I'm not at all sure this therapy is doing me any good, Doctor. Recalling the period after that night has more of an emetic than cathartic effect on me, a bit like someone walking on my stomach with hobnailed boots. If I have to do it, I can only do it by recounting it in the distant past in a vaguely literary style, to distance it as much as possible from me and feel less the pain it causes. Good thing I went to classical school.

In the course of the days that followed, the spirituality of that night turned, who knows how, into a spasmodic physical need. Soon my supposed strength of mind, of which I was so proud, revealed all its insubstantiality.

When I saw her again a few days later, one look was enough for me to realise that she felt the same way as I did. We were looking forward to being alone. She left first, I found an excuse and joined her. During the car journey we said nothing. We skipped all foreplay, we only took off the bare essentials in frantic gestures, in an unreal silence. We were in a hurry, a terrible hurry to get to the end. We did it again and again, always with the same outcome. Then we stood looking at each other in silence, amazed and incredulous, like two sailors who had escaped a shipwreck.

After that we saw each other more and more often.

I no longer made excuses to my parents: I would sneak out of the house, careful only not to let anyone guess who she was, and return with Teresa's complicity. The day passed in a continuous narcosis, a useless countdown of the minutes that separated me from her; the words of others floated muffled in the silence of my mind, pure sounds without meaning; I suffered resignedly my father's outbursts, listened indifferently to my mother's complaints. I was always smiling, like an idiot. It is happiness that has this effect. There is an inverse proportionality between intelligence and happiness, doctor: psychiatrists and philosophers should look into it.

My parents forced me to undergo a medical examination in fear that I was drugged; as the name of my drug was not written in the medical books, they concluded that I was healthy. Then they referred me to an analyst, the first of a long series, but after the first two times I refused to go back.

As punishment, I was deprived of my freedom of movement.

There followed a period when our recklessness bordered on madness: with the excuse of waiting for Michael's return, she came to me every afternoon. We would have been caught in flagrante delicto who knows how many times had it not been for Teresa, who stood between me and the rest of my family like a faithful watchdog, even though she did not hide her total disapproval of the affair: when I heard her coughing in a strange way or vacuuming for no reason in front of my room, I knew the moment had come to come out into the open with the most innocent of smiles.

I have a very clear memory of those moments. Even now the same electric shock runs down my spine when I recall our quickies in the bathroom, in the cellar, in the broom closet (that smell of rags and washing-up liquid has retained for me a tremendous erotic charge), wherever we were surprised by a sudden hunger that was not for sex, or at least not only; it is easy for an outsider to be ironic, but I know too well that it was something different: it was a kind of languor that started from the bottom of the stomach and took away all strength, an intolerable need to be satisfied immediately and at any cost.

It began with a sidelong glance followed by a hot lash in the kidneys; then it was all a chase through the rooms until finally finding a secluded corner. Just a moment, but what a moment. It was almost always her wanting me, taking me. There was no foreplay, I didn't have to do anything, it was like being devoured by a mantis. I can still feel her breath in my hair, her lips on my neck, her hands in my trousers, the need to hurry, the pleasure that rose burning, dizzying, that warm, viscous sensation on my lower abdomen, my knees buckling, my back sliding against the wall as she gave me her hand to bite because we didn't have to make noise, they could hear us, sometimes they could even see us, but I wouldn't have cared, no, not at all.

My current girlfriend, to whom I owe this cure, says that over time I have become quite a lover. Bullshit, doctor: I'd throw all my supposed amatory skills overboard in exchange for just one of those moments of elementary, raw, primitive sex. I was always feverish and had never felt better in my life. As for her, I don't know what she felt exactly, but I think she felt more or less the same as me; with one difference though: I think she feared me all the more the more she wanted me. It was a terrible mistake to underestimate this difference. For the moment, desire still prevailed in her, but the balance was precarious.

Not me, I was not afraid. I let myself live with all my being. I was an albatross, I competed with the seagulls, I spread my wings, my wings were white, large and powerful, I plunged in free fall, I swooped and then skilfully climbed and soared towards the sun, I descended to touch the treetops, I felt the tickle of the leaves on my belly, the caress of the air on my body, I dived into the stars, I breathed the light, I breathed the night, I felt the wind outside, the wind inside.

My divine recklessness would have suffered a severe blow if I could have foreseen that this would be the first and last time for me. I was completely inexperienced and could not imagine that with the others it would be any different. I actually sensed it, but I rejected the thought. I lied to myself, I told myself that sex would always and in any case be wonderful. I was wrong. Few experiences can be as mediocre and frustrating as sex with the wrong person. 

I take this opportunity to remind you, doctor, that this diary is covered by professional secrecy.

Only once did I experience something equally intense, but that was dirty sex and it doesn't count: diving into a sewer has more effect than swimming in a pool of clear water, that's obvious. But with Antonia I never felt any dirty feeling. Nothing could have convinced me that it was a sin: how could something so beautiful be a sin?

That delirium, if it had lasted much longer, would have driven us both to madness, which for me was not a problem, but for her it was: she had an engagement and a career to run. She was more and more frightened. It remained to be seen what would follow that first explosion of the senses, and I had no idea. Perhaps I would grow tired of her, while remaining attached to her like a brother; or perhaps, who knows, I might become her steady lover.

It was a surprise for me to discover that as the weeks went by the need for sex slowly subsided, but my feeling did not diminish in either intensity or depth. I needed her even if only to sit by her side, even if only to watch her work. If I did not hear from her for a day, I felt anxious and alarmed. Seeing her again gave me immense joy and equally immense relief, as if I had escaped danger each time.

When I tried to give a name to that feeling, I found only one: I was forced to admit that I loved her.

The day I realised this truth I felt thunderstruck by the revelation. It was as if I had been invested with a priestly dignity: I had been granted the privilege of loving in earnest, from the depths of my soul, and I felt it was a sacred thing. 

I spent the whole day sitting in the rows of a vineyard on a hill from which I dominated the entire valley without being seen. Tegame had understood, in his own way, the solemnity of the moment: he had rolled himself up in the grass and gone to sleep trying not to bother me. I think I prayed to God in the only way I am able, which is to thank him from the bottom of my heart.

When I finally got home she was anxious: she found an excuse to be alone with me in the kitchen and asked me what had happened. I told her to stay calm, wished her a good night with a kiss on the forehead and went to sleep, leaving her stunned but serene. I had become a treasure chest, I knew I had to have the utmost respect for it. I had never felt this way before.

Usually at this point my casual interlocutors all come to the same conclusion: that mine was not love but morbid attraction, sexual addiction, pathologically deviant behaviour and so on; they bring up the Oedipus complex and other such crap. I avoid contradicting them, it is useless anyway, they cannot understand. I myself, later on, no longer understood and denied the evidence. I now know with certainty that I was right: the attraction for her was a consequence, and not a cause, of my feelings. 

This awareness, as I said, has not prevented me from having physical relations with other women, but it has made them quite insignificant. I am currently indifferent to sex to the point of almost impotence. I also had rather vague physical sensations with her at the time when things were no longer going well between us, but having her in my arms was an immense thrill for me every time.

I do not pretend to define love; I do not know what to call that chaos of contradictory emotions, I do not know what name to give to my desire to make her happy. I apologise to the professionals of the psyche, doctor, but I am afraid you must resign yourselves to the fact that every now and then, one simply falls in love, and it is a waste of time to jack off trying to understand why.

At the time, my instincts suggested that the way to make her happy was through sex, but not in the obvious sense that comes to mind for everyone.

I hate always having to justify myself. What kind of karma is mine? I am always destined to be misunderstood, nobody is willing to believe me even when I tell the truth; I have to justify all my statements as if they were nothing but excuses to justify aberrant behaviour. It's a bit like having to continually do a maturity essay: "Can the candidate thoroughly explain why..."

I will try one more time. After all, that's what we are here for, right?

There was in her a depth of loneliness, of incurable sadness, a sense of guilt of which she was unaware and of which I never understood the meaning: but it was not important to understand it, just as a rational understanding of things is generally not particularly important; the important thing was to feel it, to try to cure the evil.

Observing her from the outside, seeing her move gaily and confidently, one might have thought she was really like that, as my brother believed. But I could see beyond her gestures, her crossed legs, her black garter belt, her provocative smile, her way of squinting while blowing up cigarette smoke. Certain silences, certain bewilderments, certain hardnesses, certain sudden sweetnesses, her effort to hide her pity for useless and despised beings, human wrecks, crushed spiders, mosquitoes, reptiles, that way of biting her lips, twisting a lock of hair around her finger: I saw a lonely child, unwanted, uncared for, insecure in front of the mirror that reflected her bony shoulders, her skinny legs. 

She had no idea what was going through my head while we were making love. If I had told her, I would have wounded her to death.

That too skinny child needed caresses, but not the vulgar ones of the men who had used her to satisfy their lust for sex or power, nor the superficial ones of my brother. Michael couldn't understand: his philosophy of life, all bent on action, classifies as a guilty waste of time any glance below the surface of things.

None of those characters were able to reach her. I knew by intuition, before I experienced it, of her coldness, her intellectual excitement without real abandon: the frightened child could only surrender to a mother's caresses. That is why, in the early days, I was an all-female sweetness to her.

I anticipate another objection: that I had no respect for my brother and felt no remorse for him. This is absolutely true, but I cannot be ashamed of it. 

No, I am not a monster, Doctor. The fact is that, beyond all evidence, I was certain that she was destined for me, not for him. By an unforgivable mistake on the part of the Demiurge, she had come into the world too soon: when the developments of the project had brought her into my vicinity, a trivial demographic misunderstanding had led everyone to believe that the predestined was my brother. I didn't blame him for that, but it was clear that he was the one who had usurped my place, not the other way around. He had nothing in common with Antonia: they were, quite simply, animals of two different species. 

I was happy, doctor, happy with perfect happiness; and so was she. Whatever we did, with or without sex, we were floating in an Edenic, preconscious zone of being in which we felt perfectly happy: isn't that enough to prove that there was nothing wrong with our relationship?

It is only natural that those who read statements like this take me for a fool (obsessive fixation, right Doctor?), but who can say what madness is? 

It is a fact that I did not know her: I recognised her. I was immediately overwhelmed by a wave of emotions that had nothing to do with the present. With time, memories began to resurface in my mind: there is no other way to explain the fact that I always knew, despite my inexperience, what her secret needs were. Nor does it explain the force of attraction that irresistibly drove her towards me, despite herself.

I will try to clarify the concept with an example.

That year it was the football World Cup. Almost all evolved males, in such cases, regress to caveman status by obeying the atavistic call of the pack, and my brother was no exception: he had turned our living room into a camp, gathering couches and chairs in front of the TV and forcing my mother, always indulgent towards male needs, to put up with the daily invasion of hordes of friends; in the evenings my father also joined the company: it was funny to see him become a boy again and munch on peanuts and popcorn sitting next to Michael, arguing with him about the coach's choices; sometimes even insults would fly: being very much alike, in fact, they loved to disagree about everything.

The girlfriends on duty also took part in this kind of general gathering, whose function in the context could be defined as follows: to keep quiet, to receive pats on the back when Italy scored, to prepare food for the tired cheering heroes. Only those of higher rank or with more obvious physical roundness enjoyed an implicit pass and sat among the men, ignoring the existence of the kitchen. Antonia was not among them. 

I knew she felt violated by the vulgarity of the situation, and it was indeed unbelievable that my brother relegated her to the rank of a subordinate, but she could not find the courage to rebel. She passively accepted her role, holed up in the kitchen with Teresa and her occasional companions, exchanging small talk with them that humiliated her culture and intelligence. From time to time she would approach my brother to hand him a plate or a glass. Frédéric's presence was a constant pain for her, always in the company of showy girls whom he displayed in public without paying any attention to them. She walked past him with a rustle of stockings; he ignored her too conspicuously, a sign that he was keeping an eye on her. Michael drew her to him for a moment, saying to the TV set "thank you, darling".

I, sitting on the sofa at the back of the room, watched the scene with contempt. Sad fate to love a vile woman.

If my brother were listening to me right now, I would like to tell him what I probably should have told him then: a woman, where by woman I mean a female human being endowed with intelligence and sensitivity, can forgive a man many things, even a betrayal; if she understands that the motive is strong, that you are in trouble, she may decide to come to your aid and pass over many things. But a woman will never forgive you for shutting her up because you had to watch the game or listen to the news: there is no good reason to put a TV programme before her, it is not like falling in love with someone else. The very moment you have silenced her to listen to the regional news, you have lost her love forever and deserve to be betrayed, which she will do sooner or later, generally falling in love with the first comer.

I understood this well, despite my very young age, and I was amazed that an individual with a Mensa club IQ like my brother didn't get it.

Sometimes I would get up and go to the kitchen to help her. I would stand beside her peeling potatoes and slicing onions. The other girls would look at me in amazement but would not dare say anything because they were in my house. Teresa shook her head, smiling. Antonia kept silent and I knew she was deeply grateful.

One evening, while we were alone in the kitchen and washing the dishes, we engaged in a curious dialogue.

- You don't like football?

- Usually not; but the World Cup is something else, I like to watch it.

- Women's tastes.

- I am a woman.

- Women watch the World Cup for the players, not for the football.

- It is a stupid cliché.

- I know, I said it on purpose.

- Who do you root for?

- For Italy, although I don't think it will repeat the exploit of '82.

- Not for Holland?

- No, why should I? My mother is Dutch, not me. She was a big Cruyff fan. Anyway, I wouldn't mind too much if Holland won.

- It is already in the quarter-finals.

- Too bad it has to face Brazil, I don't think it will make it. 

- Difficult to hazard predictions after England's elimination. 

- Speaking of England, how about that new kid from Manchester?

- He is very good.

- Good, huh?

- It was a naive trick and I didn't fall for it. 

- Really?

- You asked me because he looks a bit like you.

- But you prefer dark haired ones, don't you?

- Yeah.

- If you like them, why don't you go to the living room?

- Save the jokes.

- I've got a better idea: there's a TV in my room; we can watch the World Cup there. What do you say?

- Are you crazy?

- Do you think anyone will miss us?

- As for that, they do not even notice whether we are alive or dead. 

- Good. I'll get the apple pie and chocolate; you get the drinks.

From that night on, we followed the World Cup like this, locked in my room, without anyone actually paying the slightest attention to our absence of ninety minutes plus extra time.

We alternated the games with cartoons: I had obtained some video cassettes with old Walt Disney and Tex Avery shorts and we had a lot of fun watching them.

I knew she needed a big payback. While on screen Maradona passed the ball to Wilcoyote, Batistuta dribbled Donald Duck and Baggio won a fight with Duffy Duck, we made love in a way that has always been my favourite. I am not an expert in erotic positions and I have no interest in this kind of thing: with other women, on the contrary, I am of a discouraging predictability. But with Antonia it was different, perhaps because sex with her had a metaphorical meaning. I liked to hold her without hardly moving, letting her do everything, listening to the music I loved on headphones, leaning against the back of the bed. In those moments, as I have already said, I was not thinking about myself: I was an antenna, all tuned in to her, ready to perceive her every slightest physical reaction. I would whisper complicit phrases in her ear, I would tell her look at yourself in the mirror, you are beautiful, think if Frédéric could see you now, you can think of him if you like, I know you like him, don't be afraid, I won't be offended, and she would gradually lose herself in unconscious ecstasy. Every now and then I would feed her pieces of cake and chocolate.

In this way I was forcing her to take those revenges that she was unable to give herself, immersing her in a well-being of all senses, consoling her, so to speak, at three hundred and sixty degrees.