Sitting on the Ping-Pong table, the two twins, who were also still up, watched us in silence, chewing gum. Graziano noticed them and started saying, “What are you two still doing up?” but saying it in every possible tone—soft, paternal, worried, irritated, imperious. He was like an actor trying out a difficult line. Then all at once he took his belt off. For a moment I thought he was going to use it on the two bovine figures on the table. Instead, he buckled it around his head and slumped facedown on the armchair. It was his treatment for hair loss.

“Look at him!” Sandie said furiously. “What does he need his hair for?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “To comb it?”

Graziano chuckled, and even I couldn’t refrain from a little smile. Given the hour, it wasn’t a bad joke. Sandie, though, didn’t appreciate it and started yelling. “Faggots!” she said. “Faggots!”

At this point I decided I would get the hell out of there. I bowed, then stopped at the door and asked Graziano if he wanted to come with me. He still had his head down. “No, Leo,” he said, “I only just got back, and Sandie would be offended.” So I left him there looking at life from the most bearable position.

But I was at the end of my tether, truth be told, and when I found myself on the street, heading for Ponte Sisto, I started to kick the garbage cans, overturning them on the cobblestones. The river was black and in the distance the beacon on the Gianicolo pierced the sky at regular intervals. On Campo de’ Fiori they were already setting up the market stalls for the next day and I took two apples from a pile of crates and ate them as I walked toward Piazza Navona. The fountain glistened motionlessly on its blue base in the middle of the deserted square. The square was magnificent at that hour, as if aware of its own splendor and its own pointless survival. I settled down under the arches and sat there looking at it, waiting to feel the desire to go home. But the desire didn’t come and so it occurred to me to go to the sea. The deserted streets urged me to start up my old Alfa Romeo. I got there in less than half an hour.