I went to the kitchen and started frying the potatoes, then the eggs. I think Mirella was lying, and in any case, if she destroyed the diary, she did it after meeting Cantoni. Soon she joined me and asked if I needed help. She rarely offers, so I looked at her with amazement. She’s really a pretty girl, her hair cut so short is very becoming. The joy of the money earned made her more ardent, and yet unusually sweet. She smiled: “Mamma, why can’t you admit that I’m happy in my way?” I told her that happiness, at least as she imagines it, doesn’t exist, I know through experience. She objected: “But you have the experience of one life alone, yours. Why don’t you want to leave me at least the hope?” I told her to go ahead and hope, it costs nothing. Then I handed her a plate with the fried eggs and asked her to bring it to her brother. She asked me why he couldn’t come get it himself. “I’ll call him,” she said. I turned to her harshly: “Take it,” I commanded. “Riccardo is tired, he studied all day.” “And didn’t you work all day?” she said brusquely. “And didn’t I work all day?” Yet she brought it to him. When she returned, she said, “That is what disgusts me, mamma. You think you’re obliged to serve everyone, starting with me. So, little by little, the others end up believing it. You think that for a woman to have some personal satisfaction, besides those of the house and the kitchen, is a fault, that her job is to serve. I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want that.” I felt a shiver run down my spine, a cold shiver that I can’t get rid of. Yet I pretended indifference to what she said. I asked her ironically if she wanted to start being a lawyer in her own home.