SERGIO MOZZICARELLI WAS LOOKING AT THE SAGGING METAL mesh of the bunk bed above him, bulging under the weight of Aldo, one of his cell mates. He lay there with both hands crossed on his chest. It looked as if he were praying. Instead, he was thinking. The night was silent. People were snoring. People were coughing. A mass of men, alone and forgotten, were trying to get to sleep, just as he was. Sergio rolled over, facing the empty bed, the bed that for a few days had belonged to Mimmo Cuntrera. They had taken away his sheets, and the thin mattress was folded over on itself, baring the metal mesh beneath. The two other men in the cell seemed to be deep in sleep. The moonlight bathed the walls and reflected off the green-painted window grates. The water in the drain of the little squat toilet was gurgling. He drew a deep breath. He tried to shut his eyes, to abandon his thoughts and pretend that the sound of the drain in the squat toilet was actually a high mountain stream, full of fresh flowing water, good to drink. But he couldn’t do it: that sound remained a plumbing problem and he was still in a prison cell, not out in the meadows of some alpine valley. His eyes slid open as if there were a well-oiled spring behind them. He glanced at the bunk bed next to his. Karim seemed to be sleeping. Then he rolled over in his direction. Sergio saw the young man’s eyes glittering in the dark. The Tunisian was awake. Their eyes met.

“You’re not asleep?” Sergio whispered to keep from waking up Aldo, who was right above him, snoring and weighing down the springs with his two hundred pounds of flesh.

“No . . .” Karim replied, “and neither are you . . .”

Sergio turned over on his side. “How do you feel?”

“My mouth hurts a little . . . but that will pass.” And the young man brushed his fingers over his jaw where he’d taken the hardest hit. “Those assholes. I’ll make them pay for it.”

“Never mind. If there’s one reason I’ve lived to be sixty-eight, it’s because I’ve often let things slide.”

The North African nodded. Then he rolled over, turning the back of his head to his cell mate. A sign that he had no desire to speak. Sergio, on the other hand, would gladly have continued. He couldn’t bring himself to be alone with his thoughts. And these weren’t thoughts of yearning or dismay. There was no one outside of that prison waiting for him. His wife had remarried; his two children had jobs in other countries. His brother was serving a life sentence in Lecce prison, and the only way he was getting out was feetfirst. Sergio was alone in the world, and the burden of his solitude had never weighed on him the way it did that night.