During that period I felt strong. At school I acquitted myself perfectly, I told Maestra Oliviero about my successes and she praised me. I saw Gino, and every day we walked to the Bar Solara: he bought a pastry, we shared it, we went home. Sometimes I even had the impression that it was Lila who depended on me and not I on her. I had crossed the boundaries of the neighborhood, I went to the high school, I was with boys and girls who were studying Latin and Greek, and not, like her, with construction workers, mechanics, cobblers, fruit and vegetable sellers, grocers, shoemakers. When she talked to me about Dido or her method for learning English words or the third declension or what she pondered when she talked to Pasquale, I saw with increasing clarity that it made her somewhat uneasy, as if it were ultimately she who felt the need to continuously prove that she could talk to me as an equal. Even when, one afternoon, with some uncertainty, she decided to show me how far she and Rino were with the secret shoe they were making, I no longer felt that she inhabited a marvelous land without me. It seemed instead that both she and her brother hesitated to talk to me about things of such small value.

…

…

…

 

>> 网页版功能未完善，完整内容，请扫码微信小程序。