[...] But as soon as I held the notebook, I lost my sense of peace. In it, the image of Guido emerges everywhere between the lines: his words, written, acquire unthought-of echoes, bewildering appeals. I should have said yes the first day he invited me to leave since, in reality, I desire nothing else. My giving it up is only another proof of that lack of courage that Mirella calls hypocrisy. Facing these pages, I’m afraid. All my feelings, thus dissected, rot, become poison, and I’m aware of becoming the criminal the more I try to be the judge. I have to destroy the notebook, destroy the devil that hides in its pages, as in the hours of a life. At night, when we sit at the table together, we seem transparent and loyal, without intrigues, but I know now that none of us show what we truly are, we hide, we all camouflage ourselves, out of shame or spite. Marina gives me long looks every night, and I’m afraid that, looking, she sees in me this notebook, knows the subterfuges I use to write in it, the cleverness with which I hide it. She’s certain to find it someday and find in it a motive to dominate me as I dominate her for what she did with Riccardo. Sitting opposite me, she waits with the inexorable patience of people without intelligence.