Fatally realising that it’s been thirty years since 1992

“I cannot believe that the nineties were thirty years ago. It seems like it was yesterday that I was watching Home Alone.”

With the coming on of the hot days Regina’s nostalgia, nervousness and melancholy increased. At night she tossed and turned, and sometimes groaned softly. At last she confessed to Antonio that her heart troubled her.

Now she had arrived, now she was in the place of her nostalgia, in the dreamed-of harbour of refuge, it was strange that her soul was still lost to her. Just as at one time she had seemed to herself to have taken only her outward person to Rome, leaving her soul like a wandering firefly on the banks of the Po, so now it was only her suffering and tired body which she had brought back to the river-side. Her soul had escaped—flown back to Rome. What was Antonio doing at this hour? Was he very miserable? Was he conscious of his wife’s soul pressing him tighter than ever her arms had pressed him? Had he written to her? Antonio! Antonio! Burning tears filled her eyes, and she suddenly fell silent, her thoughts wandering and lost in a sorrowful far-away.