Our relations would have remained on this plane of latent hostility if not for a happy accident. Usually I left the office with five or six daily papers, including, on one occasion, the Giornale di Sicilia. Those were the years when the Fascist Ministry of Popular Culture, or MinCulPop, was at its most virulent, and every newspaper was just like all the others; that edition of the Palermo daily was as banal as ever, indistinguishable from a paper published in Milan or Rome, if not by its greater share of typographical errors. My reading of it was accordingly brief, and I soon set it aside on the table. I had already begun to contemplate another product of MinCulPop’s vigilance when my neighbour addressed me: ‘Pardon me, sir, would you mind if I glanced at this Giornale di Sicilia of yours? I’m Sicilian, and it’s been twenty years since I came across a newspaper from my part of the world.’ His voice was as cultivated as any I’d ever heard, the accent impeccable; his grey eyes regarded me with profound indifference.

‘Be my guest. I’m Sicilian myself, you know. If you like, I can easily bring the paper every evening.’

‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary; my curiosity is a purely physical one. If Sicily remains as it was in my time, I imagine nothing good ever happens there. Nothing has for the past three thousand years.’

He glanced through the paper, folded it, and gave it back to me, then plunged into reading a pamphlet. When he stood to go, it was clear that he hoped to slip out unnoticed, but I rose to introduce myself; he quietly muttered his name, which I failed to catch, yet neglected to extend his hand. At the threshold of the café, however, he turned, doffed his hat, and loudly shouted, ‘Farewell, fellow countryman.’ He disappeared down the arcade, leaving me speechless while the shades at their games grumbled disapprovingly.

I performed the magical rites necessary to conjure a waiter; pointing at the empty table, I asked him, ‘Who was that gentleman?’

‘That,’ he replied, ‘is Senator Rosario La Ciura.’

The name said a great deal even to an ignorant journalist. It belonged to one of the five or six Italians with an indisputable international reputation – to the most illustrious Hellenist of our time, in fact. I understood the thick magazines and the caressing of the illustration, the unsociability and hidden refinement, too.