“Because our friend Count Rivolonovo, who is, perhaps, not as authentic as his watchtower, delights in sparkling guests. He goes over the register at the hotel to see who is here to embellish his soirées. I add dash to the evenings; others, like you, add beauty; still others come automatically because of wealth, power, connections. The count is from the North, you see, brought here on a stream of American dollars to revitalize this backward part of the South. He started a branch of his northern textile industry down here and gave jobs to everyone; he built the hotel, improved the beach, and used his connection with the prefect to have the harbor of the fishing port dredged to accommodate the yachts of his friends. There he is. . . . As you look at him, which of the northern tribes do you imagine endowed our elegant count with his dynamism? Was it the Longobards, the Vandals, the Visigoths, or the Huns? Or do you notice an uncanny resemblance to Christ the Redeemer, which the count commissioned for the sanctuary at the top of the mountain? Both Christ and the count encompass all the area around here.”

Tina smiled, amused, and looked toward the count, whose broad shoulders and thickish neck and stature did resemble someone Teutonic, like Curt Jurgens.

“Well, professore, the count is right about your adding dash. Does he know what you say of him?”

“Ah, mia cara,” he answered in mock horror, “don’t call me professore! How could you . . . here, on such a night . . . on vacation! My name is Ferruccio. And yours?”

“Tina,” she said. “And now that I know you”—she smiled at him—“tell me what a futurist is.”

“A sociologist. That’s what I am—what the count mockingly calls a futurist.”

“Oh,” said Tina, pouting in a show of disappointment. “I was hoping you were the kind of futurist who tells fortunes. A sibyl, or something like that.”

“I can be that, too,” he said easily. He was looking at her intently. She began to feel giddy under his look and the strange pressure of the evening air.

They were joined by the prefect of Cosenza and his wife, Donna Emilia, who both knew Ferruccio and were introduced to Tina. The prefect was saying that it was his duty as judge in the contest for the Best-Looking Legs of the Gulf of Castronoto which had brought him there. His wife, stunning and tanned and of the type called formosa by southern men, had the glowing, satisfied look of people who live well.

Count Rivolonovo came up to them with a woman whose graying hair was well cut in a thick, short bob; she wore a polo shirt and long skirt and held a cigarette in a holder. “And here is the Baroness Dall’Airone,” said the count, “who lives in the part of Staffa that I call the chicken-coop village—a kind of modern development that’s our only eyesore.”