And the same goes for all those towns in Germany that I could have visited by simply crossing the border during my month-long furloughs. Yes... not to mention Udine which I actually did visit. I decided to go there for three days, and I saw everything; I examined everything. In three days I tried to live the life I could have lived if the abominable government had not left me in Potenza. I did the same in Bologna. You don't know what it means to live the life that you could have lived, if an event over which you have no control, an unforeseeable circumstance, had not distracted and diverted you, and at times crushed you, as has happened to me. Understand? To me!"

"Destiny!" sighed the old mother at this point, her eyes lowered.

"Destiny!" echoed her son, turning to her angrily. "You always repeat this word which irks me terribly, you know! If you would only say 'lack of foresight, predisposition'... Although, yes, foresight! What good is it? One is always exposed to the whims of fate — always. But look, Valdoggi, what man's life depends on... Perhaps not even you can understand me well. But picture, for example, a man who is forced to live chained to another person for whom he has been nursing a feeling of intense hatred which is stifled hour after hour by the most bitter reflections. Imagine! Yes, one fine day, while you're at dinner, conversing — you sitting here, she there — she tells you that when she was a child, her father was on the verge of leaving, let's say, for America, and of taking all his family with him, never to return; or else that she nearly became blind because one day she stuck her nose in certain chemical apparatuses belonging to her father. Well then, since this person is making you suffer the torments of hell, can you help reflecting that, if one or the other of these events had occurred (both quite possible), your life would not be what it is? Whether it would be better or worse matters little now. You would exclaim to yourself: 'Oh, if only it had happened! You would be blind, my dear; I would certainly not be your husband!' And, perhaps pitying her, you would imagine her life as a blind woman and yours as a bachelor, or yourself in the company of some other woman..."

"That's why I tell you--that it's all destiny," said the old woman once again and with great conviction. She spoke these words without getting upset, all the while keeping her eyes lowered as she walked along with a heavy step.

"You get on my nerves!" screamed Lao Griffi this time, his words resounding in the deserted square. "Then everything that happens was destined to have happened? Wrong! It might not have happened if... and here, in this if I always lose myself. A stubborn fly that is bothering you, a gesture you make to shoo it away, can become the cause of who knows what misfortune in six, ten, or fifteen years. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not exaggerating! It's certain that as we live, mind you, we develop —like this, on the side — un-thought of, rash forces — oh, that you've got to grant. On their own, then, these forces develop and unfold secretly, and they lay a net before you, a snare that you can't perceive, but that finally envelops you; squeezes you; and then you find yourself caught, without knowing how and why. That's how it is! Momentary pleasures, sudden desires that dominate you, it's useless! Man's own nature, all your senses demand them spontaneously and with such compulsion that you can't resist them. The damage, the sufferings that can result from them don't come to mind very clearly, nor can your imagination foresee this damage, these sufferings with enough force and clarity to hold in check your irresistible inclination to satisfy these desires, to take up those pleasures. So much so that sometimes, good God, not even the awareness of immediate evils is sufficient to check these desires! We are weak creatures... The lessons one learns from the experiences of others, you say? They're useless. Each of us can think that experience is the fruit that grows according to the plant which produces it and the soil in which the plant has taken root. And if I consider myself to be, for instance, a rosebush whose nature it is to produce roses, why should I poison myself with the toxic fruit picked from the sad tree of someone else's life? No, no. We are weak creatures... Therefore, it's neither destiny nor fate.