“A job in television, that’s what they’re promising you, certainly not the revolution. Well, all I did was get in ahead of the rest.” He waited for a sign of approval from me. I gave it to him. “When you feel like a job in television,” he went on, “all you have to do is ask for it. You have no idea what a bunch of idiots everyone there is. As long as you’re not an idiot, they’ll think you’re a genius.”

“But of course!” a woman huddled deep in an armchair said with embarrassing swiftness. She had been listening to the same record since I came in. “This friend of yours,” she said, looking at me, “doesn’t look much like a pirate. If anything, he could be one of those stowaways in Conrad. You know, one of those men who’ve committed some terrible sin and expiate it by wandering from port to port? God, how I love him!”

“Who, him?” Renzo said, pointing at me.

“Conrad,” the woman said. The record had come to a close, and she put the needle back at the beginning. I wondered which of the two would win in the end. She again gave it her full attention. There was no trace of sorrow in her, or of passion. Her whole demeanor exuded independence, an independence so absolute as to make you think she hadn’t come into the world like everybody else, in pain and blood, but had simply emerged, like a butterfly.

“Eva, you’ll get appendicitis if you just sit there all the time,” Viola said, joining us before my silence could grow too heavy. Renzo took the opportunity to lead me away, and once again he did so by taking my arm, as if the room was as big as a public square. It was, in fact, big, but not quite as big as his gesture seemed to suggest. After a few steps, we almost bumped into the companion of the girl. He was wandering through the living room with the air of having just hit a piece of furniture in a spontaneous attempt to take flight. She was alone now, on the white velvet couch. With her fingers twined in her long black hair, she was nervously laying out a deck of cards for a game of solitaire as if some redemptive response might come from it. Renzo pulled the bar cart over to her. He’d noticed the direction of my glances and with his usual discretion was taking care of things. “What are you drinking, Arianna?”