But whenhe went out to sea I didn‘t feel able to follow, I returned to the shoreline to watch apprehensively the wake he left, the darkspeck of his head. I became anxious if I lost him, I was happy when I saw him return. In other words I loved him and knew it and was content to love him. 220
On some cold mornings, when I rose at dawn and in the kitchen went over the lessons, I had the impression that, as usual, I was sacrificing the warm deep sleep of the morning to make a good impression on the daughter of the shoemaker rather than onthe teachers in the school for rich people. Breakfast was hurried, too, for her sake. I gulped down milk and coffee and ranout to the street so as not to miss even a step of the way we would go together. 156
She also asked me about the Aeneid, she was crazy about it. She had read it all in a few days, while I, in school, was in the middle of the second book. She talked ingreat detail about Dido, a figure I knew nothing about, I heard that name for the first time not at school but from her. 160
Tall, thin, in a blue shirt, dark pants, and sandals, with a bag over his shoulder, he showed not the least emotion at finding me in Ischia, in that house, so I thought that in Naples they must have a telephone, that Marisa had found a way of warning him. 216
... he seemed content with my presence only if I was silently listening, which I quickly resigned myself to doing. Besides, he said things that I could never have thought, or at least said, with the same assurance, and he said them in a strong, engaging Italian. 217
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