Nov
01
A young man is on his way to a rendezvous with a young woman, to whom he intends to say that he finds it useless, harmful, wasteful and monotonous that they continue to see each other. In reality, he has never loved this young woman, but felt for her a sequence of feelings of gallantry, devotion, admiration, hope, perplexity, detachment, disappointment, irritation. Irritation is now quietly slipping over into a form of bland and demeaning pique, since he supposes that the woman is in some way unwilling to forget him, and he fears that within her life he as assumed a dignity which he finds alarming. Reviewing the series of feelings he has felt for the young woman, he recognizes that at times he behaved with excessive fragility, and had hoped... had hoped what? He had hoped that both of them were different, and that they had possessed a space in which to invent a relationship; he admits that a part of his dilemma doesn't depend on her, but on his own behavior, laughably fantastic and irresponsible. At the very same moment, the young woman is making her way to the rendezvous, firmly intending to make everything clear. She is a woman with a love for simplicity and clarity, and she feels that the imprecisions and ambiguities of a non-existent relationship have gone on too long. She never loved that man, but must admit to having been weak; to a lack of caution in the way she had asked for his aid; to having tolerated the growth of a tacit misunderstanding in which now she feels herself unfairly trapped. The woman is irritated, but prudence advises that she only be decided and calm. She knows that this man is a creature of emotion, a fantasizer, capable of seeing things that are not there, and of trusting in such things with a faith no less constant than empty and unfounded; she also knows this man to have a high opinion of himself, and to be inclined to lie simply to prevent it from suffering humiliation. So, she will be prudent, benevolent, clear-headed.
Punctually, the young man and woman approach their appointed meeting place. Now they have seen each other, have greeted one another, with a gesture in which habit has replaced cordiality. Having reached a distance of only a couple of yards from one another, each halts to survey the other, attentively, in silence; and both are suddenly overwhelmed by a fury of joy, as both understand, and know, that neither of them has ever loved the other.
Giorgio Manganelli, "Centuria"
Who else but an Italian?
God, I hate when that happens.