He left me to stumble through an orange with a surprised face on it, placed on the altar of a church. When the professor returned, he had to chuckle.

“Now you attempt to say something,” he said. “It is progress.”

At the end of class, we had to bring up our work. Some of them were so experimental that it was hard to see what they were—some shocking and disturbing. When it was my turn, the professor asked me, “What are you telling the world by putting that orange on the altar, eh?”

I had no idea. “That religion should not be separate from ordinary life?” I suggested, blurting out the first words that came into my head.

He nodded. “I think you have made a step in the right direction today.”

As he dismissed the class, he called out certain names. Mine was amongst them. We came up to his desk.

“You are the visiting students from abroad,” he said. “I should like to invite you, my foreign visitors, to a small soiré e at my house tonight to make you feel welcome in Venice. Eight o’clock. It’s the third floor, number 314, on the Fondamenta del Forner in San Polo, not far from the Frari. You know the Frari?”

I didn’t. Neither did a couple of the others.

“It’s the big church called Santa Maria Gloriosa—but to us it’s the Frari,” the professor said. “You will learn in Venice nobody calls anything by its real name. The vaporetti stop is San Toma. If you are coming from the other side of the Grand Canal, you can cross by the traghetto at San Toma. All right. Good. See you tonight. Come hungry. My wife likes to cook.” He glanced at his watch. “And now I must run. Urgent appointment.”

One of the Italian students had been lingering at a nearby desk, putting away his painting supplies. “What he means is that he has an urgent need for un’ombra ,” he said.

“What is that?” one of my fellow foreigners asked.

“A tradition in this city. The drink before luncheon. A coffee with a splash of something, or a grappa. You will find that most morning classes end very promptly for that reason.” He gave us a grin, hoisted his bag on to his shoulder, picked up his easel and went.

After he had gone we stood there, checking each other out. There were five of us.

“Did everyone else understand what he said?” a large, chubby boy asked. He was wearing earnest horn-rimmed spectacles and was dressed in clothes that didn’t really go together. And from his stumbling pronunciation, I could tell he was American. “My Italian is not too good. How did he say we can find his house?”