‘Brandy,’ says the bartender behind him. He does not turn around and hears the sound of the saucer being set down on the open-air table.

The girl says to him, ‘You’ve already figured it all out, haven’t you?’

He says to her, ‘I think you’d already realized yourself that I’d made a mistake, that I took you for someone else. What’s sad is that he didn’t realize it.’

She twists her hands and looks down and away. He says to her, ‘Excuse me, but how did he get the idea that someone wants to take you away from him?’

‘Because there is someone.’

‘Someone … healthy?’

‘Yes, someone healthy. We’re right, aren’t we? He wants me to be like before, but he’s the one who’s no longer like before. And besides, my family no longer approves.’

‘How is he now? Did you take him home?’

Yes, but he’s in very bad shape, he’s having an attack, Attilio’s mother has sent her to get the doctor in a hurry, but Carlo can see she’s not the type to run through streets where the evening promenade is in full swing.

She asks him, ‘Where does Dr Manzone live? Isn’t he in Via Cavour?’

‘Yes, at the beginning of Via Cavour.’

The girl takes a step back; she has already thanked him and is about to turn when a horrible curiosity comes over him, and he puts out a hand to stop her. He would like to say: Excuse me, you are, you’ve often been, close to him – have you smelled that smell on him …? But then his hand drops and he only says goodnight, and she goes slowly away.

He drank his brandy and went home. At home he stripped naked and washed himself under the tap, so long and energetically that his mother woke up and from her room cried not to use so much soap, which cost a lot of money.

That night he dreamt of his struggle with Attilio, and in the morning at the employment office he heard that he’d been admitted to the infectious ward of the hospital.

‘Germany,’ said another jobless man like Carlo.

‘Who are you talking about?’ said someone who had just arrived. ‘Who’s this Attilio? Someone you know?’ he asked Carlo.

‘Me? I smelled the smell of death on him,’ Carlo replied, and the other drew back his head to look him in the face, but then he had to turn around to answer ‘Here!’ to the clerk who had begun the roll call.

He dreamt again of his struggle with Attilio three weeks later, and in the morning, on his way as always to the employment office, he stopped at a wall along the street to strike a kitchen match, since he didn’t have enough money to buy the little wax ones, and saw Attilio’s name in big black letters on a funeral poster.

‘L’odore della morte’

Part of the collection I ventitré giorni della città di Alba in the Gettoni series (Einaudi, 1952).