I didn’t read, didn’t go to the movies, didn’t do anything. I spent my days waiting to go to the newspaper office. The one thing I was proud of, the one thing that kept me going, was that I wasn’t drinking. I’d even bought a bottle of Ballantine’s and kept it in full view on the table without touching it. Then, ten days before the beginning of September, I received a letter from Arianna. Dear darling Leo. Hey, where are you? What are you doing? Who with? Not hearing anything from you worries me. Everyone’s really nice to me here, but I’ve been through some rough patches. I kept waking up at night, afraid I was suffocating, and wanted desperately to go back to the clinic. For the whole of the first week, Eva bombarded Livio with phone calls. Then she came. There was an unpleasant scene, at the end of which they went off together. To hell with the two of them. I’m fine now. All I do is eat, I’m afraid I’ll get very fat. But I also swim, and I go on wonderful excursions out to sea on board a lovely boat. I’ve discovered I’m crazy about boats. Today it’s raining, though, and I’m sad. I’m aware of how alone I am in the middle of this vast, terrible world. I don’t know where to go. What will I do with my life? Why don’t you get the hell out of there and come fetch me? I beg you, I beg you, I beg you.

There was a return address, and two days later I asked the paper for time off and set out in my car. I didn’t take the highway—the best thing of all about highways is that they leave normal roads clear. The old Alfa Romeo thundered as it climbed the slopes of the Castelli Romani, surrounded by a landscape that was wild and arid but already taking on the first faint colors of fall. Once past the Castelli, a long descent began, and at last, after a very long, straight road lined with plane trees, the sea appeared. I drove without hurrying in the noonday sun. The farther south I drove, the more magnificent the coast became. The road, wide and direct, ran across bare, stony mountains, sometimes high above the sea that glittered below in little rocky inlets, sometimes dipping to run alongside beaches that were white and deserted. Then the Saracen towers appeared, hanging sheer over the sea. And it was at this point that I saw the bay.