One of them, who was in constant fear of death, related that in his village, at dead of night, long white watery phantoms were seen running into the river. He asked a companion whether he had ever seen such a thing.

‘Not I! I don’t believe in such nonsense.’

‘You call it nonsense,’ muttered the other in a dull, toneless voice, his eyes fixed on his work.

‘Mutton head,’ someone else said under his breath.

The first man grew angry. ‘Can’t I talk to myself?’

The other protested. ‘Can’t I say muttonhead, calfhead, doghead? What’s it to you? Can’t I talk to the shoes?’

It was at that point that the warder had come and called for Costantino. He had spent a sleepless night but he opened his eyes wide and got up quickly, his face pale. He thought he was dreaming.

‘Who wants me?’ he had asked, following the warder.

He was led into a dirty room lined with shelves heaped with dusty papers. The grimy windows were closed. Beyond the windows was a red grating and beyond that the cloudy sky was visible, seeming, in its turn, covered with dust. Inside the room a man sat writing at a high, dusty desk. Some letters lay in front of him. He was almost invisible among the dust and the papers. When the prisoner came in he raised his head, revealing a flushed face and a small chin entirely covered by a blond, drooping moustache. His large milky blue eyes rested on Costantino without apparently seeing him, for he began to write again rapidly.

Costantino, who had met the man before, remained standing, his heart thumping. In his nervousness he thought of the story of the ghost in the river, the prisoner who had said ‘muttonhead’, and he wondered if the other man had been right to be offended. The only sound in the room was the scratch of the pen on the coarse paper. The round, dull eyes fixed on him again. Costantino shivered, glanced round nervously, and waited. ‘Perhaps they’ve found out that I’m innocent,’ he thought with a surge of joy.

The man had begun to write again. Then, in a deep voice, he called out, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Costantino Ledda.’

‘From where?’

‘Orlei, in Sardinia. Province of Sassari.’

‘Very good.’

Silence. The man went on writing. Suddenly he cleared his throat loudly, looked up, and at last seemed to see the prisoner. Costantino lowered his eyes.

‘Very good. Are you married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Children?’

‘We had one, but he died.’

‘You were married by civil ceremony only?’