full knowledge of it, yet it would be quite useless for him to rebel, as my mother can do whatever she likes with him. Even so, she wasn’t prepared to travel openly to Rome to see Spadolini: she had to use me as the pretext, the crazy megalomaniac son who stayed at the Hassler for months and then defied all the rules of decency by taking a lease on one of the most expensive apartments in the Piazza Minerva for years, possibly for decades, because he wanted to combine breakfast with a view of the Pantheon. And my mother doesn’t know that I’m aware of the true reason for her visiting Rome, I told Gambetti. She puts on a superb act when it comes to dissembling to my father, I told Gambetti; she displays an incomparable mastery worthy of the greatest artists. Having come to Rome just to see Spadolini, I reflected, looking again at the photo of her and my father at Victoria Station, she was bored whenever she was with me, because all the time she was thinking of Spadolini. Their relationship is not of Spadolini’s making, I told Gambetti, but entirely of my mother’s. You can’t leave the huntsmen alone when the hunting season is on. These words, spoken to my father, strike me now, so long after her visit to Rome, as even more contemptible than they did at the time. Even the huntsmen, and finally I myself, had to be involved so that she could meet Spadolini in Rome. With nothing else on her mind but meeting Spadolini again, she had the effrontery — the gall, as they say — to send my father dreary picture postcards of the Pantheon or Saint Peter’s every day, with such messages as: We [she and I, that is!] are having a wonderful time in Rome, etc. She had me sign them and so provide her with an alibi, as she thought, proving that she spent every day with me and no one else. Spadolini was the principal figure during her visit to Rome, during all her visits to Rome, Gambetti, not me. Of course I don’t attach any importance to being the principal figure myself. My mother’s mendacity was by then at its most brazen, I told Gambetti, though I immediately felt ashamed of having said this, sensing that I had gone too far, at least by saying it to Gambetti, as I instantly gathered from his reaction. He is so sensitive, I thought, that he’s bound to feelthat this remark, like other remarks of mine, is out of place, if not positively distasteful. The teacher mustn’t present such a distasteful image to his pupil, I reflected, but the reflection came too late. On the other hand, I thought, I have to be open with Gambetti, who is my pupil after all. Open, yes, but not base, I thought, correcting myself; open, yes, but not vulgar; open, yes, but not common and contemptible. But Gambetti’s known me so long that he can’t fail to understand me, I thought — he’s known me a long time, and he accepts me. He must have his reasons, I thought. This matter of Spadolini and my mother is a dangerous chapter, I told Gambetti, closing it once more. We had been walking up and down under the house of De Chirico, unable to decide whether to have tea in the teashop on the Spagna or to go and sit in the Greco. Then, as so often happened, a sudden shower forced us to shelter in the Greco, where we continued our conversation. It actually centered on Pavese — not on Spadolini and my mother — of whom I had been reminded by an observation in Pavese’s famous The Business of Living, a favorite book of mine on which I had commented to Gambetti that day, comparing Pavese with Heine and explaining the reasons that prompted the comparison. I can no longer remember what it was in Pavese or my beloved Heine that suddenly reminded me of Spadolini and my mother. Spadolini himself has naturally never told me about meeting my mother in Rome. Although I see him often, and enjoy seeing him — I visit him nearly every week at his apartment or his offices — he has never once mentioned their meetings. The churchman has maintained a discreet silence. I am not sure whether he is aware that I know about his meetings with my mother. One day all three of us met and went up to Rocca di Papa, where Spadolini, generous as ever and one of the best hosts I know, invited us to lunch. On this occasion my mother and Spadolini showed themselves to be consummate actors. Nothing that occurred over lunch indicated that they had met the previous evening and spent the night together, or that they had an assignation for that evening too. My position between these two liars and hypocrites was not altogether agreeable, as may be imagined — between a lying mother and a hypocritical ecclesiastic — but I carried it off perfectly, without betraying the slightest hint of suspicion. My mother, who had arranged a rendezvous with him for that evening, took her leave of Spadolini at Rocca di Papa as though it were the last time she would see him. Spadolini went back to Rome by taxi, and so did my mother and I. I found these separate taxi journeys, one behind the other, embarrassingly grotesque. They were so perfectly stage-managed as to make the whole situation quite clear to me. I cannot say who displayed the greater aplomb, Spadolini or my mother, but I may presume that, as in all such situations, she was the smarter of the two. It seemed to me at the time that Spadolini was merely the medium for her art of dissimulation and took his cue from her, I told Gambetti. I find it quite mortifying, as you can imagine, to have to tell myself that this prince of the Church is just a poor fool in thrall to my mother. Their liaison makes my relationship with Spadolini rather tricky, of course, but I’ll never give it up, even if it comes under even greater strain, because I don’t want to deprive myself of such a person. I enjoy seeing him, and I’m glad he’s in Rome. We don’t know many people who are more interesting and fascinating to meet when we need their company. Spadolini is without doubt one of the few true intellectuals I know in Rome. No one with any sense would willingly forfeit such a contact. No, really, Gambetti, I said, I haven’t the slightest scruple where Spadolini is concerned. I just begrudge my mother such a man: she doesn’t deserve a man like Spadolini. What the two of them call friendship, I said with a laugh, is after all just a clingy and utterly ludicrous affair, I told Gambetti. The photographs don’t disguise or conceal anything but make everything obvious, brutally obvious, I thought, still contemplating the photos. They reveal everything that the people in them wanted to disguise and conceal all their lives. The distortion and mendacity of the photos is actually the truth, I thought. This total defamation is the truth. The fact that the people depicted in them — exposed, as they say — are now dead doesn’t make them any better. When they were in London in 1931, I told myself, my parents were still what they call a young couple. They traveled a lot. They had no children. For years my mother refused to have children, until my father insisted. He demanded an heir from her. Wolfsegg had to have an heir. Having given birth to Johannes, she is said to have sworn not to have another child. But a year later I arrived, the troublesome one, the limb of Satan, the bringer of unhappiness. I was always told that she did not want me and tried to avoid having me. But she