No, Nino no longer persuaded me the way he used to. He expressed himself, I don’t know how to say it, in a provocative and yet opaque way, as if precisely he, who extolled the long view, were able to follow only the daily moves and counter-moves of a system that to me, to his own friends, seemed rotten to the core. Enough, he would insist, let’s end the childish aversion to power: one has to be on the inside in the places where things are born and die: the parties, the banks, television. And I listened, but when he turned to me I lowered my gaze. I no longer concealed from myself that his conversation partly bored me, and partly seemed to point to a brittleness that dragged him down.
One time he was lecturing Dede, who had to do some sort of crazy research for her teacher, and to soften his pragmatism I said:
“The people, Dede, always have the possibility of turning everything upside down.”
Good-humoredly he replied, “Mamma likes to make up stories, which is a great job. But she doesn’t know much about how the world we live in functions, and so whenever there’s something she doesn’t like she resorts to a magic word: let’s turn everything upside down. You tell your teacher that we have to make the world that exists function.”
“How?” I asked.
“With laws.”
“But if you say that the judges should be controlled.”
Displeased with me, he shook his head, just as Pietro used to do.
“Go and write your book,” he said, “otherwise you’ll complain it’s our fault that you can’t work.”
He started a lesson with Dede on the division of powers, which I listened to in silence and agreed with from A to Z.
72.
When Nino was home he staged a comic ritual with Dede and Elsa. They dragged me into the little room where I had my desk, ordered me peremptorily to get to work, and shut the door behind them, scolding me in chorus if I dared to open it.
In general, if he had time, he was very available to the children: to Dede, whom he judged very intelligent but too rigid, and to Elsa, whose feigned acquiescence, behind which lurked malice and cunning, amused him. But what I hoped would happen never did: he didn’t become attached to little Imma. He played with her, of course, and sometimes he really seemed to enjoy himself. For example, with Dede and Elsa he would bark at her, to get her to say the word “dog.” I heard them howling through the house as I sought in vain to make some notes, and if Imma by pure chance emitted from the depths of her throat an indistinct sound that resembled
Over time I had become used to his penchant for seductive behavior, I considered it a sort of tic. I was used above all to the way women immediately liked him. But at a certain point something was spoiled there, too. I began to notice that he had an impressive number of women friends, and that they all seemed to brighten in his vicinity. I knew that light well, I wasn’t surprised. Being close to him gave you the impression of being visible, especially to yourself, and you were content. It was natural, therefore, that all those girls, and older women, too, were fond of him, and if I didn’t exclude sexual desire I also didn’t consider it essential. I stood confused on the edge of the remark made long ago by Lila,
