You can fall ill with just a memory.

Why did you choose to stay here?" (...) "I don't know," he said. "It's as if there's more oxygen here.

but his eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them

Mattia was right: the days had slipped over her skin like a solvent, one after the other, each removing a very thin layer of pigment from her tattoo, and from both of their memories. The outlines, like the circumstances, were still there, black and well delineated, but the colors had merged together until they faded into a dull, uniform tonality, a neutral absence of meaning.

It was strange to find them here, still alive, with their shared bits of past that suddenly counted for nothing.

Separating them were two layers of brick, a few inches of plaster, and nine years of silence.

Mattia's voice no longer stirred anything in his stomach, but he was aware of the idea of him and always would be, as the only true benchmark for everything that had come afterward.