We’re silent. Dusk. That special time when the sky is almost dark, with only a hint of light in the west, and the streetlights haven’t yet turned on. Low, dark evening clouds, low houses, empty wide streets on the outskirts of Catania.

She hardly looks at me. The car drives along the highway, columns, street signs streaking by.

If this city, these memories of you, this new love couldn’t rid me of the fear of death, then what else should I do? How do I fight it? Or am I mistaken, and there’s no need to fight? A fly struggling against the spiderweb just becomes more entangled.

Look at me. I’ve gone soft. I’m clinging to life again. The professor used to say that dreams are more important than reality. Maybe he was right. Maybe what I’m struggling with—the involuntary attacks of sleep, the nightmares, sleepwalking, pain—maybe it’s all a gift, not a curse.

The taxi stops at the terminal, I settle up, help her out of the car, and we head to the entrance.

“I don’t like goodbyes,” she replies, as if finishing a thought she’d been thinking to herself. And she stops before the doors to the terminal. “Go in there by yourself.”

“Flowers get picked while they’re still in bloom.”

She slaps the back of my head.

“There you go getting clever again, stupido.”

“Wait here, I’ll go get us some coffee.”

“Great. Go. Da portare.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Da portare via—it means ‘to go’ in Italian. Take the backpack.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in Sicily. People steal here. If someone snatches it, I’m not running after them.”

I take the backpack and enter. The airport is noisy and busy. I double check the schedule: my flight is in two hours. I buy two cups of coffee, a Sicilian cannolo. Heading back onto the street, I look around—she’s nowhere to be found. I look at the clock, pressing the cup against my cheek to try and burn myself. I screw up my eyes tightly and open them again. But I can’t wake up. She left. One hour fifty-nine minutes. The evil genius’s assistant enters.

“Da portare,” I tell him. “I like this medication. Give me some to go.”

Silently, he takes my pulse and leaves. In his place come the poisonous blue and red, translucent black and vacant white, a mixture of tones from “re” to “do” in all octaves: from violet—sadness, to red—passion, a rainbow, a halo for the planet. Then the floor plans of various labyrinths, bomb shelters. Cold in the extremities. The inflamed cornea searching for dark spots. The unbearable burden of life. The inability to express your feelings. Silence. Pain, like a wave crashing between two rocks, passes through the very centre of my skull and splashes up to my eye sockets and forehead before it abandons my body. I feel like I’m sitting on a throne of fragile, white, wind-weathered bones. The wind has made flutes of them. Its song penetrates my blood. Pain groans gently throughout the entire structure, playing me like a musical instrument.