Every now and again, someone did get the hell out. When it was the turn of Glauco and Serena, two of the Piazza Navona group, I moved into their apartment on Monte Mario. By now I was at the end of my tether with hotel rooms, and I couldn’t believe I was actually going to have a place I could call my own. When I also bought their worn-out Alfa Romeo for fifty thousand lire, I naturally thought I’d reached a significant turning point in my life. I packed two suitcases with my books and moved in the same day they left. They were going because Serena had managed to get a two-year contract as a set designer in a theater in Mexico City, but above all because their marriage was in trouble and Glauco had stopped painting. Rome had crushed them and they were leaving, taking their unlikely names and an excessive number of suitcases with them. “Lousy city,” Glauco said, looking out from the balcony.

“I like it here.”

“Really? Then why are you always drunk?”

“Not always,” I said. “Often. There’s a big difference.” Then I looked at the valley stretching below. It was vast, cut in half by a multi-arch bridge crossed several times a day by a train as long and silent as a caterpillar. On either side rose the walls of two convents, alive with bells when the sun went down, while, opposite, the closest buildings merged with the greenery on the horizon. The sky was high and wide, and so was the light. It was a gorgeous spot.

“It’s all yours,” Glauco said, indicating the room we were in. No need to make an inventory: there was an old armchair, a bookcase, and a sofa bed. The other two rooms weren’t furnished at any greater expense, pleasant, old furniture from the Porta Portese flea market, for the most part. One room was almost completely filled with canvases, cans of paint, and all the things a painter usually needs. “If you run out of money, don’t sell the paintings,” Glauco said, as if anyone might want to buy them. He went out, saying that he still had to say good-bye to someone in town. He didn’t ask me to go with him, and I guessed that he was going to say good-bye to his girlfriend. Everyone knew he had another woman. A burly, aggressive type, he could never avoid boasting. He even knew there was a very definite fondness between Serena and me, but he left us alone because he wasn’t the kind of man to fear anyone.