Toward dawn, the air turned cooler and the trees in the valley filled with birdsong. Arianna woke up and we lay there listening while the room grew lighter. Then she stood up and got dressed. “Stay where you are,” she said, giving me one of those light kisses on the lips. But I went to the window that looked out on the courtyard so that I could keep watching her. She was walking to the gate, stooped against the dawn light. She fiddled with the lock, then got in her car and drove off. I went back to the room overlooking the valley. The sight of the ruffled bedsheets gave me a pang in my stomach, so I tossed everything up in the air and carefully remade the bed. But the sheets still held her perfume. I went to brew myself some tea.

As I waited for the water to boil, I switched on the radio. It was broadcasting old songs and world news. All things considered, it was in good health.

5

I was awakened by the silence. The apartment was full of light, but even though it was almost noon not a sound came through the open windows. Something else must have happened during the night, something that was yet to play itself out. I got out of bed and went out on the balcony. The valley was silent beneath the weight of a still, clear sky and the air was motionless as if waiting for a sign. It took me a while to realize it was the heat.

All at once, I knew what to do. It’s strange how a change of season makes us want to be in a different place than where we are. Maybe it’s because the air feels different, suggesting other climates, or maybe it’s because we realize time is passing and we’re standing still. The fact remains that every time the weather changed I felt like getting the hell out. Most of the time I did nothing. That morning I decided to act. I filled a small suitcase with some shirts and a few books and as I sat down for breakfast started thinking about the places I could go with the money I had. There weren’t many places and there wasn’t much money, which meant there were even fewer places.

I thought about the north. Not Milan—it wasn’t a homecoming that I needed. For some reason, I thought about Lake Stresa, which at that time of year must have been full of azaleas and old people dressed in white drinking orange juice and reading the papers in the shade of the big trees, with Europe peering out from behind the mountains.

“Yes, it’s not bad,” Graziano Castelvecchio said when he phoned me early in the afternoon. “Whatever you do, don’t go to Crete. There’s nothing there but stones.” He’d come back the previous day, or the day before that, he couldn’t remember, but what he could remember was that he’d been looking for me. “Anyway, never make decisions in haste. I’ll wait for you here,” he said, “it’s a real beauty.”