from "My Vocation"(1989)
Natalia Ginzburg

     . . . He always feels hot, I always feel cold,  In the summer when it really is hot he does nothing but complain about how hot he feels.   He is irritated if he sees me put a jumper on in the evening.  He speaks several languages well; I do not speak any well. He manages -in his own way-to speak even the languages that he doesn't know.

    He has an excellent sense of direction, I have none at all.  After one day in a  foreign city he can move about it in as thoughtlessly as a  a butterfly. I get lost in my own city; I have to ask directions so that I can get back home again.  He hates asking directions; when we go by car to a town we don't know he doesn't want to ask directions and tells me to look at the map.  I don't know how to read maps and I get confused by all the little red circles and he loses his temper.

    He loves the theatre, painting, music, especially music.  I do not understand music at all, painting doesn't mean much to me and I get bored at the theatre.  I love and understand one thing in the world and that is poetry.

   He loves museums, and I will go if I am forced to but with an unpleasant sense of effort and duty.  He loves libraries and I hate them.

   He loves travelling unfamiliar foreign cities, restaurants.  I would like to stay at home all the time and never move.   .  .  .

[Natalia Ginzburg, "He and I"   excerpted from "My Vocation."  Trans. by Dick Davis.  In The Little Virtues, 1989.]