In One Person: A Novel

by John Irving

I believe I love best the picture of Margaret Olivia Hall, Northfield’s music building, because I knew how much Elaine loved to sing—singing was one thing her big voice was born to do. (“I love to sing until I cry, and then sing some more,” she once wrote to me.)

“What’s it mean?” I asked Elaine, as we lay awake in that seedy Post Street apartment. “Adagio means slowly, softly, gently,” Elaine answered. “Oh.” That would be about the best you could say for our efforts at lovemaking, which we tried, too—with no more success than the living-together part, but we tried. “Adagio,” we would say, when we tried to make love, or afterward, when we were trying to fall asleep. We say it still; we said it when we left San Francisco, and we say it when we close letters or emails to each other now. It’s what love means to us, I guess—only adagio. (Slowly, softly, gently.) It works for friends, anyway.