[...] She shouted, assaulting my nerves: Imma, that’s enough, you’re bothering me, you’re getting me dirty. And to me: Mamma, make her stop. I couldn’t bear it anymore, I let out a scream that frightened all three of them. We crossed the city in a state of tension broken only by the whispering of Dede and Elsa, who were trying to understand if, again, something irreparable was about to happen in their lives.

I couldn’t even tolerate that consultation. I couldn’t bear anything anymore: their childhood, my role as mother, Imma’s babbling. And then the presence of my daughters in the car clashed with the images of coitus that were constantly before me, with the odor of sex that was still in my nostrils, with the rage that was beginning to advance, along with the most vulgar dialect. Nino had fucked the servant and then gone to his appointment, not giving a shit about me or even about his daughter. Ah, what a piece of shit, all I did was make mistakes. Was he like his father? No, too simple. Nino was very intelligent, Nino was extraordinarily cultured. His propensity for fucking did not come from a crude, naïve display of virility based on half-fascistic, half-southern clichés. What he had done to me, what he was doing to me, was filtered by a very refined knowledge. He dealt in complex concepts, he knew that this way he would offend me to the point of destroying me. But he had done it just the same. He had thought: I can’t give up my pleasure just because that shit can be a pain in the ass. Like that, just like that. And surely he judged as philistine — that adjective was still very widespread in our world — my possible reaction. Philistine, philistine. I even knew the line he would resort to in sophisticated justification: What’s the harm, the flesh is weak and I’ve read all the books. Exactly those words, nasty son of a bitch. Rage had opened up a pathway in the horror. I shouted at Imma—even at Imma—to be quiet. When I reached Lila’s house I hated Nino as until that moment I had never hated anyone.