But this type of behaviour also includes some inevitable risks. Every human relationship requires participation, in effect, commitment, dedication, beyond giving and receiving. To put it simply, I should dedicate myself (member, feelings, thoughts) to the call girl. Absurd though it may seem, I sincerely tried that, too. With Pinuccia, for example: the madam called her Pinuccia, while she insisted on being called Giusi.

After sex this Pinuccia, or Giusi, went to the bidet and sang the song that goes:

From the cliff, gleaming and white,

I talk to the sea about you every night

And every night you entrust to the sea

Thoughts of love for me.

It’s a song I like, so I followed with my voice, which is fairly well trained. She said:

‘You like that song?’

She spoke with a northern Emilia accent, maybe from Piatzenza, as they say in her town: stashion of Piatzenza, don’t crosh the tracks. And she continued, in her drawl, to explain to me that she liked the song, but not sung by Sergio Bruni – handsome profile, that Bruni, he hadn’t booed Villa, in Naples, he had paid his thugs to boo Villa, but now he had to pay some nice millions, to Villa, who had sued him.³

And she had the courage to ask me, I who am of Tuscan-Ligurian lineage, transplanted to Milan, used to dealing with respectable, educated people, priding myself on speaking an unaccented Italian: ‘But you, you’re maybe a hick from the south?’

Now, I say, how can one create a satisfying human relationship with a dog-faced woman like that? I tried to get close again to my wife, Viola, but there, too … Above all, she demands that copulation take place in the pitch-dark, more canonico et interposito lino. That is, she doesn’t take off her nightgown and she lies there, always lies there. And everything has to be resolved in a quarter of an hour at most, because she has to sleep afterward, and read before, and see to the house and the children for the rest of the day. All things considered, I really don’t know which way to turn. The other night I was overcome by despair, my nerves were tense, my blood was pulsing, and I had to do something.

As twilight falls, Viale Maino is already crowded with streetwalkers, standing at their posts, waiting for cars. And I drove up and down the entire avenue three times. At first sight, only an embarrassment of riches. But in reality …

For example, the one who kept slightly to the shadows, away from the street light, seemed pretty. But can one, honestly, venture to nod to a woman standing in the shadows? What if later, in the light, she reveals some outrageous physical defect? Others remained clearly visible: one, with her coat open, showed the swell of her breasts, which seemed promising. But can one trust what one sees of breasts with the shirt on? Who protects us from the tricks of bras, corsets, girdles, elastics and straps that, once released, often reveal devastation?