“Poor kid,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “Is that why you want to get the hell out?” I didn’t feel like replying and we sat down on the parapet and looked at the river, which was dirty, placid, and indifferent. “‘I don’t know a lot about gods,’” Graziano said in a dignified tone, “‘but the river is…’”

“‘I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river / Is a strong brown god…,’” I said. “That’s Eliot, man, you can’t just quote him like that.”

“What are you doing, think you can catch me out? Listen: ‘… sullen, untamed and intractable, / Patient to some degree,’” he said, raising a finger. “But, then, what’s that bit about the sea and the river?”

“‘The river is within us, the sea is all about us.’”

“Congratulations, man! What are you reading?” When I said The Iliad, he raised his eyes to heaven. “Oh, Christ! Listen to this. I’m away suffering the pains of hell, and what’s he doing? Reading The Iliad.”

“I did that so that when you got back, we’d have something to talk about,” I said. “Weren’t you in the Homeric seas?”

“Big deal,” he said. “Just stones.”

“What about the sea? How was the sea?”

“The sea?” He thought this over for a moment. “The sea was all about us.”

We walked along that side of the river, in the heavy shade of the plane trees. Every now and again, we stopped to look at the view of the two banks, which changed depending on the bends in the river, but each time there were domes and bridges and old buildings drenched in light as if to conserve it for when dusk came, until Castel Sant’Angelo came into view, darker and more compact than the rest, with the corroded angel at the top.

“We have to do something,” Graziano said. “What are you planning to do?”

“I told you.”

“There’s no point, man. You have to make a decision. You can’t just go on like this.”

“What are you doing?” I said. “Are you starting now?”

“Sure,” he said, “I’m doing it for the salvation of your soul. You can’t go on like this,” he said again, pointing to the angel. “What will you say to the thirtieth-birthday angel when he appears before you with his flaming sword and asks you for the last time what you intend to do with your life?”

I told him I would set my guardian angel on him. “It’s his business,” I said, “and he’s really angry.”