How do people know what they have chosen and not chosen? he would ask. They may think they have not chosen but perhaps in reality they have.

Listen to him, she would say. He never sticks to the subject but always manages to generalise. It’s another way of avoiding life.

Perhaps, he would say. I may not be well educated, she would say, but one thing is for sure, I never avoided life.

That’s true, he would say. Their banter, which in other couples might have been a way of fighting private battles in public, was with them always loving and always half ironic. It was also deeply ritualistic. You felt it was their way of expressing pride in each other.

As she stood in the middle of the room, carefully wiping a record before reverentially handing it to him, he would gaze at her in love and admiration. He lowered the needle and they heard the orchestra strike up. Orpheus sang:

Fu ben felice il giorno, Mio ben, che pria ti vidi, E più felice l’ora Che per te sospirai, Poich’ al mio sospirar tu sospirasti; Felicissimo il punto Che la candida mano, Pegno di pura fede, a me porgesti.

98