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poems to refuse invitations to lunch, to dance, that you don't care to meet the new guys in Corina. It's not normal, at your age."

A lump gripped my throat. Here, now she forbids me to work on my poems, I thought in anguish looking out the window at the peaks of Monte Cristallo that turned pink with the last sun.

"So," my mother went on in the meantime, "I said to myself that it was better to try to find out if it was worth wasting so much time with poems and this morning, I'm sorry but I knew you wouldn't have given them to me if I had asked for them, this morning I took them for..."

"Where are they...?!" I jumped to my feet, opened the door to my room, looked at the empty desk. "Where did you put them, what did you do with them?!" 

"Calm down, Adriana," my mother smiled. "Nothing tragic happened."

"Where are they...?" 

"Do you know Quarantotti Gambini?" 

"No, I do not know him."

"Now he's up in Pocol because he's finishing a novel and wants to stay out of the fray. He's a highly rated writer, but above all he's an honest person, a good person, a real gentleman. I knew he would go down to the post office this morning and so I brought him your poems to get an opinion. He said he didn't have time to read them right away but that he would take them away. Although he didn't seem enthusiastic about the assignment, he said he'll be waiting for you tomorrow morning in Pocol at exactly eleven. Don't be late because he's a very precise man."

"But why are you so interested in his opinion?" 

"I asked him to honestly say whether it is worthwhile for you to continue or not." 

"And if it's not...?"