When I had just started reading the book, one thing that really bothered me was when Dee and Pasquale were talking about the sickness that Dee had. "She touched her belly. 'you know the word cancer?' 'yes.' unfortunately, he did know this word. Cancro in Italian. He stared at his burning cigarette. 'is fine, no? the doctors. they can...' 'i don't think so,' she answered. 'its a very bad kind. they say they can, but i think they're trying to soften the blow for me. I wanted to tell you to explain that i might seem...frank. do know this word, frank?'(walter 56)"
I think its a little ironic and strange that she says she has cancer and she says it's really bad but then she is smoking cigarettes as she is saying this. Normally if one is sick, they stay away from things that could further worsen their health. This passage/conversation between Dee and Pasquale really struck me as important throughout the whole book. It is one of the first real conversations that they have and the reader can foresee that they are going to fall in love because of the way Pasquale looks at her and listens to her as she talks about herself and her illness.
It's interesting that Dee was first introduced into the book as "the dying actress." As her boat was coming to Porto Vergogna, Pasquale thought that the actress was beautiful and he couldn't keep his eyes off of her but shortly after she got off the boat and was walking to the hotel, he was told that she was very sick. Just as Orenzio, his friend, had told him that she was sick, Pasquale started to notice that she was really skinny and that she didn't look healthy.
Does this have any importance to the reason why he fell in love with her? I mean before this he really didn't even know about her. Is the real/primary reason that Pasquale fell so hard in love with Dee, in the beginning, because he felt bad that she had cancer?
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