‘She lay back, resting her head on interlaced fingers, displaying with serene immodesty the delicate little hairs of her armpits, her splayed breasts, her perfect stomach. She exuded what I have clumsily referred to as a perfume, a magical smell of the sea, of decidedly youthful sensuality. We were in the shade but twenty yards from us the seashore reveled in the sun and quivered with pleasure. My near-complete nudity ill concealed my own emotion.

‘She spoke and thus was I overwhelmed, after her smile and smell, by the third and greatest of her charms: her voice. It was a bit guttural, husky, resounding with countless harmonics; behind the words could be discerned the sluggish undertow of summer seas, the whisper of receding beach foam, the wind passing over lunar tides. The song of the Sirens, Corbera, does not exist; the music that cannot be escaped is their voice alone.

‘She spoke Greek and I struggled to understand her. ‘I heard you speaking to yourself in a language similar to my own. I like you: take me. I am Lighea, daughter of Calliope. Don’t believe the stories about us. We don’t kill anyone, we only love.’

‘I bent over her as I rowed, staring into her smiling eyes. When we reached the shore I took her aromatic body into my arms and we passed from the blazing sun into the deep shade; there she poured into my mouth such sensual pleasure that it is to your terrestrial kisses as wine is to insipid water.’

The senator narrated his adventure in a low voice. I who in my heart had always set my own varied experiences with women against those he regarded as mediocre, and had derived from this a foolish sense of reduced distance, was humiliated: in matters of love as well, I saw myself sunk to unfathomable depths. Never for a moment did I suspect he was lying to me, and had anyone else been there, even the most sceptical of witnesses, he too would have perceived the certainty of truth in the old man’s tone.

‘So began those three weeks. I have no right, nor would it be merciful to you, to go into details. Suffice to say that in those embraces I enjoyed the highest form of spiritual pleasure along with the greatest physical gratification, devoid of any social resonance, the same that our solitary mountain shepherds experience when they couple with their goats. If the comparison repels you, it’s because you’re not capable of performing the necessary transposition from the bestial to the superhuman plane – planes that were, in this case, superimposed.

‘Think about how much Balzac dared not express in “Une Passion dans le désert.” From her immortal limbs flowed such life force that any loss of energy was immediately compensated, increased, in fact. In those days, Corbera, I loved as much as a hundred of your Don Juans put together, over their entire lives. And what love! Sheltered from conventions and crimes, the rancor of commendatori and the triviality of Leporellos, far from the claims of the heart, the lying sighs, the phony melting weakness that inevitably mark your sort’s wretched kisses. To be honest, a Leporello did disturb us the first day, and it was the only time: Around ten I heard the sound of the farmer’s boots on the path that leads down to the sea; just in time, with the farmer at the door, I managed to throw a sheet over the uncommon body of Lighea. Her uncovered head, throat, and arms led our Leporello to believe this was some commonplace affair and hence commanded his sudden respect. His stay was shorter than usual. As he went he winked his left eye, and with his right thumb and index finger at the corner of his mouth made the motion of curling an imaginary mustache; and he returned up the path.