Ann Goldstein

When you haven’t been in the world long, it’s hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don’t even feel the need to.

But in a confused way I felt that if I ran away with the others I would leave with her something of mine that she would never give back

Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us

Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night

But I did it without conviction: I did many things in my life without conviction; I always felt slightly detached from my own actions

I was afraid they would accuse me of being what in fact I was, distracted or absent, absorbed in myself

the dark color of the pine nuts reminds me of my mother’s mouth

I believed her, to forbid her to do something was pointless, everyone knew it. She seemed the strongest of us girls, stronger than Enzo, than Alfonso, than Stefano, stronger than her brother Rino, stronger than our parents, stronger than all the adults including the teacher and the carabinieri, who could put you in jail. Although she was fragile in appearance, every prohibition lost substance in her presence. She knew how to go beyond the limit without ever truly suffering the consequences.

I, despite the rain, would have continued on the road, I felt far from everything and everyone, and distance—I discovered for the first time—extinguished in me every tie and every worry

I kept on day after day, committed to asserting, with increasing thoroughness, to the teachers, to my classmates, to myself my application and diligence. But inside I felt a growing sense of solitude, I felt I was learning without energy.