After an hour and a quarter, Laurenzi still hadn’t shown up, and the more time passed, the more obvious it became that he wouldn’t show up. But he’d told me to wait, so I waited.

In the meantime, I observed the crowd at the bar. Most of them were executives with pipes. It set an impressive tone, having a pipe, and they chattered away, banging their pipes in the ashtrays or else sucking on them with their thumbs over the chamber or else rummaging inside them with a match, morbidly so. It was a scene of intense activity, tobacco pouches, fingers grabbing, pressing, twisting. They gave off a good smell as I looked at their blue jackets, their shiny shoes, their moderately weird ties, and their pipes.

I turned to the window and looked out at the city. The sun was beating down on Monte Mario, where my apartment was, with its balcony looking out over the valley. It must have been hot out there, at the insurmountable distance of a few inches of greenish glass.

I decided that a second pick-me-up was more than justified and I was on my way to the bar when I saw the director I’d met with Renzo at Signor Sandro’s. He was wearing the same military greatcoat and possibly the same hangover. Without even wondering if he would recognize me, I went up to him. He looked at me through half-closed eyes, making an effort. Then he said, “Do you still answer for your own life?” He’d remembered my line, with the pitiless memory that alcoholics have for trifles.

“No,” I said, “not today.”

“Right,” he said, looking around. “It gets harder every day. What are you drinking?” Then he saw the two glasses. “Christ,” he said, “you know all about it.” He was drinking straight Pernod. At eleven in the morning. Holding our glasses, we made our way through the people to the window, with him constantly having to greet this person or that and be patted on the back by people who called him by his first name, Corrado. “What are you doing in this place?” he said, climbing onto a stool. He touched the glass as if testing its solidity. I said I was working there too. “I punched it once,” he said, lost in thought, “and broke two knuckles. And what work do you do?” I told him. “Two knuckles, I kid you not. Why don’t you come with me to the studios? You’ll come back filled with news and glory and get a prize for fieldwork, simple as that.”