Everybody burst into laughter again. Someone, perhaps to point out that the professor and I were on the same level of stupidity, guffawed ambiguously. I turned to grasp that uncertain yet unique solidarity with my position, but the first classmate I encountered, to avoid compromising himself, called me ‘Bagpiper’ and imitated playing the bagpipes characteristic of rural areas. Another said, ‘Did you ever see sheep dung?’ and in a chorus the others chanted, ‘Baa, baa!’

I began – this was my error – to respond to each of them as they opened their mouths. I was one of the smallest and most ingenuous students in the class, and very soon the whole gang preyed upon me. Although they belonged to distinguished families, the class included the son of a nouveau riche shopkeeper, as I gathered from the mammas and daddies who would come to the school every month: they spoke their minds to me. Finally, with tears in my eyes, taking advantage of a moment of silence, I shouted, ‘Professor, G. is not in the Maremma.’

‘It is in the Maremma.’

‘No, it is not in the Maremma.’

‘It is in the Maremma,’ said the professor resolutely. ‘I have friends all across your region and often I go to hunt larks with them. I know the town well. It is in the Maremma.’

‘We natives of G. also go to hunt larks in the Maremma. But the Maremma is at least eighty kilometres from my town. We see it as a very different place. Besides, G. is a city,’ I said.

‘But I’ve seen herdsmen precisely at the market in G.,’ he responded.

‘That’s impossible. I’ve always lived there and I’ve never seen any herdsmen.’

‘Don’t insist. You wouldn’t be trying to suggest that I’m an idiot, would you?’

‘I’m not trying to do anything,’ I said. ‘But G. is not in the Maremma. Travelling peddlers come to the market dressed as redskins. Because of this you could assert that G. is in America.’

‘You’re also witty,’ he said. ‘But before calling you stupid and throwing you out of the class, I shall demonstrate to your classmates that G. is located in the Maremma.’ He sent a boy to fetch the map of the region from the science classroom, so that there too they knew about my dispute and were amusing themselves at my expense. On the map, despite the fact that I didn’t allow a single one of his assertions to go unchallenged, the professor abolished the actual boundaries of the province, created new imaginary ones, and managed to convince my classmates, relying on the scale of 1:1,000,000, along with various other fabrications, that G. is really in the Maremma.

‘It isn’t true that G. is in the Maremma,’ I finally struck back, ‘since we take ‘Maremmano’ to be synonymous with an uncouth, ignorant man.’

‘In you, then,’ he concluded, ‘we have the proof that the people of G. are authentic Maremmani. I have known few boys as uncouth and ignorant as you. You’re still wearing those shaggy knee socks.’ At that point, he looked me up and down. The others did the same. I felt I wasn’t as elegant as my classmates. I fell silent, humiliated. From that day onward I was the ‘Maremmano’. But what irritated me most, in the end, was the geographical ignorance of the professor and my classmates.