He had become a skilled shoemaker and worked swiftly, but he earned little, and all he earned, except the part that the King of Spades took for his services, Costantino sent to Giovanna.

‘You’re a fool, I swear you are,’ the ex-police inspector told him. ‘You need money for food. They ought to send you some of theirs.’

‘They are so poor.’

‘Are they? They have the sun. What more do they want? If you would eat and drink you’d be doing an act of charity. You’re just a stick, my friend. Look at me now; I’m getting fatter. I live on air, but I still grow fat.’

He did indeed look like a little dumpling, but it was an unhealthy fatness, flabby and yellow. Costantino, on the other hand, was gaunt with sunken eyes and almost transparent hands.

‘The sun!’ he thought bitterly. ‘Oh, yes they have the sun! But what use is the sun when there’s nothing to eat, when they’re ill and suffering every kind of misery?’

He knew it was foolish of him but sometimes when he thought about his family he would cry like a baby.

Still he went on hoping. The years passed and the days fell away slowly and regularly, one after another, like drops of water in a cave, dripping from stone to stone. Almost all the convicts, particularly those with shorter sentences, were hoping for a pardon. They passed the time in calculating exactly the number of days that had gone by and the number still to go, and they never made a mistake. Some even counted the hours. Costantino thought it a foolish thing to do, smiling at the notion that he might either die or be set free before his sentence was up. It was all in God’s hands. Costantino counted on being freed before he had served his time, but it crept by so slowly, so slowly. That morning he was particularly aware of time passing when, on waking, he felt the warm paper of Giovanna’s letter.

He arose and dressed, sighing. The man on his right stopped snoring, opened a bleary eye, and lay watching Costantino as if he did not recognize him. Then he shut his eye again and asked, ‘Are you feeling poorly? Oh, of course, your son is ill. Why don’t you tell the governor?’

‘How can I tell the governor? If he knew I received letters like this he’d put me in solitary.’

‘On bread and chicken,’ another voice joked. He meant bread and water.

Someone else laughed. The indifference of his companions made Costantino feel utterly alone, lost in a burning waste.