They do not see me. They do not care about me.

It’s just the night.

I drink it in. Or it drinks me.

I turn off my cell so as not to read what new things people are saying online, the thousand rumors since my husband died, since the autopsy reports. I’m curious, I admit. I can’t keep it off for long. Though I yearn for anonymity, I fear it, too.

The stars a white smear on the black horizon.

34.

In the morning the sun whitens the haze, and the worries of the night seem unfounded. Whatever goes on in that vague, twittering darkness no longer matters. I frequent a café where no one recognizes me. I enjoy this. I eat a pastry with my black coffee and read the local paper. I’m not proficient in the language, but I imagine a day when I might be. I read the articles with something like concern, as if I am someone other than a visitor, as if it might be of interest to me, the widening of the port and the effect this will have on local traffic, on the old part of the city that many regret to see modernized, and on the factory workers whose jobs will be lost to telecommunications. I read such things over my coffee, things I never cared about before, and think about them as I walk back, forgetting for a while what pursues me.

So I didn’t notice at first the man who had taken up position across from my apartment, on the terrace overlooking the Avenida. He leaned against the white brick, smoking a cigarette. He watched me as I unlocked the gate, in the unabashed way a Latin man watches a woman. That wasn’t what unnerved me. I was used to the stubborn lechery of Latin men. It was his looks—hawk-nosed, puppet thin: a lanky, slope-shouldered man whose clothes hung loosely about his body. His shirt, like that of Lodovico’s companion that night in Rome, was buttoned up to the neck. The world brims with men of similar appearance, but I felt the chill of recognition nonetheless.

I checked on Dazio and found him asleep, lying with a young girl curled sweetly around him.

I felt a pang in my heart. I had at once the impulse to tear her from his arms and at the same time the desire to bend over her, to cover them both with the white sheet that had fallen to the floor. I lingered by the door, watching them. I might have lingered longer if it hadn’t been for the sound of footsteps in the hall behind me.

I feared at first that I had left the gate open and the man outside had somehow found his way in. The German landlord had warned us of the dangers facing women who became careless in the city.

The intruder was Johnny.