:21:02
it seems to me.
:21:04
I've had the time for it, you know?
:21:07
Since the 25th October 1942, to be exact.
:21:11
It's a lot of time.
:21:15
Especially when it
stands still with loneliness.
:21:18
Especially when it has
no days and nights,
:21:21
but just days that turn black
when the sun sets.
:21:25
It's a lot of time.
:21:27
Especially when there
is nothing to think of
:21:30
but all the living men,
women and children in the world.
:21:33
And nothing to do
but to think about them.
:21:37
And no way to forget
that I am none of them.
:21:43
Perhaps I have become, as you put it,
obsessed by our name and our past,
:21:49
and the absence of our future,
and by our paintings.
:21:53
As if, in some magical way,
:21:55
our long line of paintings will
accomplish what we cannot.
:22:01
I hadn't wanted this.
:22:03
It has happened to me without
my wanting, almost without my knowing.
:22:08
You are quite right, and
I do not have the right.
:22:12
But I do love Maria.
:22:16
The bride on whom
the rain doth fall.
:22:19
I read the announcement in the ship's
newspaper, about six months ago.
:22:24
That Maria D'Amata was going to
marry Count Torlato-Favrini.
:22:29
The gossip columns
had been full of rumours.
:22:31
Mostly the kind of angry insinuations they
write when nobody's really got the story.
:22:37
They even got on me, figuring
I knew more than I was telling.
:22:40
They were right. I'd had
many letters from Maria.
:22:44
What I knew was that the prince
had finally caught up with Cinderella
:22:48
and that nothing remained but the slipper
business and a happy life ever after.
:22:54
Maria was trousseau-shopping in Rome
when I got here. So I went to work.