When I was twenty, Michele and the children already existed, even before I met him and they were born. They were my fate, even more than my calling. I had only to trust, to obey. If I think about it, that seems to me the cause of Mirella’s restlessness: the possibility of not obeying. That’s what has changed everything, between fathers and children

They ate sweets, took compacts out of their purses, ingenious new lighters. Margherita had the same expression on her face as when, in class, she managed to pass from one desk to the next a caricature of the nun teaching. If her husband had unexpectedly come in, she would have blushed as she had the day the nun discovered her and sent her out of th

Anyway, I’m forty-three, and it seems embarrassing to resort to childish subterfuge in order to write in a notebook. So I absolutely have to confess to Michele and the children the existence of this diary and assert my right to shut myself in a room to write when I want to. I acted foolishly from the start and if I continue I’ll aggravate the impre

“I was always very anxious about you, about your future. When you got married you seemed to do it only in order to leave home, to be free. I thought you’d be a terrible wife, since you didn’t seem at all in love with Michele. Then it passes,” she repeated. I wanted to reply, assure her that I had never wanted to go, leave them, I wanted to say that

This morning I happened to open her closet and I saw a new purse, of pigskin, that must have cost at least ten thousand lire. I didn’t know what to do. I would have liked to speak to Michele about it, but he had already left, and then I considered that, if I speak to him or Riccardo, this attitude of Mirella’s, which perhaps is only temporary, once

It’s terrible for a mother to ask herself that question about her own daughter, a girl of twenty. But I couldn’t talk to anyone about it; Riccardo and Michele would react violently. Men always say, “You’ll be sorry if my daughter, you’ll be sorry if my sister …” They say, “I won’t tolerate it.” It’s easy to say “I won’t tolerate it.” Yet things hap

ever since I happened to start keeping a diary, I seem to have discovered that a word or an intonation can be just as important, or even more, than the facts we’re accustomed to consider important.

Later It’s two in the morning. I got up to write: I can’t sleep. Yet again it’s the fault of this notebook. Before, I’d immediately forget what happened at home; now, instead, since I began to write down daily events, I hold on to them in my memory and try to understand why they occurred. If it’s true that the hidden presence of this notebook gives

He said that in the presence of the children, and they looked at me with amazement. It’s terrible to think that I sacrificed my entire self to beautifully perform tasks that they consider obvious, natural.