She became upset when I murmured to her, “You are my whole life,” and I didn’t know if it was the banality of the expression that made her indignant or the puny size of the unit of measurement. “Come on, Ludo. Other men have loved before you.” “I know, I’ve had precursors.” Today, I believe she harbored a bewildered desire that she was incapable of articulating: not to be reduced to her femininity alone. How, at my age, knowing so little of the world in which I lived, could I understand that the word “femininity” could be a prison for women?
