‘We certainly did, it’s the most beautiful spot in Sicily, yet to be discovered, thankfully, by the Dopolavoro crowds.³ The coast is wild there, right, Senator? It’s completely deserted, and you can’t see a single house; the sea is the colour of peacocks; and behind it all, beyond the shifting waves, rises Mount Etna. From no other spot is it so beautiful – calm, powerful, truly divine. It’s a place where you can see the island in one of its eternal aspects, as it was before it so foolishly turned its back on its vocation, which was to serve as pasture for the Cattle of the Sun.’

The senator was silent. Then: ‘You’re a good kid, Corbera; if you weren’t so ignorant, something might have been made of you.’ He came toward me and kissed my forehead. ‘Now bring round your jalopy. I want to go home.’

In the weeks that followed we continued to see each other regularly. Now we also took late-night walks, generally down Via Po and across the martial expanse of Piazza Vittorio; we went to gaze at the rushing river and the Turin hills, elements that introduced a drop of fantasy into the geometrical rigour of the city. Then began the spring, that affecting season of threatened youth; the first lilacs sprouted on the banks, and the most impetuous of the young couples without a place to retreat to braved the dampness of the grass. ‘Down there the sun already blazes, the algae blooms, the fish appear at the surface of the water on moonlit nights and flashes of bodies can be made out between the lines of luminous foam. We stand here before this insipid, lifeless current of water, before these big ugly buildings that look like soldiers or monks all in a line, and we hear the sobs of these dying creatures coupling.’ It cheered him, however, to think about the impending voyage to Lisbon, not far off now. ‘It will be pleasant. You ought to come along as well. A shame that it’s not open to those deficient in Greek; with me at least you can speak Italian, but if Zuckmayer or Van der Voos found out you didn’t know the optative of every irregular verb, you’d be done for. This even though you may be more in touch with Greek reality than they are; not through cultivation, clearly, but through animal instinct.’

Two days prior to his departure for Genoa he told me that he would not be returning to the café the following day, but that he would expect me at his house at nine that evening.

The protocol was identical to the last time: The images of the gods of three thousand years ago radiated youth as a stove radiates heat; the faded photograph of the young god of fifty years ago seemed dismayed at watching his own metamorphosis into a white-haired old man sunk in an armchair.

When the Cypriot wine had been drunk the senator called Bettina and told her she could go to bed. ‘I will see Signor Corbera out myself when he goes.’ Then: ‘Believe me, Corbera, if I’ve asked you here this evening at the risk of upsetting any Rivoli fornication plans you might have had, it’s because I need you. I leave tomorrow, and when you go away at my age you never know if it won’t be necessary to stay away forever, especially when you go by sea. Please know that I genuinely care for you: Your ingenuousness touches me, your unconcealed carnal intrigues amuse me, and it seems to me that, as is sometimes the case with the best kind of Sicilians, you have managed to achieve a synthesis of the senses and reason. Therefore you deserve not to be left empty-handed, without hearing me explain the reason behind some of my eccentricities, of some sentences I’ve spoken in your presence that will certainly have appeared to you worthy of a madman.’