“We could take a look around the whole okupa,” said Tamara. They had crossed the threshold into a kind of large foyer surrounded by rooms without doors; the size made her doubt if it had ever been the home of her friend’s paternal grandparents. The brief scene filed away in her memory had been played out in a small, airless room. Had the house perhaps been inhabited by a number of tenants? Did poor families live, piled one on top of the other, in the former summer villas of the well-to-do? She knew nothing about the neighborhood. Why had she spent more time imagining what it was like than reading up on its history?

They were sitting on tiny stools on a patio with planters in which a few vegetables grew among the withered weeds. On the upper floor, they could see more people on a terrace with paper lanterns, candles, and although they had the impression that it wasn’t open to customers—for the simple reason that no one had shown them how to reach it—they thought that it would be a good place to begin their exploration. Without asking permission, they walked through the dark rooms until they found the stairs.

She was certain then that it really was the house where her friend’s grandparents had lived, and that it was the second time she’d been in this place whose essence had been razed to the ground but was still alive. The grandfather with his yarmulke and the iaia were standing on a step somewhere or sitting in the bright eastern light of one of the bedrooms, the lace curtains fluttering in the breeze.

The staircase was steep and there were chips in the terrazzo. A strip of light filtering under the doorway at the top might be coming from a room it would be better not to enter: probably the same one she had preserved in her memory. She didn’t ask herself why she put such value on that vague, uninteresting memory; eating a meal with her friend’s family, mild astonishment at a pair of fat legs.