They have never really stopped and it is only because life is now becoming quieter around me that I can hear them again, like those convent bells covered so well by the clamor of the town during the day that one would think they had ceased altogether but which begin sounding again in the silence of the evening. But for a little while now, I have begun to hear very clearly, if I take care to listen, the sobs I was strong enough to contain in front of my father and that broke out only when I found myself alone again with Mama. It was a very long time ago, too, that my father ceased to be able to say to Mama: “Go with the boy.” The possibility of such hours will never be reborn for me.
In me, too, many things have been destroyed that I thought were bound to last forever and new ones have formed that have given birth to new sorrows and joys which I could not have foreseen then, just as the old ones have become difficult for me to understand. The staircase wall on which I saw the rising glimmer of his candle has long since ceased to exist.
