“Does he take any interest in the baby?” She laughed in the darkness, she murmured bitterly: “A male, apart from the mad moments when you love him and he enters you, always remains outside. So afterward, when you no longer love him, it bothers you just to think that you once wanted him. He liked me, I liked him, the end. It happens to me many times a day—I’m attracted to someone. That doesn’t happen to you? It lasts a short time, then it passes. Only the child remains, he’s part of you; the father, on the other hand, was a stranger and goes back to being a stranger. Even the name no longer has the sound it used to. Nino, I’d say, and I would repeat it, over and over in my head, as soon as I woke up, it was a magic word. Now, though, it’s a sound that makes me sad.”