That’s how I found out that Arianna had been in love with me. That’s how I found out, in the intimate, persuasive tones of a piece of gossip, that she’d been in love with me. There had been terrible scenes because of me. Eva couldn’t understand how Arianna could be in love with a fucked-up guy like me. All they did was fight, but the most violent quarrel was when I’d run away from the TV center. They were all at dinner together, and Arianna, who was extremely anxious, kept getting up to phone me, until Eva exploded. There were smashed plates and tears and, in the end, Arianna walked out, saying she was going to live with me. But she couldn’t find me and at five in the morning had gone to the Diaconos’. She was in such a state, they had to call a doctor. “She couldn’t breathe,” Viola said. I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about the evening after that, when she came to my apartment and I turned my back on her and left her in the armchair.

Renzo walked in and gave me one of his slaps on the back. “Look who’s here,” he said. “What do you think of the tree?”

“He’s a barbarian, as usual,” Viola said with a laugh. “He hasn’t given it a second glance.”

They made me nauseous. I was thinking about what Viola had said as she walked me to the door the evening I’d run away from the TV center. Phone Arianna, you know how she dramatizes—that’s what she’d said. After everything that had happened, after seeing her in that state, that’s what she’d said. But that’s the way they were. They took everything in stride. They were frivolous and sure of themselves. They crushed people with a one-liner and then walked on by, toward the first armchair at hand. Well, this was another place to cross off my list. I had to make an effort to talk to them over dinner. Then I had to make another effort to play chess with Renzo. I was thinking about Milan. I felt a kind of yearning for the serious, slightly dull life of my gloomy city. I was tired of one-liners and social gatherings where you killed people coldly, without drawing blood, as if they were clothes you could discard.

When I left, an icy wind, the kind that cuts your hands, was wiping the city clean, and above it was a sky that could break your heart. I raised the collar of my coat and got in the old Alfa Romeo. Sheltered from the wind, I counted what money I had. It was enough. There was a train at one, and I just had time to catch it. I traveled all night.