Limandi showed the guest into the living room. Unhesitatingly Serrandi gained a small armchair next to a small table, ignoring the gesture with which the other was inviting him to take a seat on the sofa, on which eventually the landlord sat instead. The latter, who was by now rendering his own embarrassment official with awkwardness and blunders in succession, just when he was sinking in the cushions, was caught by the idea of asking the other if he could offer him something to drink. While Serrandi, busy in extracting from a blue packet a handkerchief soaked in perfume, ignored Limandi’s offer, the latter thought well of springing up from the sofa’s depths, and so doing went to beat his head against a bookcase that stood above him. "Careful!" said Serrandi with icy promptness while gently wiping the sweat from his forehead with the perfumed napkin. "It has never happened, I assure you," was the astonishing answer of Limandi, who, definitively abdicating his role as a host, gave up the idea of offering something to Serrandi.

Limandi reopened the brochure immediately and began to examine it frenetically. He strove to understand something, but his mind was like blocked. […] Serrandi began to draw a series of papers out of one of the so many big pockets of his leather bag. In front of Limandi’s terrified eyes, on the small table, documents containing obscure messages began to follow one after the other. They looked like the records of a trial destined to sanction his guilt from the beginning. He peeped through the records hoping to read in them a sign of the court’s mercy, yet on the contrary he seemed to make out in them, the ominous signs of a death sentence. Serrandi slipped the first of those sheets in front him. Limandi’s myopic eyes skimmed through the words without lingering over any of them. That mental block that had already revealed itself before the brochure continued to neutralize any effort of his to keep in touch with reality. […] Limandi was not reading. He did not succeed in reading anything. He was not able to think. He was literally subjugated. In some way he knew, and had always known, that all that Serrandi had told him was a fanciful invention and that on it void words of a mean cheat were printed, but nevertheless he was ready for anything, literally for anything. Maybe to be appreciated by Serrandi. Or maybe not to irritate him. Or maybe to come out of the nightmare of his presence, and to avoid to himself, at least for the moment, endurance that could be pretty well put off till later. […] Of course Limandi had never heard of either the Systhematic Multimedial or the giant editorials it was partner of. Yet he read about everything and was an informed person. But in his horizons, in that moment, there was only Serrandi with his irresistible tentacles. And he was completely at his mercy.

We would go and visit them in summer in a large house in the country, with so many fig and peach trees. A very thick undergrowth around the house. Dogs. A dry fountain. An enormous toad, which he called Volfango. His wife would set up a wooden table under the pergola and there they ate and drank. I ate almost nothing because I felt sick. Maggi treated me as if I was a little idiot. I had a vague and terrifying memory of him, because he made me feel nonexistent. His wife was better. She seemed to accept everybody’s existence. Also mine, with such pity as to drive her to prepare me the only thing I could tolerate in that place: bruschetta. Once, however, she made it with garlic; I hated garlic, but I ate it anyway, because I did not want to appear so silly as to make her do it again. I remember I ate it all, and the temptation to vomit began to assail me before even finishing it. I restrained myself and I got a headache. I wandered the whole afternoon about the garden with the temples tight in a steel vice. Then, when they were inside to prepare dinner and the first odor began to arrive, I started running and succeeded in arriving at the dry fountain before unloading the mush of the never digested bruschetta. I even succeeded in diluting the proof of my shame filling several times a rusted watering can I had found in the environs and emptying it on my refuses till making them almost unrecognizable. The odor, acrid, was smelt anyhow. All was discovered and the lady prepared me a light thin soup of small pasta, which I did not refuse, blocking my stomach again and risking another poor figure. When Maggi greeted me, he would say to me: "Bye, young man" with his never smiling eyes, and I knew that calling me "young man" was his way to remind me that, according to him, I would never become so, but I would always remain the ameba that I was.

"So", began Mr. Accardo, "Attention to what I’m about to tell you. You too, Cremona, stand to attention, and above all you, Santovito, stand to attention. Zorzi! Attention, you too!"
Mr. Accardo often addressed his pupils in that way, since he firmly believed […] that "to pay attention" and "to stand to attention" could be used synonymously. This blunder of his, however, even though it was noticed by everyone […], didn’t fully reach anybody’s conscience. Indeed when one spoke about Accardo, and made a fool of him for some defect or bad habit of his, as they did of all the teachers, never hinted at that obvious flaw (and at the others, maybe less manifest than that, populating his speech); and, for that same diabolic commingling of dread and piety that every good despot is capable to stir up in the uncertain consciences, it was completely passed over in silence. Or, even better, the expression ended up penetrating hiddenly and ambiguously into the same pupils’ verbal thought, though never completely replacing the correct one; and thus one day when the Letters teacher had rebuked Silvestri (who had A in Italian and graduated parents) for being distracted, the latter had readily and promptly replied that he had always "mmm… attention", fading on the beginning to not displease Accardo’s ghost in a possible conflict of authority with his colleague.

"Well, then. Let’s cut it out, and don’t miss this opportunity. I’m only defending your interests. And I don’t even want to insist more than this."

The inquiry had established that most of the customers bought products or subscribed to insurance or subscriptions because the agents were ‘good’ in convincing them that they needed them, when they, in fact, could do very well without them. After signing, they were intimately convinced of having no need for the goods or service purchased, yet behaved with everybody as if they had done something wise. But up to here we are in the field of normal psychological dynamics typical of the advertisement. Anyway, studying thoroughly, on a very wide sample, the most peculiar psychological aspects of these kinds of transactions, the inquiry had established that this being ‘good at’ consisted in having a power of conviction based on four fundamental topics: 1) ‘I’m looking after your own interests’; 2) ‘your fears on the investments of your money are groundless, and you’ll realize it’; 3) ‘your scarce trust in our organization is due to the lack of information: we are a renowned as well as a solid firm’; 4) ‘if you miss the special offer, prices will increase and you won’t be able to afford this luxury anymore’. And here were already emerging quite deep differences in comparison with the traditional advertising message. Entering even more thoroughly the folds of the mechanism of conviction in question, they had realized that the salesman exercised quite a real ‘personal power’ on the customer. A peculiar power, and extremely different from the power that the testimonial of a successful product can exercise. What was this power based on? The most common answer was quite surprising: on the salesman’s ability to transfer the customer an anxiety you could summarize with the idea: ‘if you miss this opportunity, you’ll cut a very poor figure’. But to cut a very poor figure with someone you must have a very high esteem for his authority. And what was this formidable authority founded on? And here the people interviewed, by now put in the corner, finally furnished the most liberating and incredible answers, a confession in perfect order: ‘I feel sorry for him. With all his gifts of the gab, with all his promotional materials, with all his categorical statements, with all his slogans, I FEEL SORRY for that man.’ Someone, once the cap is taken off, was starting to experience feelings of rebellion and of deep aversion against that unsuspected conspiracy of piety which produced turnovers of millions of dollars. Feelings were summarizable in the antithesis to the four fundamental subjects on which the power of conviction was based; those same things people would have wanted to tell the salesmen and had not succeeded in saying, finishing to yield to a self-injuring piety: 1) ‘when did you ever see that someone goes to others’ house, without knowing them, for the only pleasure to look after their interests?’; 2) ‘my fears for the investment of my money are more than well-grounded, considering that the money is mine’; 3) ‘but who knows your organization; and then, if it’s so large and renowned, why does it send its own errand boys around to houses?’; 4) ‘if I lose the opportunity of the special offer, it will be bad for me; and for me this choice is all right’. This is what they would have said, but had not said. For fear to offend the interlocutor. For fear to hurt someone that has come to your house to tell you that you are not informed, that you cannot look after your interests, that you have groundless fears, that his firm is very large, and that you are so stupid as to lose the special offer then you’ll repent it… Do you understand, now?"

"Everything is regular, I told you. Be quiet. Don’t you trust? All right. I’ll read it to you: ‘With the present acquittance I declare to accept the indisputable fact that the subscription to the 15 updating CDs to the Data Bank on CD-ROM, for an total value of £56,309,100, has been subscribed by you exclusively for PITY FOR ME. […] Moreover I authorize you to make this declaration of mine public and confirm, upon my honor, to accept as an integral part of the transaction just happily brought to an end this exact statement of Yours: I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU AND ONLY FOR THIS I PAY YOU and the concept contained in it. Signed…’"

"You know I’m coming from Turin? I got off the plane not more than three-quarters of an hour ago. The time to jump on a taxi and here I am. 85,000 lire fare. Is that a lot or little? You know I don’t know: the Sisthematic Multimedial will pay for everything; right everything: they don’t even let us pay for a coffee. And since I always work, and I’m almost always away on business, I’m losing the sense of reality, as for money. The day before yesterday I was in Ravenna. At the ‘Red Candle’ I had a well substantial supper – you know, I hardly ever eat at lunch, I just nibble, as we say in my town, and then in the evening I make up for it – but 170,000 lire seems a bit too much to me. Or not? You know that I really can’t watch myself any longer? Of course, I ate some macaroni ‘all’amore’ that at the ‘Santa Klaus’, in Milan, they can only dream of. And the chicken baked in a clay mould? I can’t even imagine what they put into it. It is perhaps the cooking time, or some secret spice, but it is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. […] Then you’ll surely like the Neapolitan cooking. I was there five days ago, in Naples. Nothing too sophisticated, simple but true tastes. In Naples oil is oil, the fried is fried, tomato is fresh tomato and clams are genuine clams. And above all, if we talk about pizza, mozzarella cheese is mozzarella cheese. Buffalo mozzarella cheese. So fresh that if you squeeze it, whey must come out copiously. Cut thick, so that the raw mozzarella taste remains even after it has gone into the oven. Wooden oven, obviously. And there’s some terrorist that tries to pass off such stuff from the electric oven as pizza. What criminals… Excuse me if I’m using strong words, but they speak so much of national identity, of recovery of values, of preservation of traditions, and then there’s someone who pretends to put into our stomach pizzas slaughtered by an electric oven."
Limandi, who during his interlocutor’s speech had always kept on nodding obliging, felt bound to react against Serrandi’s dramatic suspending silence. He began to shake his head slowly, while his look was fixed on an imprecise point, to ponder on that heritage of values that the electric oven was contributing to shatter.
"And the basil?" resumed Serrandi implacable, "…It must be put on the pizza in the very moment in which it comes out of the oven. Neither cooked nor raw. Only in this way it keeps all the scent of the living plant, but withers in such a way that makes it an ingredient, and not an additive…"
While Limandi was still nodding, this time sweetly smiling, Serrandi was silent. There was a brusque change in the atmosphere. Like a sudden breath of chill, which had the power of throwing Limandi in a rather worse condition than the embarrassment of a little while before. He felt panic approach. There: after having allured into the trap of cordiality, Serrandi was about to launch his attack. "Do soon what you have to do…" Limandi begged him silently, ready to give in to anything in order to rid himself hurriedly of that invader.
"So, Mr. Limandi…" began Serrandi after having cleared his voice noisily with an aehrhmmh a bit too affected not to be itself part of that ritual of circumvention; "…let’s come to us… I’ll explain to you immediately: the Sisthematic Multimedial, world leader in the field of computer publishing, along with the Champyon Editions, of the Champyon & Wynning International publishing group, is launching a new, extraordinary publishing initiative that only people of wide and deep culture, as you are, will be able to fully appreciate. Here it is, have a look here…[...] You don’t have to buy the Encyclopedia at all, but only to express your opinion on it. Now I’ll try to be clearer. Some information on the Work. Nine years’ work to realize it. Single version on CD-ROM: 640 megabyte CD, text, images, sound, music, all completely online, direct connection to our Internet site, to 13 world data banks and to over 100 specialized BBS. Content: interdisciplinary information on the advanced technologies, with texts fit to point out the inputs of the technological realizations, decoding and reorganizing them not only on a scientific basis, but on a popular one. […] Before launching it on the market, the Sisthematic Multimedial and the Champyon editions want to have a clear idea about it and test it in any possible way. Let’s be clear: this is a work destined to leave a deep mark in the field of scientific diffusion. […] And then, here’s the idea. Why not have the work evaluated before putting it on sale? And by whom? By experts, scientists, great professors? We’ve consulted many of them, but so many, and we obliged them to work very hard, paying them handsomely. The best on the market. The work is crammed with their signatures and their contributes. No: what interests us now is the opinion of the others, of you men of culture, of you professional men, of you who are able to choose, of you who are used to choosing what to buy in order to enrich your cultural heritage, of you who can afford to choose, because you are able to value, of you who always want the best, you always expect the best! Of you who are shrewd, that can keep your eyes well open. Of you who are the real energy of the market."

His name was Capponatto, with two Ps and two Ts, as he said. What a fellow he was… Completely crazy. He called on you to the front of the classroom, he stared at you in the eyes and then would tell you, almost whispering: ‘Homer…’ and nothing else. […] But I owe him everything. I got two degrees, thanks to him and to the ringworm with which he stuffed me of knowledge. Jurisprudence and Languages. And now I’m getting the third. Philosophy. It has always been my dream, but I have little time to study. Just think, I prepared my last exam in a weekend. Between Friday and Monday. Thirty. Without laude. But, really, pardon the term, who gives a damn. Some time ago I met him, Capponatto. ‘So, when are you graduating in Classical Letters, old rascal?’ he said to me. ‘At due time!’ I answered him, ‘That’s th’ fourth degree, teacher. Now I’m gettin’ th’ third. Patience!’ What laughs… How many laughs we have when we meet. It’s a shame that his wife is ill, poor thing. But he has spirit! What a guy. Hey, well… But now, if you don’t mind let’s get back to us."

"He is strange. So strange. First he was an ever-cheerful little boy, jovial, full of fancy. He sang and recited poems for everybody. He invented stories. Clever. Smart. And now, instead, look at him […] Here he is. Always sulky. He has become bad-tempered and off-putting, he who was sunny, open and unconventional also with strangers. Just think that when I took him to work with me, till some time ago, he was the attraction of the whole office. They all adored him. Now they treat him as if he had some illness. He keeps silent there, aloof, hardly answers to the greeting of the colleagues, not even smiles out of kindness. And then, at home, he has become spiteful. And treacherous. He seems to be always brooding over something. He never speaks, but then, as soon as you reproach him, he is at once ready to be argumentative. Then he speaks surely. He stops only with blows. He makes clear and is pedantic on everything. I assure you that at this point to try to bend him is an effort. We have even thought of granting him to some… institute of religious people who can speak to him, guide him. But I really don’t feel like it. I’d prefer that doctor Maggi gave him a cure, advised me of some therapy, some meeting with a psychologist, I don’t know, I don’t know…"

The mouth which had perhaps too much spoken; too much expressed, and which now was blocked in the bloodless fixedness of an everlasting half-closed crack. The indistinct nose, in its growth, between a ball-shaped outcome, which would have freed him to the eternal childish and finally to the ridiculous, and a prolonged one, which would have marked before time his countenance with the allusion at his being already too adult. The lengthened face. His head, which ought to have been rounded and well proportioned till a few months before, now was stretching out a little too sharpened towards the sky in search of an answer, of an angel-like voice which could help him to understand a very difficult reason for his childish soul. The ears quite a bit shifted from the head, as if to want to eavesdrop at the door of a life that had made him promises of extraordinary melodies and that now had excluded him from the delight of its beautiful song. And at last the eyes, misted over like two stars twinkling far away right in the background of a mass of chimneys insensitive to the sky, and only able to smoke him with their heavy dross.

I thought of my father, who was closed in the dark of his 1100 Belvedere, and it wrung my heart. He was a good man, who like all of us knows but doesn’t know, and asks himself unanswerable questions only because they assure him the possibility to cling to the doubt; and he knows well that if he stopped for a while asking himself those blind questions he ought to meet with the answers that had always been there, simply there. But I also thought of the "family problems", of the mum that could not take it any longer, of Maggi, of how "worldly-wise" and "trustworthy" he was, and of the cures and therapies that were going to be organized to immerse into the font of oblivion that little boy, who one day had been happy, but now knew too much to be able to aspire to be still as such. I entered headlong and slammed the door, like an American cop disposing to chase a criminal. I fastened Chicca to the child’s chair, closed decisively my seat belt and blocked the doors. Then I looked at him in the rear-view mirror: his big eyes were sparkling and had the same excited and enraptured face of when dad had not met Maggi yet, and made him dream because he was a great hero. I shifted to first gear and took off.

Since the beginning of their marriage, Gina and Armando had been able, with scientific precision, to pay off every penny of the salary well before the payment of the following one. Thus, around the twentieth of the month – and afterwards, as years went by and the children were born, around the eighteenth, the fifteenth and, ultimately, even the twelfth or tenth – you could see them appear on the threshold of Mario’s house, with that stray dog-like expression of theirs. The ritual was now perfectly tested: they kept silent, awaiting that Mario or his wife Lucia asked what was the most conventional and at the same time incautious of the questions: "How’s it going?". This was a question that Armando and Gina, with their own experience, had ceased to ask anyone and that – for that sensation of hypnotic emptiness that one feels in front of those who are so insolent as to give up, from the very beginning, any expression of courtesy – they were able to extort anyone, even to their worst enemy. The answer to this fatal question consisted as a rule in a quick exchange of glances between husband and wife. Then Gina’s sudden vent of cry followed, while Armando, busy in putting on a grimace of pain, found it hard to restrain the half-smile that was twisting his facial muscles for the joy of the already half-successful task. The sequel to the visit was a mere formality. From somewhere a wallet stuck out. From it some bills were taken out which Armando and Gina rejected with desperate gestures, till Mario or Lucia succeeded in pressing them forcedly into the palm of a wriggling hand, then closing around the fingers, stretched out in an extreme defense of the wounded dignity. At that point, a sudden appointment arranged with some creditor (appointment that made unconceivable the strenuous physical resistance opposed to the delivery of the money some instant before) tore the two fellows from their relatives’ loving attention, projecting them again on their enigmatic shipwreck-like dimension.
Since the rule that Mrs. Jole had dictated established that Armando was not incautious and maladjusted, but "extremely unlucky", neither Mario nor Lucia ever dared to seriously inquire into Armando and Gina’s economic life.

[...] Armando, to tell the truth, before the suspension from work, earned a little less than Mario, who, among other things, was an employee in a very small company, which alternated happy moments with sudden setbacks, with following serious risks of survival. Armando, on the other hand, worked in a big company generously subsidized by the government, and a cautious management would have helped him to get over the hill towards a secure pension, floating on summer bonuses, overtime pays, soft loans and substantial chances (if not formally allowed, in fact tolerated) of rounding out his income by doing some other job, considering the nearly symbolic working hours.
The trouble was that Armando, after Antonio’s death, had actually replaced this latter in the family’s heart. And that sensation of frailty, of insubstantiality, of incorporeity, of Nothing that by now the family associated with the idea of a natural firstborn, had shifted to him who now was the actual firstborn. And the ghost of the same unfathomable unknown that had swallowed Antonio had found shelter in Armando, who, one day, waking up in his new condition, had found himself frail, insubstantial, incorporeal, nullified like the lost brother.
Different had been Mario’s life. Since Antonio’s departure for the war, he had well realized that he was not designated at all to compensate for that love gap, but that he had instead an unexpected occasion to justify an existence whose superfluity found efficacious synthesis in the definition of "one more mouth to feed" with which it was alluded to him in most of the family speeches. The natural way to take this opportunity was to provide for his family’s concrete needs 

Leaving the school mocked and beaten right on the day that had to be victorious, Michelino thought the bitterest thing in all that matter was not the fact that the teacher, for some obscure reason of his, had denied him any word of praise, but the distressing certainty that no schoolmate would ever have felt the need to linger over commenting the teacher’s silence with another schoolmate and wondering why. Thus, just to talk about something, as one talks about the floppy hat of the Math teacher or about the buckteeth of the English teacher. Not for solidarity but out of curiosity. In the following days, that injustice nobody had realized became an obsession for Michelino and his need to confer it substance was read as a wicked attempt to instigation against Mr. Accardo, who was a good man and helped everybody during the teacher meetings, pleading the causes of the most weak and saving so many from the failure. He was subtly criticized for the fact that he himself, Michelino, who was a disaster in Drawing and who even this year would have been saved only by that good-natured teacher who never made anybody repeat, he himself went around spreading the seed of defamation against that innocuous man.
[...] And Michelino alternated between long silences and new attempts to accusation, continuing to struggle against breathing in the toxic air of a reality where the events perceived by an isolated individual are equivalent to the figment of a mad man’s imagination, and the attempt to share the experience of such events may assume the appearance of a vile slander on the life of some innocent. Until, in a bright end-September morning, filled with odors of notebooks and pencils, Michelino found his Philosopher’s Stone hidden within the most secret inwardness of his exile: the reconciling certainty that if truth is what a good authority says, what it silences cannot be but a falsehood. And of the drawing competition no trace remained, not even in one’s memory [.... And at school, as Michelino expected, nobody talked any longer about that improbable competition, whose non-existence became for him the path that lead back to Santovito, to Trotta, to all his dearest friends, and to the Drawing teacher, who, against every possible logic would continue passing him.

A big lump was growing in Michelino’s throat, and he started crying covering his eyes with his hands and giving silent starts. Next to him Santovito, as red as a beetroot and with his face contracted in embarrassment, half-waved his hand for a while, as if trying to aid his friend in some way, but he restrained himself, fading out the gesture in an improbable finger stretching movement. "I’ll fix him", blurted out Accardo. In a purple face […], in two leaps Accardo was near Michelino’s desk, grabbed his ear and started scientifically twisting it, making it rotate beyond any possible endurance, until Michelino let out a shout. […] The boy’s sobs, leaving no space to any word, even less of apology, caused the teacher to go even beyond. Dragging Michelino by his ear always well tight and twisted, he made him stand up, he led him next to the teacher’s desk and, like a rifleman who is about to execute a condemned man, brutally forced him down on his knees, with his face against the wall.

[...] The day after, at four o’clock, Serrandi rang the bell gently. "Is that you, Dr. Serranda?"
"Dr. Samuel Serrandi. You may open with confidence."
[...] "You, Dr. Serramenti, have a degree in Law, don’t you?"
"Serrandi. Yes, I do in Jurisprudence. And in Languages, too."
"With whom did you get your degree in Law?"
"Well, in Jurisprudence. Wait, but you know I don’t remember it? Ah yes, with one whose name was Rossi. A fellow… I don’t tell you… Think that once…"
"When I said with whom I meant what specialization."
"What specialization, you tell me. Specialization … the classical one of Jurisprudence… It’s obvious."
"And what is the classical one of Jurisprudence?"
"…Law…"
"What Law?"
"Law… of precedure…"
"Law of precedence? But what are you saying?"
Serrandi’s big face had become purple. He began with a little cough and to clear his
throat. Then he pretended he had heard his cellular phone ring and begging pardon in hoarse voice went to the corridor, where suddenly he improvised a telephone conversation in a loud voice with a ghost. When he came back he was all cheerful again and began to talk about a certain customer of his, a famous English heart surgeon, who had invited him to have tea at five. And since the English do not allow delays, especially for tea, it was better to hurry up.
"What’s your heart surgeon’s name?"
"Oh, he isn’t my heart surgeon at all. Let’s hope we’ll never need him. He’s one of my customers. Not me one of his customers," he said in smarting tone. But his smile deadened on his lips when Massimo repeated to him: "What’s his name?"
"Well… his name… Smith. Professor Smith, from London."
"Make me understand, you get your degree with a certain Rossi, your best customer’s name is Smith. I bet that you know Professor O’Hara from Dublin and Dr. Popov from Moscow as well, don’t you?"
Serrandi did not even go as far as understand the quip, but with the expression of one who, seething hatred, is obliged to smile to the severe grandfather that is about to hand the Christmas box, he sat down again. Then he seemed to have a sudden idea, darted a grim glance at Massimo and started to draw out the already signed copy of the contract.
"And in Languages? What language did you graduate in?"
Serrandi’s eyes became red from anger and his mouth assumed a cruel wrinkle. He did not resist and burst out, this time, even though in his quip there was a trace of patient good nature.
"Excuse me, but what do you want from me?"
"Me nothing. It was not I to tell you about my journeys, my gastronomic preferences and my degrees. And now that at last, overcome the embarrass of the first moments, I show interest in the topics dearest to you, do you even take it amiss?"
"No, for Heaven’s sake. That would be the last straw. I’m only a bit in a hurry…"
"I won’t let you waste time, I assure you. I was just asking what language you graduated in."
"I have studied a little all languages. You know, when one is inclined. And then, having to travel…"
"I was asking for that of the thesis, probably the quadrennial language. Or did you do a little of all of them quadrennial?"
"All, all. Look, I devoted myself as never before in my life. I even came down with a nervous breakdown. Well, now it’s high time to go," he concluded in a trembling voice. Two large beads of sweat fell on his light wool azure jacket, one after the other.
[...]"You see, Mr. Saracinesca…"
"Serrandi!" he said yelling and with his eyes out of their orbits, "… And knock it off making fun of my surname. Here we aren’t at the cinema and you aren’t Totò! Serrandi, if you haven’t got it yet. Better, Dr. Serrandi, if you don’t mind!"
"Come on: "Doctor"… but you knock it off. And now in what are you graduating, in Philosophy?"
"Why? Why?? What do you mean? Hey? You, what do you want from me? Do you know that the Champyon Editions and the Sisthematic Multimedial don’t even consider the curricula of candidates with a diploma? Yes: Philosophy. And so?"
"Don’t take it amiss. I’m convinced of what you affirm. Also because I have no doubt at all that the Champyon Editions and the Sisthematic Multimedial, supposing they exist, accept only graduates specializing in Law of Precedence and in Languages-Mixture. By the way, what will the thesis in Philosophy be about? On the moneyaids of Leibniz?"
Serrandi sprang up like a fury, put the contract back into the bag crumpling it all, closed the bag and headed for the front door soundly striding away. Then he yelled: "See you again in court!" and slammed the door noisily. Massimo sat silently for some minutes. Then he stood up and went to the corridor towards the front door, but immediately noticed Serrandi sunk into one of the small armchairs in the porch, seemingly to grips with some attack.
"I thought you had gone out," said Massimo with an inexpressive tone.
Serrandi, with a very weak voice, answered him: "Water. Please, a glass of water."
"Would you prefer some tea? As a matter of fact it seems that you skipped the ritual of five o’clock tea with the British heart surgeon."

[...] Massimo threw his papers on the table, rubbed his hands, clapped them loudly, and in a conclusive tone said: "[...] I won’t pay you."
"Sure, you’ll pay me. Or I’ll sue on this very day."
"This too will happen today. And this is true, your suing isn’t," said Massimo calmly handing him the other paper, the one he had held tight before, along with the check. It was a photocopy of the registered letter of withdrawal from the contract no. 6646 drawn up the day before, ‘according to and due to paragraph 6 Legislative Decree no.50 of January 15, 1992’…"
Serrandi gnashed his teeth as an angry dog and brandished a big fist that looked like the hammer of a Nordic god. His face was purple and the thick head of blond hair seemed ruffle up visibly like the mane of an infuriated lion.
"If you lay your hands on me I only need to scream out to my neighbor. He is a Police commissioner, but he may be interested in your computer publishing programs. Who knows. You never know. If you still won’t break my face."
Serrandi was broken.

The bell rang.
"Why have you never loved him, Mum?", said Ale with her voice quivering.
"Because he is a tepid. A coward. A dead. And you aren’t."
The bell rang a second time.
"It’s not true. He is alive. And also Aurora is alive. And also I…"
"You are like me. Not like him."
Ale, who was sobbing by now, repeated:
"Why don’t you love him? Why?"
The bell rang again.
"The thing I’ll never be able to understand is why you chose him. Why him?"
"Mum…"
"Why? Answer me, my daughter. Why?", the mother pressed her, suddenly assuming an imploring tone.
"…Mum…", whispered Ale again, and instinctively strengthened her hand towards her in the gesture of taking off a mask.
"Why?", repeated the mother withdrawing, while her figure, now astonished was breaking up slowly.
The bell was ringing madly, and Massimo, who feared his child’s health, had started to call Ale in a loud voice.
"…Why…", started Ale without succeeding in continuing the sentence…
Then, while the darkness was spreading in the kitchen and her mother’s voice remained only a rhythmical and feeble echo, in the mumbling of the crying she succeeded in saying:
"…he loves me".

Massimo began to experience a fundamental feeling that rose from the depths. It was neither exasperation nor disdain or solidarity. Those were news terms. Empty. They expressed nothing but the worn-out rhetoric of a society that cannot experience feelings and so mumbles again their manneristic counterfeits. No: what Massimo experienced in that moment was something quite different. It was so innocent a feeling to seem devilish, so natural to seem perverted, so human to seem bestial. It was hate. And while the interiorized structures of the ethics, common sense, religion, law, civil living launched their slogans of condemnation, he was nailed to the terrible discovery that hate is not the opposite of love, but a dramatic defensive phase to come to forgiveness, and from there to the elusive love for the neighborhood. A neighborhood that in this case was called Samuel Serrandi. Dr. Samuel Serrandi. With a frozen light in his eyes, he disposed to wait. Among the potential customers of the indispensable ‘special programs of computer publishing’ there was him too.
[...] He had endured, supported by the mysterious feeling that at a first moment he had called hate, but that during the last hours he had begun to define more properly ‘instinct of self-preservation’. Self-preservation of the species of the innocents, which perhaps was worthwhile considering endangered like some animal species, because it too at risk of extinction. Not only are the Serrandis in relation to the Limandis as are the hunters with roe deer, but in the war between the Serrandis and the Limandis, the first can enjoy a formally opposite but substantially sympathetic audience, if not even friendly. Also for this reason Massimo had told nobody of his discovery. Not to expose Luigi to definitive shame that the same death of his would have sanctioned, instead of dissolving it (he already imagined the comments of friends and colleagues: "Well, quite stupid to get gypped in that way… He asked for it… It’s quite like the Guinness of World Records: the most stupid death of the century…"); but also not to transform Serrandi’s smartness in a kind of myth, maybe negative, but myth as well in comparison of Luigi’s idiocy; and not to even leave him the honor of being the smart executioner of a foolish condemned man.

[…] Once outside, he embraced Marisella, throwing himself into her arms as an athlete throws himself into the arms of his trainer after winning a race. Marisella shivered and seemed to melt with passion at that gesture, which to Ivan on the other hand was completely innocent. They walked along arm in arm for a while, and once outside she asked Ivan to sit down on a stone bench.
"I have two things to tell you. The first is bad news and the other... I'm not sure, maybe even the second one is bad news. The first is that Angelo and Livia are getting married because she's in an "interesting" state "...
Ivan […] was about to faint and seized onto the ambiguity of that censured, irritating expression […] "What do you mean? "Interesting". What are you saying? Who exactly is interested in her condition? Huh? […]"
"In short, she's pregnant."
"There you are", Ivan said in the tone of someone who wants to show how much better it is to speak clearly. And how a death sentence, if pronounced with clarity, can be something absolutely normal. Acceptable. Sound. Natural. It seemed he was about to say: "Good good good. Now what shall we do?" But he did not say it, because as he was sinking into the lava flow of final grief, he saw a soul that was wandering, like a bird descending from the skies. His Livia was embracing the wandering soul and settling him on her lap. Life. Destiny. The most precious thing you have is falling into an abyss and you're stretching out your hands toward a horror […] He didn't even realize that he had gotten up and started running crazily, blindly, stopped only by the embrace of Marisella, who had run after him desperately; nor did he understand that the inhuman scream that seemed to reverberate in his brain was coming from him, until it was suffocated by Marisella's lips, opened wide to suck him into herself and into the swirling vortex of an unfamiliar mouth, a consoling love that tasted like clean teeth, like mingled tears, like hope.

[…] Ivan found himself suddenly plunged into a new nightmare. unexpected and terrifying. Marisella, the incarnation of comfort and warmth, had become his enemy […]. He began to feel like he was the weak half of their pair, the obstructed part, the part that didn't function. Marisella continued to grant him her time and her love, but from a position of concerned superiority, as the head of a family would allow an unemployed brother-in-law to sit at the same table with his children.
[…] Then, one day toward the end of autumn, on a frozen bench in a park on the outskirts, as he rested his head on Marisella's knees asking desperately for her help, she spoke up:
"You see, Ivan, your problem is that you're not really a man yet. You're still a bit of a child. And it's very cumbersome for a woman to drag a child along with her. I love you, and I do it willingly. But I assure you that it takes a lot of patience." Ivan, who felt more like an old man than a child, had the impression of having lived this same moment many times in his life, or in other lives. He got up from his position, which now seemed ridiculous, and looked directly into her eyes. She, the woman, lowered her gaze, but he, the child, continued to stare at her, just as children do to adults when the adults feel guilty and are trying to avoid those implacable eyes.
[…] He nailed her to her lie. […] He remembered when, several weeks earlier, they had seen Angelo and Livia and little Deborah walking along slowly on the other side of the street, as though in a dream. Marisella had stretched her neck like a puppy sniffing out a pleasant smell, and an expression of suspended anguish had appeared in her eyes. She had recovered herself pretending to be absorbed in a gentle thought, and had said: "How nice it is to have children... Who knows if we... When...". Angelo. As soon as Ivan had pronounced that name, Marisella dissolved in an emotion that was cathartic, childish and cruel: "I miss him so much. So much. Forgive me, but that's how it is. I'm sorry for him. I'm very sorry for him. He needs help. That's not a life: work, home, diapers, baby bottles, the little wife... Can you see someone like him living that kind of life? There's no love between them. He's unhappy. So unhappy. Seeing him like that should arouse pity even in you, who hate him so much. He needs help. But he's trapped. What can he do? How can he leave everything, how can he leave that creature? He needs help. He needs me. I don't ask for anything in return. And he doesn't ask me for anything. But he makes me feel I'm worth something. And for a woman it's very important to feel like she's worth something".