He had them to thank for a thousand delightful hours, but had never devoted a single creative impulse to any of them. He lived one of those lives that seem otiose because they are not linked to any community of interest, because all the riches stored in them by a thousand separate valuable experiences will pass when their last breath is drawn, without anyone to inherit them.

I said as much to him one evening when we were sitting outside the hotel after dinner, watching the bright lake slowly darken before our eyes. He smiled. “You may be right. I don’t believe in memoirs; what you have experienced is in the past as soon as its moment is over. And as for literature: doesn’t that perish as well twenty, fifty, a hundred years later? However, I’ll tell you something today that I think would make a pretty novella. Come with me—such things are better told as one walks along.”

So we set off on the beautiful path along the beach, overshadowed by the eternal cypresses and tangled chestnut trees, with the lake casting restless reflections through their branches. Over there lay the white cloud of Bellagio, softly tinted by sunset colours, and high, high above the dark hill gleamed the sparkling crown of the walls of the Villa Serbelloni. The atmosphere was still slightly sultry, but not oppressive; like a woman’s gentle arm, it leant tenderly on the shadows and filled the night with the fragrance of invisible flowers. Then he began his tale.

“I will introduce the story with a confession. Until now I haven’t told you that I have been in Cadenabbia before, last year, at the same season and in the same hotel. That may surprise you, especially as I have mentioned that I always avoid doing anything twice. But listen to my story. Last year this place was, of course, as deserted as it is now. The same gentleman from Milan was here—the one who spends all day catching fish and throws them back into the lake in the evening, only to catch them again next day; there were two old Englishwomen whose quietly vegetative existence one hardly noticed, and in addition a handsome young man with a pretty, pale girl, who I don’t believe to this day was his wife, because they seemed far too fond of each other for that. Finally, there was also a German family, the most typical kind of north Germans. A flaxen-haired, raw-boned woman getting on in years, with angular, graceless movements, piercing steely eyes and a sharp, quarrelsome mouth like a cut made with a knife. She had a sister with her, unmistakably her sister because she had the same features, only lined and somehow softened; the two of them were always together, yet never seemed to talk to each other, and were always intent on their embroidery, into which they seemed to weave all their absence of thought, implacable Fates in a restricted world of tedium. And between them a young girl some sixteen years old, the daughter of one of them, I don’t know which, for the pronounced immaturity of her features was already mingling with a slight indication of feminine curves. She was not really pretty, too thin, not fully grown yet, but there was something touching in her look of helpless yearning. Her eyes were large, and probably full of dark light, but they always shyly avoided the glance of others, their glow dispersed into fitful glints. She too always had some needlework with her, but her hands often moved slowly, her fingers slackened, and then she would sit still, looking out over the lake.

“I don’t know what it was about that sight that so strangely attracted my attention. Was it the banal yet inevitable idea that struck me, on seeing the faded mother beside her daughter coming into the bloom of youth? Was it the shadow behind her figure, the thought that lines wait hidden in every cheek, weariness in all laughter, disappointment in every dream? Or was it that wild, unfocused longing just breaking out, giving away everything about the girl, every wonderful moment in her life when her eyes were fixed on the whole universe in desire, because they had not yet found one desirable object to cling to, then to remain there rotting like algae on a piece of floating wood? I found it infinitely fascinating to watch her, to see her dreamy, dewy-eyed glance, the wildly exuberant caresses she lavished on every dog and cat, the restlessness that made her begin so many projects and then leave them unfinished. And then the ardent haste with which she raced through the few wretched books in the hotel library in the evening, or leafed through the two volumes of poetry, worn with much reading, that she had brought with her, books containing the poetry of Goethe and Baumbach… but why do you smile?

I had to apologize. “It’s the juxtaposition of Goethe and Baumbach.”

“I see! Yes, of course, it’s comical. And then again, it isn’t. You may believe me when I say that it is immaterial to young girls of that age whether the poetry they read is good or bad, the real essence of poetry or an imitation. To them, poems are only vessels for quenching their thirst, and they pay no attention to the quality of the wine in those vessels; it is intoxicating even before it is drunk. And this girl was like that, so full to the brim of longing that it glowed in her eyes, made her fingertips tremble on the table, and she moved in a manner somewhere between awkwardness and elation. You could see she was hungry to talk to someone, to give away something of all that filled her mind, but there was no one there, only a void, only the slight sound of the embroidery needles to right and left of her, and the cold, deliberate glances of the two older ladies.

“I felt a great sense of pity for her.