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theoretical,” prescribes ordinary Lexotan for the worst nights.
    Here we are, then, all three of us absorbed by ourselves and no one else: Nora reeling from her proliferation of chores, Emanuele trying to suppress his longing for his nanny and me giving in to psychic weakness. A family just starting out is sometimes like that: a nebula of self-centeredness in danger of imploding.
    _____
    All of this is enough to make me forget Mrs. A.’s cough, which in the meantime has worsened to the point of not allowing her to sleep. Another insomniac, and not because her room is infested with ghosts—her ghosts have been her best friends for a long time—now every time she lies down, her chest begins to heave, until she’s forced to sit up again and gulp some more water, more cough syrup.
    She’s also stopped going to Mass because she was disturbing people; she noticed how they began eyeingher with disapproval, how the shoulders of those in front twitched impatiently. On the last Sunday, she left a few moments before the Eucharist, awkwardly stepping on the foot of the person beside her as she made her way out of the pew. The coughing echoed against the high, unadorned vault, unbearably amplified.
    On her walk home via the shortcut that runs through the birch trees, driven by anger, she wondered about the business regarding Communion (“business” is a word that comes to me when talking about her, since she used it so frequently: “a fine business” or “what is this business?” or “we have to settle the business about the socks”—she had a “business” for everything). She wondered whether the special mystique surrounding Communion wasn’t a lot of hype after all, dependent on the hymns, the words whispered by the officiant, the people lined up with bowed heads, hands folded in prayer. With that thought, Mrs. A. began slowly to break away from a faith that she had never doubted and that she could have used now more than ever. She would no longer go to confession, not even as the end approached. At a certain point, I think, shewas convinced that this time it was up to the Lord to ask
her
for forgiveness.
    In fact, one of the rare disagreements between us had to do with religion. For a while she had made up her mind to teach Emanuele some prayers, not paying much attention to our opinion. Not that Nora and I were totally against it, but we’d chosen to get married in a civil ceremony and we had never set foot in a church together, except for other people’s ceremonies or purely as tourists. For the sake of conformity, I had received the sacrament of baptism at twelve years of age, along with my First Communion and confirmation, in a kind of convenient three-in-one (my father, who didn’t at all agree with it, had gone to the priest with his hand rigidly outstretched and muttered something about Galileo’s recantation and the stake, causing the cleric to turn pale). As suddenly as it had appeared, my faith was soon spent.
    Nora, more simply, has always been lukewarm with regard to God. As far as I am aware, she never prays and has worn an ebony rosary around her neck for as long as I’ve known her, oblivious to its symbolic import, just because she likes the way it looks. “Whatharm is there?” she replied when I seemed puzzled by such an insouciant attitude.
    Emanuele seemed to sniff out our ambivalence. At the table he would start reciting Mrs. A.’s prayers, defying us with his eyes. We went on eating, as if we hadn’t noticed. When he didn’t stop, Nora told him gently but firmly that it was not the proper time, that he should save his prayers for when he was alone in bed.
    I wonder if faith would seriously have taken root in our son if Mrs. A. had had more time to nurture it. Maybe it would have been a good thing for him: any kind of belief, rational or not, complex or simple depending on the need, is still better than