I felt chained to an intolerable pact of friendship. How tortuous everything was. It was I who had dragged Lila to Ischia. I had used her to pursue Nino, hopelessly. I had relinquished the money from the bookstore on Via Mezzocannone for the money that she gave me. I had put myself in her service and now I was playing the role of the servant who comes to the aid of her mistress. I was covering for her adultery. I was preparing it. I was helping her take Nino, take him in my place, be fucked—yes, fucked—fucked by him for a whole day and a whole night, give him blow jobs. My temples began to throb, I kicked the sand with my heel once, twice, three times, it was a thrill to hear echoing in my head childhood words, overloaded with sex imagined in ignorance. High school disappeared, the wonderful sonority of the books disappeared, of the translations from Greek and Latin. I stared at the sparkling sea, and the long livid array of clouds that was moving from the horizon toward the blue sky, toward the white streak of condensation, and I could barely see them, Nino and Lila, black dots. I couldn’t tell if they were swimming toward the mass of clouds on the horizon or turning back. I wished that they would drown and that death would take from them the joys of the next day.