“You stay here,” Viola said to Renzo, who was about to get up from his armchair. “He can see Arianna home. I’ve been trying to throw them into each other’s arms all evening, and now you want to ruin everything?”

Without saying a word, the girl started collecting her cards, then walked out to the entryway, and Viola took the opportunity to throw me a knowing glance. A moment later, the girl reappeared, wearing a red plastic raincoat that made a loud rustling noise. She put the pack of cards in her pocket. “I’m ready,” she said as if a firing squad awaited her outside. At the door, there were the usual promises of telephone calls and even an official invitation to dinner. In the old days, I would merely have had to turn up at the right time without even calling ahead.

“You’ll have to go down on foot,” Viola said. “Arianna hates elevators.”

The girl didn’t say a thing. We descended the stairs in silence, making sure we waited for each other at each landing.

Outside, the air was shaken by faint gusts of wind. Winter and spring were exchanging their last blows. The seasons change at night, unbeknown to the people, and we were witnessing a spectacle whose grandeur was only equaled by the silence with which it crept up on us. It was one of those nights when you feel that anything might happen. Next to me, the girl, remote, her hands clasped over her raincoat, her eyes half closed, was greedily breathing in the scent of the plane trees with the satisfaction of someone finding herself in her own garden together with a chance guest. To regain a little composure, I looked up at the sky.

It was black and very high, interspersed with big, racing clouds.

3

By the time we got in the car, the street-corner clocks said it was three in the morning. The city was drying out in the night wind, but there were still puddles as big as lakes, and the little English car swished past them. The girl drove in silence, proud of her profile, and I was already thinking that I would soon exit her life—as I would the life of any bus driver, with the door slamming behind me and the driver watching me in the rearview mirror—when she shook out her hair, and said, “What was your name again?”

“Leo Gazzara,” I said. “It still is.”