Forbidden Notebook

by Alba de Céspedes

In her diary De Céspedes confides, “I will never be a great writer.” Here I take her to task for not knowing something about herself. For she was a great writer, a subversive writer, a writer censored by fascists, a writer who refused to take part in literary prizes, a writer ahead of her times. In my view, she is one of Italy’s most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers.

I was alone in the empty house, in the Sunday silence, and it seemed to me that I’d lost those I love forever if in reality they’re different from what I’ve always imagined. And if, above all, I myself am different from what they imagine.

and it seems to me that, although we love each other so much, we protect ourselves from each other like enemies.

We both pretended a nonchalance, and yet I knew what his thoughts were and he knew mine, I was sure of it.

I didn’t know for whom I had to go home or for what, but I knew that I had to return, and that implacable, absurd duty caused me great bitterness.

I often have a desire to confide in a living person, not only in this notebook. But I’ve never been able to. Stronger than the desire to confide is the fear of destroying something that I’ve been constructing day by day, for twenty years, the only thing I possess.

I’m a conventional person and more familiar with sin than with courage and freedom.

I went to my room early. Michele had already gone to bed, and was reading. I lay close to him, as he went on reading, and I pretended to sleep as if it were any other evening. I thought that perhaps Michele, too, sometimes pretended to sleep. And that of this continuous pretense of being asleep and remaining awake in one’s own anguish, without the other realizing it, the story of an exemplary marriage is made.

At night, when we sit at the table together, we seem transparent and loyal, without intrigues, but I know now that none of us show what we truly are, we hide, we all camouflage ourselves, out of shame or spite.

Of all that I’ve felt and lived in these months, in a few minutes there will be no trace. Only a faint odor of burning will linger in the air.