“Watermelon! Oh, Miss Ingram, may I have a slice of watermelon?”

“Oh, please, Miss Ingram?”

“Miss Ingram, I’m dying.”

“Not so loud. All right, if you’re quick. D’you have change? If not, be careful with the notes—the five thousand looks like the one thousand. Mind the cars. And don’t talk to anyone.”

They wagged away, one after the other, across the square, a line of bright pennants being run up like a signal over the paving stones. Miss Ingram had been standing in the same place, with her back to Michele, but all at once she turned and faced him. She walked to where he sat and went straight past him, up the steps, to stand in the shade of the portico. He twisted around to look at her. She had taken off her sunglasses and was rubbing them with a handkerchief. Older than he had guessed; not much younger than he.

She had not noticed him at all.

Michele wanted to talk to her, to speak English, to belong for a moment to that world where even children traveled easily and women quoted poetry. He cursed all his countrymen who had ever promiscuously accosted foreign women, beclouding what he conceived of as his serious approach to this one.

“The statue is by Giambologna.” He got to his feet and went up to her.

“I’m sorry?” Her eyes were gray, enormous, unsurprised.

“I said, your statue—the statue of the grand duke, the one in that poem. Is by Giambologna.”

She said doubtfully, “In the poem it says ‘John of Douay.’”

“Is the same person. He was Flemish.”

Standing down one step, he was exactly of her height. She had a full, smiling expression, suited to her voice. She had particularly lovely ears, small and close, looped over with strands of light-brown hair.

“You speak English well.”

This open, easy way she had of talking, quite unflirtatious, interested Michele. He thought, You tell the girls not to speak to anyone, meaning men, and straightaway you speak to me; but he felt the emptiness of the charge. “I live one year in London, to study English for the hotel business. Instead, now I work for my brother. He imports foreign foods for the supermarket.”

“Oh, a supermarket, even here?”

“Yes, the big one outside Porta Prato.” He could see she didn’t care, though—would not care even if he told her about the Chianti flasks sheathed in woven plastic, or the canned music played there all day long. He followed her eyes across the square to where, by the pedestal of the grand duke, the girls were arched over their crescents of watermelon, stretching their necks forward like ponies to avoid staining their dresses. “You come from London?”

“Yes. From Islington.”

“There are some nice houses in Islington.”

“Yes,” she said, not laying claim to them. “Difficult to get to, though.”

“The girls, too? From Islington?”