We relaxed into a bourgeois feeling of well-being. Since Lello’s return we had realized that, in the midst of the general ruin, we were a truly lucky family. We were all alive, our houses intact, not even a crack, not even a broken window. At that moment, for the first time, I no longer felt that sense of oppression inside, and my husband didn’t either, I could tell, since he was so lively in his speech, he who was always so serious and taciturn. This meant that our spirits were intact, too. We were young and we could start over.

Captain Smith arrived a little late. He was a tall man with grey hair who laughed and gestured abundantly, and his cordiality smoothed over the first moments of embarrassment that always accompany encounters between people who have nothing, not even a language, in common. I accompanied him to the balcony and showed him the panorama, which is vast and serene, surrounded by undulating mountains whose names he wanted to know, one by one, with a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon meticulousness. I don’t know all of them. I’ve been living here for many years and I never thought to ask what they were. For me it’s enough to contemplate the landscape and see it change colour with the time of day. To avoid admitting my ignorance, however, I made up a few names that he wrote down in a little notebook. This gave me a childish joy. I laughed. Maliciously, among the trees below, the fireflies lit up and faded.

When we sat down to the table, I felt a little exhilarated, like a girl at her first ball. I was happy to live in this house, in this season, in this country. Beyond the window you could see the tops of the cypress trees and a dim blue light lingering in the sky. The table was lovely, decorated with short-stemmed flowers interspersed with antique Capodimonte figurines of dancing cupids. The food had been carefully prepared. We hadn’t eaten this well in ages, but we wanted to celebrate the great occasion of Lello’s return. We spoke about the usual things one speaks about in such circumstances. Our English, first, and then our stays in London, and finally our guest’s family, who we declared we couldn’t wait to meet. The moment also arrived, without fail, when he showed us, with obvious pride, the photographs of his children. They were passed around the table, each of us demanding them from the other. Lello, who was the last to get them, really had to struggle to find, in English, a new expression of admiration, after the ones my husband and I had used. Especially since the children were so ugly.