I won't steal any of that money! Do you know, do you know how they live?"

"How?" I answered. "I've stopped asking about them."

"Come on, you know," he continued. "They told you last night."

Hesitating, I made an inquisitive gesture with my eyes.

"Yes, where you wanted to go before you saw me!"

I jumped to my feet, but couldn't stand, and falling onto the little table with my elbows, I shouted at him:

"Is it they? Tuda? Tuda and her mother?"

He seized me by the arm and brought his forefinger to his lips.

"Quiet! Quiet! Pay and then come with me. Hurry and pay."

We left the tavern. It was raining even harder. The wind which had grown in intensity slung water in our faces almost prevented us from walking. But the man dragged me away, away, against the wind, against the rain. Staggering, drunk, my head burning and heavier than lead, I moaned, "Tuda? Tuda and her mother?" In the violent shadow his cloaked figure became confused with the umbrella he carried high against the rain, and to my eyes it became huge. It was like a ghost in a nightmare, dragging me towards a precipice. And there, with a powerful shove, he thrust me into the small dark doorway, shouting into my ear, "Go, go visit my daughter!"

Now I have here, here in my head, only the screams of Tuda as she clung to my neck, screams that had pierced my brain... Oh, it was he, I swear it again, it was he, Jacopo SturziL. He, he strangled that witch who was passing herself off as an aunt... But if he had not done it, I would have. But he choked her, because he had more of a reason to do so than I.

If...

Is it departing or arriving? Valdoggi wondered as he heard a train whistle, and looked towards the train station from his table outside the chalet-style cafe in Piazza delle Terme.

He had fixed his attention on the train's whistle, as he would have fixed his attention on the continuous, dull buzzing of the electric light bulbs, in an effort to divert his eyes from a customer sitting at an adjacent table who stared at him with irritating stillness.

For some minutes he managed to distract himself. In his mind he pictured the interior of the train station, where the opaline brilliance of the electric light contrasts with the dismal and gloomily resounding emptiness under the immense, sooty skylight. And he began to imagine all the nuisances that a traveler encounters when he is departing or arriving.

Unwittingly, however, he again found himself gazing at that customer at the adjacent table.

The man, dressed in black, was about 40 years old. His thin, drooping hair and small moustache were reddish, his face was pale, and his green-gray eyes were cloudy and had rings around them.

Sitting beside the man was a little old woman who was half asleep. Contrasting strangely with her peaceful air was her hazel-colored dress, neatly trimmed with black rickrack. Moreover, covering her wooly hair was a small hat, worn and faded, with two large black ribbons tied voluminously under her chin. Oddly enough, these ribbons ended in silver tassels, making them seem as if they were ribbons taken from a funeral wreath.

Valdoggi again immediately took his eyes off the man, but this time he did so in a fit of great exasperation that made him turn rudely in his chair and blow forcefully through his nostrils.

What on earth did that stranger want? Why was that man looking at him that way? Valdoggi again turned around. He, too, wanted to look at that man in order to make him lower his eyes. At that point the stranger whispered: "Valdoggi." He did so as if speaking to himself, shaking his head slightly without moving his eyes.

Valdoggi frowned and bent a little forward to better make out the face of the man who had muttered his name. Or had he just imagined it? And yet, that voice...

The stranger smiled sadly and repeated:

"Valdoggi, right?"

"Yes...," answered Valdoggi, bewildered and trying to smile at him, although with some hesitation. And he stammered: "But I... pardon me... you, sir..."

"Sir? I'm Griffi!"

"Griffi? Ah...," uttered Valdoggi, confused, continually more perplexed, and searching his memory for an image that would bring that name back to life.

"Lao Griffi... 13th Infantry Regiment... Potenza."

"Griffi! You?" Valdoggi suddenly exclaimed, flabbergasted. "You... like that?"

Griffi accompanied the exclamations of astonishment of his newly found friend with sorrowful noddings of his head, and every nod was perhaps both an allusion and a tearful salute to the memories of the good old days.

"It's really me.