The teacher praised me, but carelessly, partly because by now she took my ability for granted, partly because she wasn’t well, the illness she had in her mouth was very troublesome. She never mentioned my need to rest, her cousin Nella, Ischia. Instead, surprisingly, she began to talk about Lila. She had seen her on the street, from a distance. She was with her fiancé, she said, the grocer. Then she added a sentence that I will always remember: “The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn’t find an outlet, Greco, and it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it.”

I had never heard her say a rude word since I had known her. That day she said “ass,” and then muttered, “Excuse me.” But that wasn’t what struck me. It was the regret, as if the teacher were realizing that something of Lila had been ruined because she, as a teacher, hadn’t protected and nurtured it well. I felt that I was her most successful student and went away relieved.