The lift rises, squeaking, screaming, but no, it’s stopped on the floor below. I almost get dressed again so that I can wait for him in the entrance.

This time it’s definitely him, the lift jerks at every floor, now he’ll come in and switch on the big light: ‘Were you sleeping? Oh, I’m sorry,’ he’ll say. (I keep my eyes closed and hear him standing in the middle of the room, tense and tired, with his coat on.) ‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ he insists in a loud voice (the hypocrite); then, as if realizing that he’s standing there exposed, he starts to undress with the gestures that are part of my sleep, then sits on the bed, causing it to sink, crushing me a little, but I don’t shift: ‘You don’t know,’ he says softly, ‘it’s raining.’

‘Did you get wet?’ the words brush against me.

‘Mmm,’ he mutters. As he speaks, his sentences run over me like clouds in a dream.

It isn’t him. It’s someone from the apartment opposite who’s come in. I could go out. When I went to pick him up from the last but one conference – another one on ‘Literature and Society’ or some such thing – he didn’t seem annoyed with me, on the contrary, he was quite pleased, I couldn’t see him at first with all those people jammed together, I squeezed my way into the crush, and suddenly there he was, right in front of me. That evening, going home, he was cheerful; as we reached the car park, he declaimed, he speeded up so that I had to run after him, then stopped suddenly, yes, he was cheerful. But his mood changes suddenly, I don’t know why, he takes offence over trifles, withdraws and freezes. It was beautiful, though, that night, we sped in the car along the deserted streets, and all at once we slowed down to a snail’s pace on the Aventino, down Via dei Fori Imperiali, past those walls of dry bare brick, lapped by the golden glow of the discreet, considerate floodlights; then we got out in the crisp autumn air and sat down at the foot of the Basilica di Massenzio, in silence, motionless, until it was late.

The moon rose in an arc of night, surrounded by the vaults of clay kneaded by men, the high vaults of earth as porous as the surface of the moon, old; one day, we, too, will grow old, and then, like the arid, rough, desolate moon, all you’ll have left of me will be a soft image, faded, you know how: with restraint.

‘Vivere in due’

First published in the magazine Tempo presente (December 1966), and then included in the anthology Voci: Antologia di testi poetici e narrativi di autori italiani iscritti all’ENAP (1993).