My Brilliant Friend

The plebs were us. The plebs were that fight for food and wine, that quarrel over who should be served first and better, that dirty floor on which the waiters clattered back and forth, those increasingly vulgar toasts. The plebs were my mother, who had drunk wine and now was leaning against my father’s shoulder, while he, serious, laughed, his mouth gaping, at the sexual allusions of the metal dealer.

I wished I could talk every day to a boy on that level: how many mistakes I had made with him; what foolishness it had been to want him, love him, and yet always avoid him.

But staying near her meant staying in her world, becoming completely like her. And if I became like her, who would be right for me if not Antonio?

and also—yes, also—of Antonio?

was we who were truly consumed by the heat of feelings, by the outburst of thoughts.

“Not for you: you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.”

“If God is present everywhere, what need does he have to disseminate himself by way of the Holy Spirit?”

the human condition was so obviously exposed to the blind fury of chance that to trust in a God, a Jesus, the Holy Spirit—this last a completely superfluous entity, it was there only to make up a trinity, notoriously nobler than the mere binomial father-son—was the same thing as collecting trading cards while the city burns in the fires of hell.

I felt I was a shadow, I wept in despair.

Lila seemed inaccessible, a dazzling figurine against the light.