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Nino arrived around three in the afternoon; I don’t know what nonsense he had told his wife. We made love until evening. For the first time he had the luxury of dedicating himself to my body with a devotion, an idolatry that I wasn’t prepared for. I tried to be his equal, I wanted at all costs to s…

Seeing each other was a terrible idea. We discovered that, instead of waning, desire had flared up and made a thousand demands with brazen urgency. If at a distance, on the telephone, words allowed us to fantasize, constructing glorious prospects but also imposing on us an order, containing us, fri…

He left an hour later, even though Pietro sullenly insisted that he stay, even though Dede burst into tears. My husband went to wash, and reappeared soon afterward ready to go out. Looking down he said: I didn’t tell the police that Pasquale and Nadia were in our house; and I did it not to protect …

Nino stayed for ten days. Nothing of what happened in that time had anything to do with the yearning for seduction I had experienced years earlier. I didn’t joke with him; I didn’t act flirtatious; I didn’t assail him with all sorts of favors; I didn’t play the part of the liberated woman, modeling…

So Nino had come with his wife; I was terrified by the comparison. I knew what I was like, I knew the crude physicality of my body, but for a good part of my life I had given it little importance. I had grown up with one pair of shoes at a time, ugly dresses sewed by my mother, makeup only on rare …