Someone else might have laughed it off, but Carter wanted to crawl under his seat and never utter a word of Italian again. The woman must have thought him a complete imbecile. How, he wondered, could he have been so stupid? After all the hours of lessons and study, was that what he could look forward to doing when he finally met Elena again? The thought of it made him miserable, until he suddenly recalled the words of Giancarlo that day when he told Carter that he should not be too embarrassed when he made a mistake. So long as Carter was trying his best to speak the language, he had said, Italians would love him all the more for it.

He could only hope that would be the case when at last he went to Roccasale, and so he let out a sigh and flopped back against the seat. Looking across the aisle, he noticed that the man who had been sitting there with his wife had left behind his newspaper. As the train began to move once more, Carter reached over and grabbed it. Obviously there was still a great deal of the language that he needed to learn; reading the newspaper, he figured, could only help.

Carter had just begun to scan the headlines when he heard someone give a little cough. He looked up from the newspaper and saw an elderly man standing in the aisle before him. He was a dapper old gent dressed in a gray suit and carrying a small valise. Holding the top of a nearby seat to steady himself, he smiled and gestured to the two open seats in front of Carter.

“Permeso?” asked the man, inquiring if it would be all right if he sat there.

“Si, Signore,” Carter replied, pulling his legs in so as not to trip him. “Prego.”

The old man nodded his thanks and settled into a seat opposite Carter. There, with his valise resting on his lap, he sat with a very erect posture and looked about at the other passengers with an expression of vague curiosity. For his part, Carter turned his own attention back to the newspaper, but found himself now and then glancing at the old man over the top of the page.

Opening his valise, the old man took out a small thin package wrapped in paper. He put the valise aside and unwrapped the paper to reveal the sandwich inside. He took the sandwich from the paper and held it up to Carter.

“Ne vuoi?” he said, offering Carter some of his sandwich.

Carter politely declined, explaining that he was not hungry. It impressed him, though, that the man would have thought to offer part of his lunch to a complete stranger.