‘This is America,’ said Signor Melfa.

‘Is there any danger it might be some other place?’ someone asked, since he had spent the entire journey thinking about the fact that there are no roads or tracks on the sea, and that it was a godlike feat to find the right route, without mistakes, steering a boat between sky and water.

Signor Melfa gave him a pitying look, and asked everyone else: ‘Have you ever seen a skyline like this one, in your neck of the woods? Can’t you feel that even the air is different? Can’t you see how brilliantly the towns here sparkle?’

Everyone agreed, looking with pity and resentment at that companion of theirs who had dared to ask such a stupid question.

‘Let’s settle the bill,’ said Signor Melfa.

They fumbled beneath their shirts and extracted the money.

‘Get your things ready,’ said Signor Melfa, after stashing it away.

They only needed a few minutes: having almost exhausted the provisions they’d supplied themselves with for the journey, all they were left with was the odd item of linen and the presents for their relatives in America: a chunk of pecorino, a well-aged bottle of wine, something embroidered to put at the centre of a table or on the back of a sofa. They disembarked walking on air, weightless, laughing and humming tunes – and one burst into full-throated song just as soon as the boat began to move off.

‘So you’ve understood nothing,’ hissed Signor Melfa angrily. ‘You’re determined to land me in it? … As soon as I’ve put you ashore you can rush up to the first cop you see and get yourselves deported on the next available boat: I don’t give a shit, you’re free to kill yourselves in any way you like … I’ve kept to my side of the bargain: this is America and I’ve dumped you here … Now, for Christ’s sake, give me the chance to get back on board!’

They gave him more than enough time to get back on board: they remained sitting on the fresh sand, undecided, not sure of what to do next, blessing and cursing the night which gave them protection as long as they stayed still on the beach, but that would turn into a terrible ambush if they dared to leave it.

Signor Melfa had advised them to ‘scatter’, but no one felt inclined to separate from the others. Who knew how far away Trenton was, and how long it would take to get there?

Then they heard in the distance, sounding unreal, a song. ‘It sounds like one of our own carters,’ they thought – and that the world must be the same everywhere: that everywhere man expresses in song the same melancholy, the same sorrow. But they were in America now: the cities that blazed beyond the horizon of sand and trees were the cities of America.

Two of them decided to head off as scouts. They went in the direction of the lights that the nearest town cast into the sky. Almost immediately they found a road: ‘Tarmaced, well maintained – how different roads are here compared to back home!’ But really they had expected it to be wider and straighter. They kept away from it to avoid meeting anyone: they walked alongside it, through the trees.