The return to childish fairy tales just as I felt I was truly emerging from childhood had for a while the advantage of reducing to the minimum not only my father39;s responsibility but mine, too. If, in fact, Vittoria39;s magic arts were at the origin of all the wrongs, the current drama had begun when I was just born, and so I had no guilt, the obscure force that had led me to seek out and meet my aunt had been at work for some time, I had nothing to do with it, I, like the small children of Jesus, was innocent. But this picture faded, too, sooner or later. Curse or not, the fact was that thirteen years ago my father had judged beautiful the object that his sister had given me, and its beauty had been ratified by a refined woman like Costanza. As a result, an incongruous juxtaposition of vulg...