of concern or curiosity. What do we care now about what happened to our first girlfriend, when we used to long for her phone call or to be with her? What indeed do we care about our penultimate girlfriend, after a year without seeing her? What do we care about our friends from school or university and afterwards, even though whole swathes of our existence revolved around them and seemed as if they would never end? What do we care about those who break away, who leave, those who turn their backs on us and distance themselves, those whom we discard and who become invisible to us, mere names that we recall only when, by chance, their names happen to reach our ears, or, indeed, those who die and thus desert us? For example, my mother died twenty-five years ago, and although I feel obliged to be sad whenever I think of her, and do, in fact, feel sad, I’m incapable of reliving what I felt at the time, let alone of weeping as I did then. It has become just that, a fact: my mother died twenty-five years ago, and I have been without a mother ever since. It’s simply a part of me, one of many facts that have shaped the person I am; I’ve been without a mother since I was a young man, that’s all, or almost all, just as I’m single or as someone else might have been orphaned in childhood or an only child or the youngest of seven siblings or the descendant of a soldier or a doctor or a criminal, what does it matter, in the end, these are simply facts and not of any great importance, everything that happens to us or that precedes us could be summed up in a couple of lines in a story. Luisa’s present life has been destroyed, but not her future life. Think how much time she has left in which to move forward, she isn’t going to stay trapped in the moment, no one ever is, still less in the very worst of moments, from which we always emerge, unless we’re sick in the head and feel justified by and even protected by our comfortable misery. The bad thing about terrible misfortunes, the kind that tear us apart and appear to be unendurable, is that those who suffer them believe or almost demand that the world should end right there, and yet the world pays no heed and carries on regardless and even tugs at the sleeve of the person who suffered the misfortune, I mean, it won’t just let them depart this world the way a disgruntled spectator might leave the theatre, unless the unfortunate person kills him or herself. That does happen, I don’t deny it. But very rarely, and it’s far less frequent in our age than it was in any other. Luisa might shut herself away, withdraw for a while, be seen by no one apart from her family and myself, always assuming she doesn’t weary of me and decide to do without me as well; but she won’t kill herself, even if only because she has two children to look after and because it’s not in her character. It will take the time it takes, but in the end, the pain and the despair will become less intense, the sense of shock will diminish and, above all, she will get used to the idea: “I’m a widow,” she will think or “I’ve been widowed.” That will be the fact, the piece of information, that she will tell people to whom she’s introduced and who ask about her marital status, she’ll probably choose not to explain how it happened, because it’s too gruesome and wretched a tale to tell to a new acquaintance whom she barely knows, it would cast an immediate pall over any conversation. And that will be what others say about her, and what others say about us plays a part in defining us, however superficially and inexactly, after all, for most people, we are only superficial beings, a sketch, a few scrawled lines. “She’s a widow,” they’ll say, “she lost her husband in horrific circumstances that have never been fully explained, I’m not even sure what happened myself, I think he was attacked by a man in the street, whether by a madman or a hit man, I don’t know, or perhaps it was a kidnap attempt that went badly wrong because he resisted with all