“Oh, there were many reasons, I suppose,” the professor said evasively. “As I told you once before, there is a lot that people take for granted in this country, opportunities that just aren’t available for people in many parts of the world, especially in little villages far off in the mountains of Italy.”

“Like what?” pressed Carter with sincere interest.

Giancarlo gave a little cough to clear his throat.

“Different things,” he replied vaguely. “I was a musician and composer, you see. Intellectually and culturally, I suppose I just felt attracted to America.That was why I left.”

“Intellectually and culturally?” said Carter.

“Yes.”

Carter sat back and folded his arms. He regarded his teacher with a skeptical gaze before breaking out in a mischievous smile. “Okay,” he said slyly. “So tell me, what was her name?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Giancarlo.

Carter was at heart still the imp he had been as a little boy. There was simply no way for him to pass up this golden opportunity to give his mentor a playful dig.

“Let me see, what was it you once told me?” he said, striking a comically authoritative air, not unlike that of the Cowardly Lion. “What is it that roots a man in one place, or that can just as easily uproot him in the blink of an eye? Hmm? What makes him come or go? My friend, for better or worse, it’s always a woman. So tell me, Professore, what was her name?”

Carter had meant it all in good fun, and he had fully expected Giancarlo to accept it as such. He realized straightaway that he was quite mistaken in this regard, for the older man suddenly fixed him with a stony, withering glare that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. In all his life, Carter had never seen a man’s face transform itself in such a way, and never so quickly.

“And as I also told you,” said the professor coolly “you have a great deal to learn before you go to Italy.” With that he abruptly took the map and began to fold it up, an icy silence falling over the room.

Carter did not need to be told that this day’s geography lesson had officially ended. At a loss for words as to why this harmless jest had provoked such a response in his teacher, he sat there quietly, wondering if it might not have been so much what he’d said but how he’d said it. Perhaps, in making the friendly joke, he had overstepped his bounds and come across as disrespectful. This was certainly not his intention. Just the same, he felt quite bad that it might have been interpreted as being so.

“Um, mi dispiace—” he began to say by way of apology.