So many years had passed, and yet Nino didn't miss a chance to mention Lila, to show that he was solicitous of her even at a distance. I was there with him, I had loved him, I had beside me his daughter who was licking a chocolate ice-cream cone. But he considered me only a friend of his youth to whom he could show off the extraordinary path he had traveled, from his high school desk to a seat in parliament. In that last encounter of ours his greatest compliment was to put me on the same rung of the ladder. I don't remember in relation to what subject he said: The two of us climbed very high. But even as he uttered that sentence I read in his gaze that the declaration of equality was a sham. He considered himself much better than me and the proof was that, in spite of my successful books, I stood before him as a petitioner. His eyes smiled at me cordially, suggesting: Look what you lost by losing me.

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