Anyway, the conclusion to which all stories come is that the life a person has led is one and one alone, uniform and compact as a shrunken blanket where you can't distinguish the fibers of the weave. And so if by chance i happen to dwell on some ordinary detail of an ordinary day, the visit of a Singhalese who wants to sell me a litter of newborn crocodiles in a zinc tub, i can be sure that even in this tiny, insignificant episode there is implicit everything i have experienced, all the past, the multiple pasts I have tried in vain to leave behind me, the lives that in the end are soldered into an overall life, my life, which continues even in this place from which I have decided I must not move any more, this little house with a courtyard garden ... where I have set up my tropical-fish aquarium, a quiet business, which forces me more than any other would to lead a stable life, because you can't neglect the fish, not even for one day ...