Until a couple of years ago, they had never met, they had never seen each other, I introduced them one summer, I was the link and I’m afraid to say I still am, although they have not seen each other since. From the time that they met, or rather, saw each other and became aware that I knew both of them, their lives have changed far too rapidly and not so much in parallel as consecutively. I don’t know if I should stop seeing the one in order to liberate the other, or change the nature of my relationship with the other in order to have the first one disappear from her life. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know if I should say anything. Initially, they had nothing in common, apart from a considerable mutual interest in books and, therefore, their respective libraries, each created with patience, devotion and care. The friend I had known longest, Giulia, was an amateur: the daughter of a former ambassador, a misino (i.e a neo-fascist), she was married and had two children, she rented out a few apartments that she owned in Rome, she lived off the rent and did not work, she could devote almost all her time to her passion, reading, and her social life was limited to inviting writers to her house in a pale emulation of French salonnières of the eighteenth century such as Madame du Deffand (what more can one expect nowadays?).
