O Melhor Amigo

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I liked so much the way she would suddenly sit down on a wall, or a broken pillar in that shattered backyard to Pompey’s Pillar, and be plunged in an inextinguishable sorrow at some idea whose impact had only just made itself felt in her mind. “You really believe so?” she would say with such sorrow that one was touched and amused at the same time. “And why do you smile? You always smile at the most serious things. Ah! surely you should be sad?” If she ever knew me at all she must later have discovered that for those of us who feel deeply and who are at all conscious of the inextricable tangle of human thought there is only one response to be made — ironic tenderness and silence.

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