He loathed the poetic, the literary, the picturesque, the fantastic. He could recite dates in history with impressive promptness and accuracy, and reduce the essence of facts to a few words. His manner when uttering them suggested that they were still too many. And he would pen certain compositions that seemed designed to be sent by telegram. Adjectives were completely excluded from his vocabulary, and verbs in the infinitive used as much as possible. The professor of rhetoric felt at a loss before him. To throw away so much God-given grace, and to reduce to capsules what for him represented the light, the splendour, the greatness and the richness of the universe … The topic would be developed, albeit with a disdainful aridity, and just so that it would pass, his work would be awarded a chronic mark of ‘Six’.

In the exact sciences Benedetto Vai was a prodigy. The maths teacher would remain perplexed by the ability and rapidity with which his young pupil could solve the most difficult problems. And his classmates would crane their necks for a glimpse of his open exercise book, rest their chin on his shoulder from behind when passing, or, hoping for some shaft of illumination when in trouble, would wink at him from across the classroom. At such times he would let his smile spread to hide the disappointment that such antics provoked in him, becoming as mute as a fish to discourage them from trying to use him in this way. They were all intimidated by him, and yet at the same time attracted.

His father determined to make an electrical engineer of him, but as soon as he had obtained his degree, with top marks, there was no more talk of engineering in the Vai household.

As a young man Benedetto Vai was in possession of a rather crude, forceful and domineering virility: but he looked for the kind of love that completely excludes an entrancing prelude of any kind, or any trembling and corroborating comment at the point of action, woven from sweet nothings but nevertheless so expressive. It is hardly surprising that liaisons such as these survived in his memory as little more than statistics.

As the years passed he began to withdraw from his family, and when relatives, acquaintances or friends showed up he was increasingly less visible. ‘Bettino is out with a friend …’ his mother would mutter, uncertainly. But which one? He didn’t have any. Or she would say, with little conviction: ‘He’s in his room: his poor head was hurting a little.’ This was an affliction unknown to Bettino. ‘My Bettino is a bit of a hermit, and a bit of a mole,’ she added, laughing, ‘and he’s getting worse, he runs away the moment he catches sight of anyone.’ And gradually she managed to avoid the subject, allowing Bettino, now a fully grown man, to exercise his right not to be seen at all by anyone.

The death of the mother ushered in a fatal cooling of the atmosphere in the Vai family home, due to which our hero’s nature underwent a very marked development. For five years, father and son sat facing each other without moving. The father had become taciturn due to the void, impossible to fill, that had been created within himself by the death of his companion, and taking advantage of this sorry state of affairs, Bettino had been able to indulge his temperament without encountering the slightest obstacle. Eventually all conversation between father and son was reduced to ‘Goodnight’ and ‘Good morning’. And the ever-faithful Leonia would only intervene for those daily practicalities of everyday living which required the eternal recourse to a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’, within a household where everything functioned with the regularity and monotony of clockwork.