“Do you mean that?” she said. The idea excited her, and she immediately said she wouldn’t be the least trouble, we could share the rent because she had an annuity of fifty thousand lire, which was at least something, and she knew how to cook a fabulous chateaubriand. At this point I felt like showing off a little, and I said she shouldn’t make anything because it made me really sad to think of a poet who went down in history because of a steak. So she asked if I minded in the same way when it came to politicians, and we settled on Bismarck.

Then she started planning out our days. We would listen to music, read, and study, because she really had to resume her studies, get that damned degree, and go back to Venice, where she would be part of a team of technicians working to save the city. Except she could never really study properly, she was so disorganized, so disorganized!

“What time is it?” she asked, even though she had a heavy man’s watch on her wrist. “This thing? Oh, it’s a family heirloom.” It wasn’t accurate, and she’d never had it fixed, because, that way, looking at it was always a surprise. It was six o’clock, and the watch said a quarter to eight, though who knew what day?

“I’ll be back,” she said, getting up and going to the toilet. It was locked, and she had to ask the barista for the key. When she came back, she had a look of disgust on her face. “Maybe they keep it locked because they’re afraid someone will go in and clean it,” she said. “What shall we do?”

“We’re going home, aren’t we?” I said, managing to pry myself out of my chair, but Arianna shook her head. After a night spent smoking, the best thing was to run down to the sea and get some oxygen in our lungs, didn’t I agree? I wondered if there was anything in the world capable of destroying her, fragile as she was.

She sat down behind the wheel, and ten minutes later we were zooming along the straight road leading to the coast, between meadows covered with dew and pines silhouetted blackly against the clear sky, which now had some color. Arianna kept talking in a slightly frenzied way, about the days we would spend together, and I shut my eyes to blot out the light and listened to the sound of her voice, thinking about how it would echo in the bare apartment facing the valley. God, there was still something that could be saved in this world!