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He went to the window. There was a large courtyard surrounded by high walls full of balconies, but it was like being in a desert. The sky could be seen above the roofs, no longer limpid, but bleached, covered by an opaque patina, as in Gnei's memory an opaque whiteness was wiping out every memory o…

"No, my friend, in February," Gnei began, and at the same time he recalled a movement the lady had made, late, in the morning hours, that to him had seemed a new revelation and opened immense, unknown possibilities of love—"no, they already deducted mine then," he went on, in a mild voice, and he m…

For his job, Gnei harbored that amorous passion that, though unconfessed, makes clerks' hearts warm, once they come to know the secret sweetness and the furious fanaticism that can charge the most habitual bureaucratic routine, the answering of indifferent correspondence, the precise keeping of a l…

The neighborhood was sparsely inhabited, and the inhabitants were not early risers. On the tram there was an elderly housewife, two workmen having an argument, and himself, the contented man. Solid, morning people. He found them likable; he, Enrico Gnei, was for them a mysterious gentleman, mysteri…

[...] But possibilities of communication with members of her own sex were rarer and more uncertain, unlike the perilous ease of encounters with men; and a distrust—reciprocal this time—blocked such communication. Most of the women went by in catamarans accompanied by men, and they were jealous, ina…