“So to save the others we have to want to kill an innocent man. That’s the reason the majority of people who are asked the question, though they can’t explain why, as you did, say they feel instinctively that this would be a bad act.”

*

118The young woman pursed her lips and made the kind of face made by someone who’s pleased with a success or a compliment but doesn’t want to show it.

I looked away from her and let my gaze wander over the faces of those young people. For many of them, I thought, becoming a magistrate was the culmination of a process – and a dream – that had begun on the first day of university and ended with their exams. I remembered my old friend and classmate Andrea Colaianni. He had studied law with passion and determination. His aim was to become a magistrate and change the world. You could say he got halfway to achieving it: he had graduated with flying colours, but had soon discovered that changing the world is, in the best of cases, an unintended consequence of our actions.

I had never had that passion. I hadn’t had a dream which had reached its culmination. I had become a lawyer by chance, or at least so I’ve always told myself. Though some people say there’s no such thing as chance and that we use the word to indicate something else we can’t identify or don’t want to understand.

Be that as it may, I had never had the privilege of imagining that my future lay in this profession. In fact, I had always thought of it as temporary. Sooner or later, I would find something I really identified with.

Somebody once told me that the most beautiful things to remember are the dreams you had as a child, especially if you’ve realized them, at least partly. They echo with the poignant note of the past and possess the indistinct excitement of the future.

The problem was that I hadn’t allowed myself to cultivate the dreams I would have liked: to study the things I felt passionate about, to write, to produce ideas. Out of fear, I 119had decided that these were dangerous illusions. So I had forbidden myself to cultivate them. The adult world doesn’t allow for enthusiasms: that had been my confused, childish thought as I faced life.

I resumed speaking.