Page 168 of DATE
He had trusted her enough.
Hedy studied his expression and gave him a silent gesture of encouragement.
"I won’t tell anyone."
There were no birds here, no one to overhear your secret.
The young man with brown hair and eyes slowly opened his eyes, and in a quiet voice, he began to tell her a story.
Once there was a girl named Caterina, who, at fourteen, lost both of her parents. At sixteen, she had a physical relationship with a man.
She soon became pregnant, feeling both joyful and anxious.
But the man she had fallen in love with came from a family of notaries and was about to marry another woman.
They were from different social classes and had no possibility of marrying each other.
Leonardo was born on a Saturday, and when he was baptized, nearly all the local gentry and family members attended, including more than ten godparents.
In that small town, his father had both status and prestige, and even though Leonardo was a bastard, he received everyone’s attendance and blessing.
"After all, this was the golden age for illegitimate children," he suddenly laughed. "Without his surname, I couldn’t inherit his position, but perhaps it worked out for the better for him."
Hedy fell silent for a while and asked, "What happened next?"
"What happened next?"
Shortly after Leonardo's birth, his mother was arranged by Piero to marry a common brick kiln worker, someone protected by their family.
In the same year, Piero married a lady from Florence and began a new life.
His mother quickly had four daughters and one son with the kiln worker, while Piero and his wife had no children.
Then, Piero lost his wives in succession and remarried several times.
It wasn’t until this year that he got a half-brother—one who was over twenty years younger than him.
As Leonardo casually spoke of these old events, Hedy suddenly understood many things.
In history, he was often suspected of being asexual or homosexual.
In front of her, he showed no interest in love, and even seemed to dislike intimacy.
All of this stemmed from his childhood.
His father lived far away in Florence, and his mother was busy taking care of the five children.
For the first five years of his life, he lived with his grandparents.
There was no maternal love, no paternal love, and no intimate affection to offer him comfort or warmth.
For such a small child, how lonely and helpless must that have felt?
If one never experiences the purest, unconditional love in childhood, who could possibly teach him that as an adult?
Who could make him let go of his defenses and inhibitions, to accept a relationship of closeness?
He wasn’t incapable of loving; he had simply never been loved, and so he didn’t know how to love.
