December 7 – Ercole Patti tells me that the Martian, invited to the Ciampino airport to welcome a movie star, was asked by the photographers to get out of the way. It seems, in fact, that his presence in a photograph may prevent their sale to magazines. ‘Hey, Mr Mars, will you move your ass?’ they said to him, laughing, but resolutely. And the Martian, sweet, smiling, without fully understanding what was being said to him, was shaking his head and his hands, waving hello.

December 18 – Vittorio Ivella and I, the other night, were speaking about Italy, when Ivella shared his hypothesis with me. I don’t know why it really amused me. He said: ‘But for what reasons would he have landed here of all places? I say he didn’t come on purpose, he fell here!’ The thought of the Martian forced to make an emergency landing, then behaving like a discoverer of new worlds, was, I repeat, very amusing to me. All night I did nothing but laugh thinking about it. Attilio Ricci claims, instead, that the Martian is a typical case of idolization of the unknown. He predicts that the Martian will end up lynched.

They also say, and I take notice of it as a matter of record, that the Martian has fallen in love with a ballerina, who plays hard to get, and speaks of him in despicable terms.

December 20 – Today for the first time I spoke with the Martian. I was in Fregene, and I recognized him immediately. He was walking along the sunny, but windy beach. He was watching the sea and stopping to pick up sea shells: some he put in his pocket. Since we were alone on the beach, he walked up to me to ask for a match. I pretended not to recognize him, so as not to offend him with my curiosity, and also because in that moment I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. It was he who told me, pointing a finger at his chest: ‘Me, Martian.’ I feigned surprise. Then the idea popped into my head that I should interview him. I intended to jot down an interview different from the rest, something a bit literary, if you know what I mean, to coax him into broader reflections than usual, which could have been justified by the proximity of the sea, if it’s true what Flaubert says that the sea inspires deep thoughts in the bourgeois. Then laziness stopped me. I should have asked questions, insisted, explained. No – I told myself – let’s content ourselves to watch him up close. His excessive height struck me in a bad way. He’s too tall, so much that he appears defenceless, like certain elderly men from the north who look younger than their real age, but who, in their childish smile, reveal an existence led without great pains and far from sin, or rather, totally uninteresting to my eyes. I invited him to get a drink. At the bar he asked for a whisky and, certainly to thank me, he placed a hand on my shoulder, smiling. For just a moment, a fleeting and slight impression, I was certain that he was unhappy.