“You know, you realize you’re losing your dignity when you become intolerant and irritable, when you actually tell off a person humiliated by old age and illness. A person who doesn’t understand why her children are treating her so harshly.” He couldn’t continue. “Oh shit,” was all he added, his voice breaking. Then his lips quivered and he started crying. I overcame the impulse to look around me to check if anybody was watching us and wondering what was happening. My usual problem with other people’s judgement.

“How about a coffee?”

He stared at me in surprise. Then he sniffed and nodded, a flash of gratitude in his eyes. So we left the courthouse and as we walked he began to tell me about it.

“You know what the worst thing was, Guido? That before she died, she didn’t sleep for ten days. I mean, when she realized she was going to die. Eighty-eight years old and yet, like everyone else, she was scared of dying. The psychologist who helped us, me and my brother, explained it to me. She was scared of going to sleep and not waking up again. That’s why she couldn’t sleep. It’s something I can’t come to terms with, something I find disturbing. When you get to that age you should be resigned, I always thought.”

“Maybe we’re never resigned…”

“No, we’re never resigned.”9

“There’s something Marcello Mastroianni said in an interview when he was already old. It was more or less: ‘I like having dinner with my friends. So why do I have to die?’”

Enrico smiled, nodding as if sharing the sentiment. On the surface, the words were bitter. But perhaps they made him feel less alone with his sadness.

We sat down in a cafe near the courthouse. A fairly awful place which, for that very reason, could almost always guarantee you a free table where you wouldn’t be disturbed.

“Have you ever noticed, Guido, how life seems to accelerate with age?”

“I notice it almost every day.”

“Before her situation got worse, Mamma often said it. ‘I have the thoughts of a young girl and the body of an old woman. Why?’”