The car, a black Volkswagen parked in the sun, was boiling, but he let it cool down a little by leaving the doors open, entered it as though he were late for an appointment, but he wasn’t late and he didn’t have any appointments, it was four o’clock in the afternoon, he’d get to the hotel in a little more than an hour, the convention wouldn’t start till the evening of the following day, with an official banquet, he had more than twenty-four hours of freedom, what was the hurry? No hurry. After a few kilometres a tourist sign indicated the grave of Venizelos, a few hundred metres from the main road. He decided to take a short break to freshen up before the drive. Next to the entrance to the monument was an ice-cream shop with a large open terrace overlooking the little town. He settled himself at a table, ordered a Turkish coffee and a lemon sorbet. The town he saw had been Venetian and then Turkish, it was nice, and of an almost blinding white. Now he was feeling really good, with an unusual energy, the disquiet he’d felt on the plane had completely vanished. He checked the road map: to get to the freeway to Iraklion he could pass through the town or go around the gulf of Souda, a few kilometres more. He chose the second route, the gulf from up above was beautiful and the sea intensely azure. The descent from the hill to Souda was pleasant, beyond the low vegetation and the rooftops of some houses he could see little coves of white sand, a strong urge to swim came over him, he turned off the air-conditioning and lowered the window to feel the warm air smelling of the sea on his face. He passed the little industrial port and the residential zone and arrived at the intersection where, turning to the left, the road merged with the coastal highway to Iraklion. He put on his left blinker and stopped. A car behind him beeped for him to go: there was no oncoming traffic. He didn’t move, just let the car pass him, then signalled right and went in the opposite direction, where a sign said Mourniès.