My Brilliant Friend

there are no gestures, words, or sighs that do not contain the sum of all the crimes that human beings have committed and commit.

Our world was like that, full of words that killed: croup, tetanus, typhus, gas, war, lathe, rubble, work, bombardment, bomb, tuberculosis, infection. With these words and those years I bring back the many fears that accompanied me all my life.

Instead, in her absence, after a slight hesitation I put myself in her place. Or, rather, I had made a place for her in

Life was like that, that’s all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for

I had the impression that, although I was absorbing much of that sight, many things, too many, were scattering around me without letting me grasp them. My father held tight to my hand

“What you do, I do,” I recited immediately, aloud, very frightened.

didn’t my passion grow in the warmth of hers?

Firm in what her mother’s relative was doing, firm in the pain, firm in silence as a statue is firm. A follower.

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. When