Sometimes her behavior toward me even seems to be intentionally hostile. A few days ago, for example, she called Michele to tell him that she was planning to send him these famous tortellini that he likes very much, and that she would prepare them herself, with her own hands. Michele was really pleased by this attention and said that the women from the time of his mother and my mother were extraordinary. Offended, I pointed out to him that though my mother could prepare tortellini, she would never have been able to earn a cent to help her husband. Michele replied that it was precisely the housewife virtues that made women extraordinary. I couldn’t help going to Mirella’s room and venting to her about this business of the tortellini. To her, as to my mother, I tried to explain that I didn’t have time to do more. Mirella interrupted, asking me, “What do you care about tortellini?”

And yet I do: I feel guilty toward Michele for not making tortellini, but driving with Guido I don’t feel at all guilty. The only remorse I suffer, when I’m with him, is that I’m stealing time from the family, from the house, the same I feel writing in this diary. Perhaps wealthy women, who have a cook, never feel any remorse. Yesterday Michele left all the meat on his plate, saying it was tough, Riccardo did the same, and both asked where I had bought it, almost accusing me, I felt, of having chosen badly. That meat left on the plates wrung my heart. It was as if Guido were guilty of the unsatisfied hunger in Riccardo and Michele. I imagined the refrigerator in his house, overflowing with good food, and I felt an awareness of sin rising in me. Maybe Mirella isn’t wrong when she claims that money corrupts everything. I’ve begun to understand it since I’ve been going out driving with Guido; our relations have changed now that we no longer see each other only in the office.