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.”

The beauty was Piazza Navona, and when I got there I had the usual stupid idea that the sky was more beautiful there than over the rest of the city. I spotted Graziano immediately. He had on one of his legendary white shirts and was sitting in a small armchair at Domiziano’s, his pale face turned to the sun, his eyes shielded by a pair of dark glasses. He’d let his beard grow and both his hands were occupied, one holding a glass of beer and the other a glass of scotch.

“Don’t drink like that,” I said, coming up behind him. “Don’t you know alcohol kills slowly?”