Giancarlo jutted out his chin in a look of ambivalence and gave a shrug. “A typical town for that area. Nothing out of the ordinary, I would say,” he replied. “Not very big, but not so small, either. It has a nice piazza, if I remember correctly. You can see the mountains in the distance. It’s a bustling place, though. There used to be several restaurants and one or two small nightclubs. I went there occasionally with my friends when I was young.”

“Really?” said a surprised Carter. “Where did you grow up?”

“Here, in a place called Castelalto,” replied Giancarlo, tapping a spot on the map further west toward the center of Abruzzo. It’s a little place, a frazione, too small to be drawn on the map.”

“Hey, that’s not far at all!” exclaimed Carter.

“Eh, the mountains of Abruzzo are deceiving. It is only an inch or two on the map, but trust me, it is farther than it looks,” Giancarlo assured him. “From Roccasale you can see the mountains. In Castelalto, you’re in them. It’s the real Abruzzo.”

There was an air of mystery to the way his teacher spoke of his native land, one that piqued Carter’s curiosity. “What’s it like, the Abruzzo region?” he asked, hoping to draw him out.

Giancarlo sat back and gazed blankly past Carter, his eyes fixed, the young man supposed, on some image within his own mind. “Wild,” the professor replied in a faraway voice after a few moments of contemplation. “Wild and beautiful, and welcoming in a great many ways. But also harsh and unforgiving in others. It took the Romans a hundred years and three wars before they could control it, you know.”

Giancarlo paused for a moment, still staring off into the distance before coming back to himself.

“But as you can see,” he resumed, “the coast borders the Adriatic Sea. Many beautiful places and beaches there. But most of Abruzzo is in the mountains. Tall, rugged mountains, some almost ten thousand feet high, like the Gran Sasso. And there are beautiful parks, thousands upon thousands of acres. I spent much of my youth hiking and exploring all around my hometown. I loved hiking in those days.”

“Hey, I loved hiking, too,” enthused Carter. “Back when I was in the Boy Scouts, we used to go up to New Hampshire and hike in the White Mountains all the time. It was great.”

“Then you will certainly love the Abruzzi mountains,” nodded Giancarlo.

“It sounds like an awesome part of the world,” said Carter. “Whatever made you leave it and move to America?”

It was an innocent question, one for which Carter had not really expected an answer of any substance, but for some reason it seemed to throw Giancarlo, who suddenly seemed a bit unnerved.