I began to recognize the streets of my neighborhood. There were many new stores since I’d lived there and it was pretty much from the names only that I recognized the streets. That morning I noticed the changes with greater clarity than before, and yet some things reemerged from the past—an osteria with a green sign of a ballerina in a white tutu, the stores run by the Chinese, the tobacconist’s where the hookers went to have a chat and brush their hair—all things that were still standing, huddled between new stores with plate glass windows.

Then all of a sudden I didn’t recognize anything anymore. Where was that ugly Baroque church? For a moment I thought the streetcar had changed route and instinctively I checked the names of the streets. They were the right ones, but the church wasn’t there, and not only the church, as I could see when I got off the streetcar, but even the hill facing our apartment building. It had been a wooded hill, with granite steps and long slopes down which as a boy I’d slid during long, icy winters, once breaking my arm. It wasn’t there anymore. It had been flattened and in its place was a low, covered market. But that wasn’t what astonished me most. It was the fact that it had all happened so quickly, in not much more than a year.

I got off the streetcar and started wandering around the market. It was overflowing with merchandise, especially fruit and fir trees heaped up in the corners, spreading an absurd forest smell. I bought a bunch of grapes and started eating them. They were so cold they set my teeth on edge. As I ate, I looked at my home. It was the same as ever, but it still didn’t arouse any emotion in me. It was the street that ruined everything. It had been a clean street once, but now it made me sick to my stomach. I finished the grapes, including the stalk, and made to cross over to the building but stopped.