‘Sweets, Corbera, ought to be sweet and nothing but. If they have another flavour they are like perverted kisses.’ He gave large crumbs to Aeacus, a stocky boxer that had entered the room at some point. ‘This creature, Corbera, for those capable of appreciating him, more closely resembles the Immortals, despite his ugliness, than your little temptresses.’ He refused to show me his library. ‘It’s all classics, stuff that wouldn’t interest someone like you, a moral failure in Greek.’ But he did lead me around the room we were in, which was his study. There were few books, among which I noted the theatre of Tirso de Molina, Fouqué’s Undine, Giraudoux’s play of the same name, and, to my surprise, the works of H.G. Wells; but in compensation, on the walls, were enormous life-size photographs of archaic Greek statues, and not the typical photographs that any of us could procure for ourselves but stupendous reproductions, clearly requested with authority and sent with devotion by museums around the world. They were all there, the magnificent creatures: the Louvre’s Horseman, the Seated Goddess from Taranto that is in Berlin, the Warrior from Delphi, one of the Korai of the Acropolis, the Apollo of Piombino, the Lapith Woman and the Phoebus from Olympia, the famous Charioteer … The room shone with their ecstatic and at the same time ironic smiles, gloried in the calm arrogance of their bearing. ‘You see, Corbera, perhaps these, if one is so fortunate; the local “maidens,” no.’ Above the fireplace, ancient amphorae and craters: Odysseus tied to the mast of his boat, the Sirens casting themselves down onto the rocks in expiation for having let their prey escape. ‘Lies, Corbera, the lies of petit bourgeois poets. No one escapes, and even if someone did, the Sirens would never destroy themselves for so little. In any case, how could they die?’

On an end table stood a faded old photograph, simply framed, of a young man around twenty, almost nude, his curly hair disheveled, with a bold expression and features of rare beauty. Perplexed, I stopped myself for a moment. I thought I understood. Not at all. ‘And this, countryman, this was and is, and will be,’ he stressed, ‘Rosario La Ciura.’

The broken-down senator in a dressing gown had been a young god.

Our conversation then turned to other matters. Before I left he showed me a letter in French from the rector of the University of Coimbra inviting him to be a guest of honour at a Greek studies conference in Portugal in May. ‘I’m very pleased. I’ll go aboard the Rex in Genoa along with the French, Swiss and German participants. Like Odysseus I’ll plug my ears in order not to hear the drivel of those moral cripples, and there’ll be beautiful days of sailing: the sun, the blue sky, the smell of the sea.’

On my way out we again passed the shelf containing the works of Wells, and I ventured to show my surprise at seeing them there. ‘You’re right, Corbera, they’re ghastly. There’s one novella there that, were I to reread it, would make me spit nonstop for a month; and even you, salon lapdog that you are, you would be appalled.’