–15–

I dreamt last night that I was a child and alone at home, feeling sick. I kept on vomiting, and there was no one to help me. Distressing. I did actually find myself in this situation several times, after my mother died. Domestics never lasted more than a year at our place — my father fired them before they got to know us too well. As a result, I was always in the company of strangers who didn’t really care whether I was OK or not. They’d do their work, then disappear into the back shed in the afternoons, and they’d only come out to answer the door or fix an afternoon snack … My routine? I’d go to school in the morning, get home at lunchtime, eat alone, do my homework, watch TV, have afternoon tea alone, go for a swim in the pool, have a shower (I often didn’t bother, since no one kept tabs), eat dinner alone, watch more TV, and, when I heard my dad arriving, run to my room to pretend to be asleep. And I would end up falling asleep, obviously.

Whenever I was sick, like in my dream, it was our driver who came to my aid. But he wasn’t always at home, since my father used his services a lot. My pre-adolescence was very solitary, as was my adolescence … Yes, my father took me to doctors about my dizzy spells. They ran a series of tests, which detected nothing. The diagnosis was ‘neurovegetative disorder’, a name that doctors use when they don’t know what the problem is. Since they assured my father that I wasn’t going to die from it, he stopped worrying about my crises. I could miss a week of school, and he wouldn’t care. He’d go off to work and out on the town, regardless. The only difference on these occasions was that he’d allow his driver to put his other tasks aside and keep me company.

Did I have friends at school? It’s not that I didn’t, but I was never able to truly be a friend. Every now and then, someone would invite themselves over to my place after school. When this happened, I’d change the subject, or I’d tell them that the pool was being renovated, or that I had a doctor’s appointment. Stuff like that. It’s hard to explain. I didn’t like being alone but, at the same time, I was used to solitude. It seemed to be my natural state … Weekends? Well, when my father was out of town — and he was gone a lot — I’d keep to the same routine as every other day. When he was in town, we’d go to the country club. He’d spend the whole time drinking whisky with his friends, while I’d wander from one group of kids to the next, without settling into any of them.

No, my father had no family. I mean, he did, but he didn’t like having contact with them. He came from humble origins, and was irked by the fact that his relatives hadn’t broken out of the poverty cycle which had scarred him in his childhood. Actually, when I say relatives, I’m referring to cousins, aunts, and uncles. Both sets of grandparents, on my father and mother’s side, died before I was born; and his only brother, who was younger than him, had gone off to Australia without a trace. This uncle once tried to re-establish contact by phone, but my father had chased him off with swear words, according to the driver, who’d witnessed the scene …

My mother’s sister? Well, like I said, she lives abroad. She’s lived in several places: New York, Paris, Milan. She went because her husband, an executive with a multinational, was transferred around a lot. After he died, she moved to a small municipality an hour out of Rome, in the mountains — Anticoli Corrado. It’s very popular among sculptors and painters. This aunt of mine always had artistic inclinations. She makes etchings; some are interesting. Occasionally, she sends letters — which I don’t answer — and tries to get me on the phone, but I don’t take her calls. She feels a bit guilty for everything that’s happened … I could talk to her, I know, but the price I’ve imposed on myself is high. That’s the way it has to be.