But it’s time to return to that November afternoon, a clear, fresh afternoon, quiet as our house and the part of the street where we lived. Really, that was when my life began; everything that had happened before was like the putting-on of make-up and costumes by those who are about to go on stage, the lighting, the tuning of the fiddles, starting up the orchestra … Now I was about to begin my opera. “Life is an opera,” as an old Italian tenor who lived and died here used to say to me … And he explained the definition to me one day, so convincingly that I ended up believing him. It might be worthwhile giving it here; it will only take a chapter.