Sometimes my longing for faraway places filled my mind even in bed. If, on a still and windless night, I suddenly caught the wild sound of a train whistle in the distance, I would start up from Cilia’s side with all my dreams reawakened.

One afternoon, when I was passing the station without even stopping, a face I knew suddenly appeared in front of me and gave a cry of greeting. Malagigi: I hadn’t seen him for ten years. We shook hands and stood there exchanging courtesies. He was no longer the ugly, spiteful ink-spotted little devil I knew at school, always playing jokes in the lavatory, but I recognized that grin of his at once. ‘Malagigi! Still alive, then?’

‘Alive, and a qualified accountant.’ His voice had changed. It was a man speaking to me now.

‘Are you off somewhere, too?’ he asked. ‘Guess where I’m going!’ As he spoke he picked up a fine leather suitcase that toned perfectly with his smart new raincoat and the elegance of his tie. Gripping my wrist he went on: ‘Come to the train with me. I’m going to Genoa.’

‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘Then I leave for China!’

‘No!’

‘It’s true. Can’t a man go to China? What have you got against China? Instead of talking like that, wish me luck! Perhaps I may stay out there.’

‘But what’s your job?’

‘I’m going to China. Come and see me off.’

‘No, I really can’t spare the time.’

‘Then come and have coffee with me, to say goodbye. You’re the last man I shall talk to, here.’

We had coffee there in the station, at the counter, while Malagigi, full of excitement, told me in fits and starts all about himself and his prospects. He was not married. He’d fathered a baby, but luckily it died. He had left school after I did, without finishing. He thought of me once, when he had to take an exam a second time. He’d gained his education in the battle of life. Now all the big firms had offered him a job. And he spoke four languages. And they were sending him to China.

I said again that I was in a hurry (though it was not true), and managed to get away from him, feeling crushed and overwhelmed. I reached home still upset by the chance meeting, my thoughts in a turmoil. How could he rise from such a drab boyhood to the audacious height of a future like that? Not that I envied Malagigi, or even liked him; but to see, unexpectedly superimposed on his grey background, which had been mine, too, his present colourful and assured existence, such as I could glimpse only in dreams, was torment to me.

Our room was empty, because now Cilia often went downstairs to work in our neighbour’s room. I stayed there a while, brooding in the soft darkness lit only by the little blue glow of the gas jet under the saucepan bubbling gently on the stove.