Elena Ferrante

In the heat, women sat on the thresholds of their houses, fanning themselves and lazily letting their gaze linger up and down the street.

Go with your class. Don’t leave them alone.

She felt like a clock that had been wound too tight.

Only the joy in the knowledge that it was her hand, and not Lila's, holding the telephone remained in her.

Why couldn't she deny it? Why couldn't she just say, 'Fine, I slept with your boyfriend, but it was a mistake'?

She returned to the beautiful text written by hand, its slanted letters.

Instead it appeared to me as if that whole neighborhood had in some way been shattered, and all the things that passed between Lila and Stefano, among the three of them, were lost, just as, when you break an object, the marks it has acquired, the fine cracks, the tiny scrapes, are gone.

The process of discovering Lila, at the moment, gave me the illusion of moving forward, extending my fingers into the future.

Now she could only feel the guilt that comes from groveling before oneself, from bending to the abasement that one most abhors.

Like a doll in a showcase, she was observed, touched, and admired by everyone.

But at the same time, I recognized some kind of subtly elevated aura emanating from Lila, which occurred rarely and only in certain family circumstances.

It reminded me of schedule books that Giustina had shown me when we were students, books she had been given at the elementary school in Rione Luzzatti. In those she would write in pencil her daily tasks: 'studying: two hours, lunch, homework: one hour,' and so forth.