A further surreal effect burst loose yesterday evening on Via Benaco, as I was walking along, hands clasped behind my back, pondering who I ought to put in the next scene and how to give that person shape, and as I thought, I slowly entered the gallery of greenery, whereupon, raising my eyes, I realized that I had stepped into that famous painting by Magritte: under the vault of foliage it was already dark night, the bright yellow streetlamps casting shadows, a gloomy silence like some provincial city—while overhead, above the branches, you could still glimpse clear and luminous the sky of Rome, crisscrossed by darting swallows.

High above, there was still daylight.

On the ground, darkest night.

Sort of like in this story. Divided by a line where opposites meet, even though the canvas is the same, and so is the instant. Even the protagonists are the same, whether they act in the darkness or in the light of day. There, it is as if the light itself produces the darkness, as if its splendor engenders the darkness, and I’m certain that this contradiction in terms has some meaning of its own, that’s right, that it is prosperity itself that engenders malaise. I can’t find this meaning, I can’t find it on my own, I have to reach out to my memory and my imagination for help. You might say to me, what help are you looking for, whose help are you asking for, in that case? Whose help, if you are still the one, who remembers and invents. But the memory and the imagination aren’t mine, I’m not really me, the forces that come to my aid as often as not also abandon me. If they really were mine, they’d do as I say, wouldn’t they? Like a hand that reaches out to grasp a glass. Hand, grab that glass, and my hand grabs it. Lift it to my mouth. Tip it …

A thirst-slaking gulp of water.

I have no choice, though, but to hope that memory and imagination come to visit me, and I cannot expect anything certain, maneuverable, from them. I have begun to suspect that these are not two separate, distinct forces, recollection and fantasy, but rather a single force, and that the words come from the same spring, they are neither true nor are they false, neither authentic nor invented, there is just one voice that recounts and reasons, and I have no option but to listen to it. Trustingly. (The Catholic School)