That’s how I learned the real meaning of that fictitious name on the envelope, and realized that I would have been loved only in theory—that Dante Alighieri would have adored me only in his mind, that he would never have kissed me on the bench, needless to say, given that I wasn’t even a girl in flesh and blood. I discovered that Dante’s lines were filled with prophecies, but that those who uttered them—Tiresias, for instance, and his daughter, poor Manto, with her face turned tragically backwards—were among the damned who suffered punishments in hell.
