Banco, and Buccinasco, and Corsico, and I was the daughter of a peasant, I slept on a straw mattress, my arms were covered in insect bites. How could I say no?’
    She swore again. He had finished, but she was saying interesting things, so he pretended to continue. ‘Keep still.’
    ‘And so I was stuck. He took me straight to Milan, putme on the cash desk, and told everyone I was his fiancée. In the evening he’d come and pick me up in his car and take me home, he cares a lot about what people think. In the car he’d ask me for all kinds of things, and in the end I had to yield, except for my virginity, because that’s something he thinks is the cherry on the cake, to be kept for last, but he didn’t want people to know anything because then they’d talk, and so he always got me back to Ca’ Tarino by ten and handed me back to my parents. And he’s always trusted me, that’s why I feel a bit bad about it, not only because I cheated on him,