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so he had told me. But in Papa there was not only a tired man, there was also Ernest Hemingway the writer who needed me. Would it have been right to turn away from him? 

"...In every situation, under every circumstance in which there is my happiness or your happiness I will always want your happiness to win and I will withdraw mine from the race..."

He was ready to give me everything, without asking me anything in return. Yet I had given him something: "...I'm finishing the long story and maybe it's the best thing I've ever done because I have you and gotten used to it."

Yeah, that's how the situation could be summed up: I had sacrificed myself for the good of literature. And ever since I had looked at the Sea with him, in Cojimar, I was sure it was worth it.

Sure it would have been better if he hadn't written Across the River. Or he hadn't let that girl make love. Or that at least he hadn't given her my face, but even without my face they would have suspected me because, as Papa said, "you could see that we were happy together." But now the book was there, and my face was inside, there was me...

Wax. The book, but not yet in Italy. Papa had offered to explain to Mondadori that it could not be published for military and security reasons. He would pay Fernanda Pivano, who was translating it, double what he would receive from Mandadori but the book would only come out after everyone was dead. He would have written all this immediately to Mondadori, if I wished, because: "... I prefer not to publish it although I know that it is a good book because I prefer to lose everything rather than harm the person to whom I have..."

The lacquer belt closed docilely to the hole of fifty centimeters, the same as Rossella O'Hara in Gone with the Wind; I put on my evening sandals, oh how tall I was, how elegant I was in my silk dress... but I would rather have been...