“Well, I don’t know if I do. I see Weezy’s feminists and what they’re doing—they’ve gone out into the streets, marching and jamming up traffic and making people notice them and get angry. They wave banners and scream and make a real spectacle. And things are beginning to change. And where would they have gotten if they had all stayed home and waited, like ladies, for men to hear the voice of reason? And besides, you were marching and protesting yourself once. It just means that after the first shock of getting attention by assault, then you can put on your jacket and tie and look like a lawyer reasoning things out.”

“Easy! Everything seems to set you off.”

“Oh, I know.” She sat up and faced him, her brow wrinkling with displeasure at herself.

“La rughetta,” said the old man, who had picked a clump of green and held it out to her.

“Ah, rughetta,” she exclaimed. They picked more of the pungent green leaves and then joined the old man, who put it with other greens into a salad and shared salad, bread, and cheese with them.

As they ate together under the olive tree, the old man looked at them again and again, finally nodding his head vehemently and saying, “Fidanzati, si!”

Jason took his harmonica out of his jeans pocket and played “Come Back to Sorrento.”

They arrived the next day at Staffa, a site once sacred to Venus and so beautiful in its position that Tina felt the energy and motivation for going to Castagna drain from her. There was the sea, deep blue before her, and at her back was the yellow ginestra-blooming mountain. All was curves and dips and strong, bright colors. They went through the lower village down to what was known as the public beach, a small strand of sand between the rocky projections of the shore and a seedy-looking hotel. The sea was still and calm, and Tina waded in. A piece of eggplant floated nearby, a bean-pod, some tomato skins—refuse evidently of the hotel or of the small thatched-roof eating place built on stilts over the water.

Tina made a face of disgust. “I can’t bear this!”

“Detritus,” he grinned.

“De trop,” she answered.

They walked back to Piazza Gesù, the center of the lower village, a square flanked by a pink church, a yellow Banco di Napoli, and a vine-covered bar. They stopped to have a beer and to find out, by talking to the waiter, exactly where Signor Agostini’s place was.