Each time, I try to pretend it’s nothing: I go to bed and tell myself it’s only the power of suggestion, that in twenty minutes I’ll be asleep, as happened in similar situations when I was twenty-five years younger.

It never happens.

After an hour spent tossing and turning in the dark between the blankets, sheets and pillows, forcing myself to “think of nothing, concentrate on your breathing” as I’d learned from an indispensable manual on the cure for insomnia, I finally decide to switch the light back on. If the 151next day I have any commitment that requires a modicum of clear-headedness and is therefore incompatible with a sleepless night, I knock back about fifteen drops and soon afterwards sink into an artificial sleep. Otherwise, I start reading, watch television and, if the electric shock is more intense than usual, and the anxiety less bearable, I go to the Osteria del Caffellatte.

That’s what happened this time. I got dressed, grabbed an umbrella – it had been raining intermittently, wearyingly, for a couple of days – and set off through the shiny, spectral 2 a.m. streets.

There was only one customer in the bookshop: a sturdy, vigorous-looking old gentleman with a very short white beard and a red face typical of someone who spends a lot of time in the open air. He looked like a friendly old boatswain straight out of a children’s book illustration. He was sitting in a small armchair, leafing through a volume, with other books on a little table next to him. Our eyes met and, although we had never seen each other before, we exchanged a smile and a nod.

As usual, Ottavio was behind the counter, also reading, and as usual, there was a very slight, almost imperceptible smell of caramel in the air.

“Hi, Guido, haven’t seen you lately at this hour.”

“I’ve been sleeping well for a while now. It couldn’t possibly last.”

“What’ll you have?”

“I’ll have a rum,” I said, sitting down on one of the stools, “that very good rum from the Philippines whose name I can never remember.”

Ottavio poured me the very good rum whose name I could never remember. “Any particular reason you can’t sleep tonight?”152

“I’m sure there are reasons, but I long ago stopped trying to identify them. I suspect I might not like what I found.”

Ottavio nodded his approval, like someone familiar with the subject.

“When you were still teaching and didn’t have the shop, did you stay awake every night?” I asked him.

“Every night. I’d start to feel sleepy at about five in the morning.”

“But did you stay in bed or did you get up?”