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- that is, in the rooms obtained from the tobacco drying room at the end of the garden, the house is no longer there as you know - there was only Gigia, who occasionally came to peek to see how I was and brought me a sandwich. Sandwich after sandwich, there was a whole pile of them on the desk, can we perhaps stop to eat when the girl is about to discover that her boyfriend has killed her father or the soldier is about to blow up on a mine?"

"Actually you can't."

"Then Gigia, since I didn't eat sandwiches, came with a glass and bottle: 'Take some wine, Paronsina: it's blood.' I followed the advice, always continuing to write, but at the end of the bottle my characters could no longer speak seriously, the letters were dancing and I had to stop."

"Health, books and pesetas to spend" toasted Papa. "Start again, Daughter. With a little more discipline, if I may give you some advice. I didn't mean for wine but to find, and defend, the time to write."

"I think I am disheartened. During the war I had written a novel. As you know, I gave my room to the Kechlers and I often had to leave my new room to passing partisans and every now and then I ended up with a mattress on the floor, in short, in all of these movements I lost my first, true novel. Perhaps it was used to light a stove, we were always looking for paper. In any case it has disappeared and I would not be able to rewrite it."

"I understand you, Adriana. It happened to me too." And, while the vaporini, the sandoli, the gondolas and the angels of the Salute passed in vain in the Grand Canal, they tried in vain to take flight, I recall the adventure of one of his manuscripts, when he was still married to Hadley. The fact, which made a great impression on me, would become the outline for one of my stories, An ordinary day.