She got out of the cab to find herself in the Piazza di Rotonda. The square was thronged with tourists bustling between ice cream stalls and cafés. She stood before the blocky walls of a great building that loomed over them like a fortress—and indeed, said Rosa, it had been used as a fortress in the Middle Ages, as had been most of Rome’s ancient buildings; the brick walls were, after all, six yards thick. This was the Pantheon.

Rosa pointed to a ditch around the walls. “See that? The road level is higher than the base of the building. Since this place was built the rubble and dirt has risen like a tide . . . Come.” She took Lucia’s hand.

They walked under the great colonnaded portico at the front of the building. Though the height of the tourist season had been the summer, the space among the great gray columns was crowded by people, many in shorts, T-shirts, and baseball caps and with tiny cameras in their hands. In the Crypt everybody was trim, neat, and would get out of each other’s way without having to be shoved. Not here. The people all seemed grossly overfed and clumsy to Lucia. It was like being in a herd of cattle—slow-moving and aggressive cattle at that.

And then there were the boys, and even some of the men, who looked at her, stared in fact, with a calculating intensity, a greed that made her shudder.

But there was one boy whose gaze seemed clearer. He looked perhaps eighteen, with a pale face, high forehead, and red hair in which sunglasses nestled. He stared, too—he seemed fascinated by her—but there was an innocence in his gaze. He actually smiled at her. She flushed and looked away.

Rosa didn’t seem troubled by the tourists. She was stroking the cool marble of one of the columns. “My father is an accountant, but he did a lot of work with the building trade,” Rosa said. “I know what he would say if he was here.” She switched to English. “Imagine shifting one of these buggers.”

“You were only small when you came here, to the Crypt.”

“Yes. But I still remember him. I remember his hands.” She spread her own fingers. “Big, scarred hands, great slabs of muscle, like a farmer’s hands. He always had strong hands, even though most of his life was spent behind a desk.”

Lucia didn’t know what to say, how to join in a conversation about fathers. Lucia had seen her own father only once or twice. He was a contadino who did occasional work in the Crypt. He was a slightly overweight man, characterless, given to smiling a little weakly. She’d never even spoken to him. To Lucia, even to think about your father seemed unnatural.

“Do you miss your father?”