“You have to know something about the author,” I said. But in any case, I went on, evidence suggested that since the advent of television, reading had become such an outmoded activity as to endure only among people with a certain level of intelligence. “Readers are a dying species,” I said. “Like whales, partridges, wild animals in general. Borges calls them black swans, and maintains that good readers are now scarcer than good writers. He says reading is an activity subsequent to writing, more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. No,” I went on, “that’s not where the danger lies. Books make different impressions according to the state of mind you read them in. A book that struck you as banal on a first reading may dazzle you on a second simply because in the meantime you suffered some kind of heartbreak, or you took a journey, or you fell in love. In other words, something happened to you.”

So now she knew what kind of pretentious snob she was dealing with. She’d listened to me in silence, keeping her gaze fixed on the damp gravel of the garden. She looked up. “You’re funny, you know,” she said. “You looked so tragic when you showed up at Viola’s.”

“It was just hunger.”

“Hunger?”

“Yes, ever hear of it?”

“Of course,” she said, laughing, as we walked back to the car. “Isn’t it that Indian thing you get when you have an aperitif?” Reaching the car, she sat down on the trunk and looked around. “It’d be fun to live here,” she said, “but I don’t feel like marrying the mayor.”

“Where do you live?”

“Via dei Glicini,” she said, her face lighting up. “Know where that is?”

“Over toward Viale dei Platani.”

“Yes, and there’s a street nearby called Via dei Lillà, which I like a lot, and there’s also a Via delle Orchidee,” she said, uttering the names of these flowers—wisteria, lilac, orchid—as if the streets were paved with them. “Drive me home,” she said, letting me take the wheel.

“Please don’t joke,” I said, because if there was a place where someone like her couldn’t possibly be living, that was the place. Instead of answering, she propped her boots on the dashboard.