While he was waiting for his gas tank to be filled at one of the many stations found at the beginning of the Cassia road, on the way out of Florence, attorney Adami kept looking at the girl in the blue tank top and jeans, standing on the edge of the road, a little further up. She was quite tall and slim, with loose washed-blond hair, and she had a large backpack at her feet. She must be a foreigner, possibly Nordic, one of those who hitchhike around Europe. But she must have been shy, or otherwise incredibly lazy, because she let cars go past without signaling them to stop. She didn’t signal attorney Adami either, but he, moved by some sort of indulgent concern, stopped his car anyway and, opening the door to invite her in, asked:

“Rome?”

Maybe the girl was neither shy nor lazy, but just cautious: she looked at him with a pair of very light eyes, the color of the sea on windless days, and studied him with great seriousness, before deciding to note her consent. She then gathered herself on the seat, as far as possible from him, and seemed to become even smaller, with her tiny face, that, to be honest, seemed also not very expressive, as it is often the case with Nordic women, and her skinny arms, reddened by the sun.

Attorney Adami was no Don Juan, no seducer with little conscience. However, as he was sure he had been one in his youth, he was left with the calm awareness that, in the case of need, he would not lack the charm, nor the experience, needed to win a woman over. Naturally, the idea of using charm and experience with the girl he just picked up didn’t even remotely occur to him, and in fact, with great rectitude, he was thinking mostly of his daughter, and what she would be like when she grew up. This girl seemed to be fourteen or fifteen, she was pretty and delicate. In fact, he would not have minded at all if his daughter, in ten years’ time, would be like this girl, as pretty and delicate, but he would certainly not allow her to travel the world on her own, risking her falling into the hand of some villain. It wasn’t without any personal complacency, relating to his own virtue, that he thought he could be a villain himself if, faced by this very young and seemingly very pure girl, he wasn’t stopped by a sense of responsibility that could even be defined as fatherly.

The attorney was therefore feeling exceptionally well with his conscience, but it was this very sense of his cleanliness and appropriateness that made him feel he would appreciate it if the girl would show more trust, for example, by smiling back at him when he turned to smile at her. But instead, she remained enclosed and contained in her corner, and did not seem to be inclined to show any trust, to the point that it could even appear offensive, in the sense that it was possible to interpret it as an expression of doubt and suspicion that he, at the end of the day, did not deserve.

At San Casciano, at the café that is right at the top of the hill, he stopped for a moment to buy a bag of sweets. Sometimes children are won over this way, with small things, and indeed she finally smiled, when he put sweets in her hand, but immediately afterwards she returned to her corner, only that now she was munching on the sweets. The road was descending from the hills of San Casciano, one turn after the other, and on the trees the cicadas were singing in the air warmed by the sun. The valley ahead was wide, with a multitude of shades of green and yellow and farmhouses scattered on the hills, each with its own tassels of cypresses, and the attorney, who was feeling almost moved by all this beauty, was sorry that the girl from the north was not aware of it, it seemed. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

“Yes”, she replied with great calm.

The attorney gestured vaguely to the valley. “Beautiful Italy”, he said.

The girl confirmed with a nod, to show that she agreed. It wasn’t much to encourage a conversation, but the attorney thought that this was a start and explained to her that he lived in Rome and had a four-year-old daughter called Gisella. He also started to say that he would not mind at all if his daughter, when she grew up, would be like her, but this concept was too complicated for his English and he was soon stuck, and then asked her, in French, if she could speak French and she replied yes, of course. So he started explaining to her, in French, that he lived in Rome and had a four-year-old daughter called Gisella, and that he would not mind at all, etc. etc., but his French also failed him with this difficult concept, even ambiguous, that he could not explain, and she watched him as he struggled with foreign languages, and her face was no longer blank, but impertinent and amused, and in the end she said, in an Italian that was slightly softer than ours, that he could speak Italian to her, if he preferred, because she was a student in a college in Florence and understood Italian very well.

The attorney had the feeling, not entirely unfounded, that the girl was making fun of him, with the issue of foreign languages, and he resented that, not very much, but enough to encourage him to imagine treating her with less consideration than he had done to that point. Indeed, just because of that push, that the hidden resentment gave him, as he approached Poggibonsi, he thought: if that little flirt was a few years older, now, instead of heading for Rome, I would turn right and take her to San Gimignano, which is a place foreigners like and could lead to something. A few years older? Well, to be honest, the age issue was indeed a touchy one. He liked young girls, very young, in fact, but due to his legal profession, he was not the type to compromise himself with a young girl of fifteen, although, if he really looked closely, she was probably easily sixteen or even seventeen. Dear God, what if she was seventeen? With Nordic girls, you never know: they develop late and keep their virginal look even long after they lose their virginity. If she was seventeen, the situation would be different, reversed even. But she could not be that old. At seventeen, a girl, next to a man that, although he is a bit over forty, is certainly not unattractive, does not behave like that, in that disconnected, calm seriousness that the girl was displaying, while still munching on sweets. The attorney concluded that the temptation to turn right, to San Gimignano, a place favored by lovers, was nothing but bizarre fantasy, it was not right to act on such desires in contrast with the penal code, and indeed, when he reached Poggibonsi, he bravely remained on Cassia, and the road, having left the village, was again surrounded by vines and olive trees, with many twists and turns. The attorney was now satisfied, as one who just did what is usually defined as a good act, but, unfortunately, he was not one of those people who achieve perfect satisfaction from exercising virtue, and deep inside, he regretted missing San Gimignano, with that special timeless atmosphere, allowing us release from prejudice in our time. The attorney had no doubt that it was prejudice and stupid moralistic fancy. Who, at the time of Boccaccio, or, say, the Arezzo man — and those were, now we know this for sure, very civil times — who would hold back when facing such an adventure as the one that he had been offered? At the time, much worse used to happen, without anyone expressing any surprise, or causing inconvenience due to this penal code.

“At what time will we reach Rome?” the girl asked unexpectedly.

It was a standard question, maybe the most natural one could ask, under the circumstances, but it was asked just as the attorney, caught by nostalgia of what he could have done had he been born in any period preceding the Counter Reformation, was feeling rather touchy. “Why?” he asked. “Is anyone expecting you?”

She looked at him with an expression that was almost aggressive, funny in her tiny face, and persevered with her questions. “What about you? Don’t you have anyone?”

The attorney felt like laughing. “My daughter”, he replied.

“If there is a daughter, surely she has a mother”, the girl observed. “In Italy there is no divorce”.

Well, why did she care if there was divorce or not? What did she want from him, was she trying to provoke him? As far as she was concerned, he would have been equally separated, a bigamist or even a widower. For a moment, he wanted to make her believe he was, indeed, a widower, but then he preferred to behave like a gentleman. “Yes, I also have a wife”, he answered proudly. And then he added, less proudly, “Unfortunately”.

The girl was quick to react to the last word: “Why unfortunately? All Italians say that.”

This time, the attorney was truly annoyed. “I am not responsible for other Italians”, he retorted dryly. “I am an anarchist, an individualist, I say unfortunately and I mean it. I haven’t been getting along with my wife for years, if I could turn back…” He stopped himself because he was too miserable. A married man can lie like that, and usually he does, only when there is a concrete advantage, that is when there is a need to use emotional arguments to knock down remaining objections of a woman who is about to fall. But there, with that girl, saved, physically, and especially being legally underage, what advantage could there be? He felt malice toward her, as if she was to blame for that small fall of idle hypocrisy, and in a sense, she was, because no one authorized her to be indiscreet and even provocative, and the least one could think of her is that she had a bad education, despite the college.

But he could not remain angry, and on the other hand, could her apparently insolent questions and comments be, after all, the proof of a growing interest in him? Young pubescent girls are particularly susceptible to the charm of men in their forties, he knew it both in theory and in practice, as the daughter of the concierge at his building, a fifteen year old girl, but unlike this one, even somewhat over developed, tended to blush in his presence, get confused and make a thousand faces, in other words, she was showing in many ways her secret crush for him. Of course, this girl was not he concierge’s daughter, yet, in itself, nothing prevented her from falling in love with him, and it would be wonderful, even though, naturally, he would not take advantage of it in any way, not even to stroke her neck and kiss her closed mouthed. He would respect her in any case, even if, for example, at some point she would offer herself to him spontaneously, a possibility that was quite improbable, as the girl, after that indiscreet explosion of interest for his marital status, returned to her corner, where she was again consuming sweets with detached, melancholy seriousness. Could she be hungry? The attorney was pleased with this thought as it detracted him, at least to an extent, from the guilty and equally morbid fantasies that occupied his mind in the last kilometers, and because he was approaching Siena, he decided to offer her a cappuccino and pastries.

He drove to the piazza and parked next to the café across from Palazzo della Signoria. The sun was burning hot and there were people only in the shade, with the exception of tourists who were walking in the heat with their cameras and straw hats they just bought, admiring the monuments. They sat under the café’s canopy, where it felt less hot, and the attorney, despite being behind schedule, was happy to have brought her here, to this magnificent piazza, and looked like he had built it all himself. When the waiter arrived, she ordered a bottle of German beer. “Won’t it be bad for you?” he asked her.

“Bad?” she replied with a shrug, then politely excusing herself and went inside the café. Before she was back, the waiter brought her beer and the coffee ordered by the attorney. He waited for a little while, but then decided to drink his coffee before it became too cold, and she was yet to return. The attorney thought, irritably, how he would not reach Rome at breakfast time, as he had promised his wife, and thought that if it wasn’t for the girl’s backpack in the car, he would have left her there, in Siena, as she deserved. After all, picking her up was just a careless act, nothing good was going to come out of it, it wasn’t at all an exaggeration to say that he regretted it, as it always happens with good acts that are completed without any prospect of profit. But then, when she finally reappeared, everything he was thinking was suddenly erased to give space for something that could also be called enchantment: she had put lipstick on, she put her hair up in a bun on top of her head, and, with her tank top tucked into her jeans, she displayed a thin waist, slim hips and in addition, tenderly, what little breast she had. “Tell me the truth”, he asked her once he was able to talk. “How old are you?”

She took a long sip of her beer, then turned toward him, with eyes shining with malice. “Almost twenty”, she answered.

After Siena, the Cassia road roams around the chalky scenery, going down into the valleys and back up again to the hills on the other side, apparently without much need, like narrow and often complicated turns, which the attorney reached before even realizing it, as he was driving quite nervously. The issue was that the adventure with the girl, that became suddenly possible and even probable, took him by surprise, he was unprepared for it, and in a way it even scared him, for a number of reasons. The first, and biggest question, he wasn’t hiding that from himself, was the following: was it worth cheating on his wife, the mother of his daughter, with a girl he happened to meet and for whom he could not yet have any real, deep affection? Well, to be honest, he had to answer yes, it was worth it, and not so much for the basic comparison between the girl and his wife, which would be extremely ungenerous and also not entirely justified, but for the more general consideration that for a man of forty, even if blessed by more charm than average, it doesn’t happen every day to have a twenty-year-old girl, beautiful, fresh, with breasts barely outlined, but undoubtedly moving, and so unusually blond. When something like this happens to him, usually a man does not let it go, and indeed, the lawyer didn’t intend to let her go, but in some secret fold of his conscience he still feels some vague discomfort about the idea of marital infidelity, and mostly, he attributed this discomfort to the fact that, even though the conquest appeared to be easy, he had no idea where to begin. Naturally, it wasn’t that he was afraid of having a technical deficiency, but that fact was that now, imagining any contact with the girl, even the most simple, made him feel confused, and probably even more inhibited than before, when he thought she was just a young girl. It was as if he was facing a woman he had known as a little girl, and that suddenly appeared all grown up, but not changed enough to allow him to forget her as a child, and in conclusion, he could not let go of the fear and respect towards childish innocence, and he was almost sorry that she grew up, as he was full of guilt, but also full of anger for the guilt that appeared at the most inconvenient moment. It was this confusion of emotions that made him take the turns so badly.

The girl let him drive as he wished for many kilometers, but then, on the climb to Radicofani, the road became dangerous, and she asked: “Why are you driving so fast? Are you in a rush to get to Rome?”

“No. And you?” The lawyer asked, finding it difficult to address her informally.

“I just need to get there before midnight.”

“Why before midnight?”

“At eleven fifty the train for Calabria leaves.”

“Are you going to Calabria?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“No, with a guy.”

“Someone from your country?”

“No, a guy from Naples. Last year we traveled to Sicily. This year we are going to Calabria. They say it is even more beautiful.”

The lawyer was hurt by that answer more than it was expected, but, as he almost rightly understood when analyzing his own state of mind, it wasn’t jealousy, at least not the usual kind of jealousy, but the regret that he could not put himself in the place of the Neapolitan young man that was going to Calabria with her, he could not even put himself there in his fantasy, because he was married already, and youth for him had gone away, life came upon him with a suffocating weight of responsibility and concerns, not leaving space for love outside the limits of a rushed and enclosed adventure. These were the things, ultimately, more than the years, that marked a man’s decline.

It was with that feeling of self-pity that lawyer Adami, feeling in some way authorized to catch in his garden all the flowers that it was still possible to pick, reached the conclusion that any further hesitation on his part would be out of place, and in other words, that he would be a beast if he let that girl, who dropped on him from the sky, get away.

At Acquapendente, even though there was no need for it, he stopped to refuel, and in the meantime, from a nearby hotel, he called his wife and told her that one of his clients from Florence asked him to negotiate the purchase of a fund, so he would not arrive for breakfast, and maybe not even for lunch, but she should not worry about it, because he would certainly be home by midnight.

Once he removed the main psychological obstacles that stood in the way of his adventure, lawyer Adami found himself facing what bullfighting experts call the moment of truth, when the bullfighter faces the bull face to face, but as he had no doubt as to the balance of power between him and his victim, he felt very calm, and indeed, he was no longer driving dangerously, but with lively and optimistic elegance. The road descended from the heights of Acquapendente to enter that kind of funnel at the bottom of which is Lake Bolsena, and it was approximately one o’clock. The summer sun was tiring everyone and everything, with exception of the cicadas that with unparalleled ardor screeched on every tree. The girl, maybe because of the heat, stayed in her corner where the wind from the window was better, and generally seemed inattentive, in other words, not suspicious or at least indifferent, of what could happen to her before the evening. Nordic women, the lawyer knew just like anyone else, are like that: peaceful, reserved, maybe a bit cold, but at the right time they give themselves with great simplicity, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and actually nothing was ever said to claim that it wasn’t.

The lawyer did not have reason to worry about the girl’s apparent reserve, but was instead thinking of the logistical difficulties of the matter, that could not be neglected, also because the girl was not yet twenty-one, which certainly was a complication. Ruling out a decent hotel, where would it happen: in the country behind a bush, in a wood, in a room of a dubious guest house or on the beach? At this moment, everything was possible, even the beach. Rome was less than 100 kilometers away, so they would reach it around three, and in another hour he could reach Tor San Lorenzo, where a painter friend of his owned a hut on the beach, used for these purposes exactly. The only inconvenience would be not to find the painter at home, because of the key, but other than that, the beach was not only the safest solution, but also the best in absolute terms, and the girl, in a bathing suit, would undoubtedly look stunning, with her long adolescent body, firm and contained. “Do you have your bathing suit?” He asked.

Called back from her distraction, the girl smiled at the question. “Of course I have one. In Calabria I want to go to the beach a lot. I always went to the beach in Sicily, too.”

A little annoyed by this unintentional hint at a past and a future in which he had no part at all, the lawyer replied forcefully, “I’ll also take you to the sea”. And because she was looking at him surprised and vaguely wondering, he explained, “We will get to Rome first, then go to the beach. Do you mind?”

“It would be wonderful,” she smiled with her usual simplicity.

Now the lawyer was imagining the adventure in all its magnificence, and it wasn’t difficult, looking at the girl, to imagine her as she would look in a bathing suit, or even without it, also because the wind that was coming through the window, was pressing on her tank top and was accentuating her breasts, that appeared to be of acceptable size, such as would inspire tenderness and other feelings. And because there is nothing like fantasizing about love for causing impatience to reach the desired conclusion, or at least to receive a reasonable advance, the lawyer started looking at the road for a convenient place to stop.

When the car stopped on the side of the road, where a part of a lake was visible between the oak trees, the girl, instead of looking at the view, hanged her head down as if she was already aware, and allowed him to put his arm around her, pull her close and kiss her on the neck that was left bare now that her hair was tied up. She didn’t resist later, when he lifted her face and started kissing her mouth, but she didn’t take part in any way, leaving him quite unsatisfied at the end of the long kiss, even resentful. On her part, she did not appear to be in a better mood, indeed, she immediately hung her head down, without doing or saying anything.

“Didn’t you like it?” he asked her.

And she asked, “Why did you do it, because you love me?”.

The question, even accounting for the girl’s possible inexperience, was without a doubt inappropriate, and in fact, everyone knows that for a kiss it is not essential to have binding and powerful emotions like love. Now, the lawyer didn’t want to think he had kissed her simply for pleasure or to try and win her, in fact, at the moment, nobody, not even him, could claim that he wasn’t already in love with her, at least a little bit, but talking about love before they even started was a bit too risky. In any case, if pursuing the adventure depended on a little lie, the lawyer was more than willing to say it. “I love you”, he confirmed with as much sincerity as he could show.

“All Italians say that”, the girl replied, without raising her head.

Offended in his effort to be honest, the lawyer was about to retort, when he noticed drops dripping on her trousers, that due to their position and other circumstances, could have only been tears. “Are you crying?” he asked, somewhat stupidly. “What is there to cry about?”

“You are just like the others”, she replied, pulling her nose. “But this is not why I’m crying. I am crying because I am like the others, the foreigners that come to Italy to make love with Italians.” She started crying harder. “I’m not like the others”, she said.

He pulled her to cry on his shoulder, and was stroking her hair, sweetly, then said, “You shouldn’t cry, the two of us are different”, but as much as he tried, he could not think of a reason to complete and explain his statement. However now, and not only because of a sense of satisfied pride, he started to feel that he and the girl were indeed different than other people, he felt that there was something inexpressible creeping into his soul, and that if it wasn’t love, it certainly was similar to it, but this complicated the issue greatly, both because he could not forget he had a wife at home, and because he knew that the sentimental way is not the shortest path to reach certain results, and here there certainly was not time to lose. Maybe a few glasses of Orvieto or Montefiascone wine would be enough to bring the adventure back to the easy and careless tracks that befitted it. “Are you hungry?” he asked the girl who was still crying.

She replied yes with ease, like a child.

“Let’s go then. We will stop at the first restaurant.”

“No, I’d rather get to Rome” she replied.

A little less than an hour later they were sitting, very close to each other, under the canopy of one of the little restaurants along the Cassia road, in the outer suburbs of Rome, and the lawyer could observe how accurate was his prevision that a little wine would be enough to do away with any melancholy. He felt at his best physically and mentally, and as for the girl, she was completely transformed. She was twisting, with amusing incompetence her fettuccine with sauce around the fork, and was laughing, continuously laughing, asking him, “Do you love me? Tell me you love me”, but without expecting any seriousness in his reply, like in a game.

And he swore he loved her, and again he poured her a drink, and she begged him not to, not to make her drink too much, because she loved him and therefore did not want to get drunk, and she pressed herself to him, with her small, warm and slim body, and they were kissing, they could do it because there were no other patrons at that time under the pergola, and the waiter did not mind them, numb with the heat and the hope of a good tip. “What will we do afterwards?” she was asking.

“I’ll take you to the beach, to a place called Tor San Lorenzo. There’s a hut there…”

“Two hearts and a hut”, she interrupted him beautifully, because she already drank a bit too much.

“It’s an outdoors hut”, he explained. “But inside it’s very well arranged. There’s a shower, a small kitchen with a fridge, and there is a big bed, with a flower print blanket…”

“A big bed”, she repeated with disconcerting malice, and he felt all confused, and they went back to kissing. And then, with a damp mouth, dazed by the kiss, she asked, “And the key, do you have the key?”

“No, but I will call my friend…”

“Didn’t you call him already?”

“Yes, but he was sleeping. He will wake at four thirty. I will call him again at four thirty.”

“At four thirty”, she repeated, suddenly melancholic, as if the wait weighed on her, or for who know what reason. “What time is it?”

“Almost four.”

“Almost four”, she said, becoming even more melancholic, until unpredictably she started laughing and said, “Do you love me? Tell me you love me”.

And he, despite understanding that all this was nothing but a generous game, replied that he loved her, my God, did he love her so much, and while he was saying that, he didn’t understand anymore if he crossed the boundaries of the game, because in fact he felt like he truly loved her, everything about her enchanted him, her youth, her beauty, her freshness, and especially her splendid ability to do the most ill-matched things, deviled chicken and kisses, tears and happiness, the immodesty with which she looked at him when they talked of what they would do in the beach cabin, and the childish innocence that bloomed again in her as soon as she was distracted by something of her own, looking at a cat searching for food, or playing with the remains of the bread on the tablecloth. “What time is it?” she asked.

“Four fifteen.”

She asked again for the time six or seven times, before it was finally four thirty, and she laughed less and less, as if her merriment was being suffocated by the impatience of arriving to the beach, but when, when it was finally four thirty, she didn’t want him to make the call anymore. “Wait a little”, she said. “A little longer.”

“But if I wait, he may go out, and then we won’t find the key anymore.”

“Please, a little bit longer”, she kept repeating with painful sadness, it was possible that she found herself in a moment of such acute love that she preferred the rest of the adventure to fall through rather than being away from him at the particular time, and without a doubt it was a beautiful and moving feeling, but the lawyer did not forget the rest of the adventure was what counted most, and that on the other hand, she was the one teasing him with the constant questions about what they would do at the hut, so it was not clear how come she now wanted to hold him back, risking losing out on the best. And all things considered, although he still thought that she was the most extraordinary and amazing girl he ever met, partly because of her unpredictable changes of tone and mood, he was also starting to wonder if it wasn’t better if he had met a less complicated girl.

At four forty five, although she kept begging him to wait a little longer, he did not listen to her and went into the restaurant, where the telephone was.

His painter friend was still asleep, but he asked his housekeeper to wake him, which she did, and the painter, having been woken up in the middle of a muggy afternoon, came to the phone in a bad mood and pique. He began by demanding to know exactly who the girl was. The lawyer could only tell him her name was Inge and she was Swedish, not from Stockholm, but from Lulea, a town near the North Pole, apparently. Then the painter asked him where he found her, and also wanted him to describe her, and the lawyer, despite being annoyed at the wasted time, described her, feeling justifiably complacent, because at the end of the day, she made him look good. He told his friend she was not even twenty yet and was divine, slim, but not too slim, unimaginably blond, and yes, the legs were also perfect and the breasts were this way and that, but suited her, she could not have had different breasts. After describing her well, with all the necessary abundance of details, the painter said he also wanted to come to Tor San Lorenzo, and the lawyer had to work hard to make him understand this was not appropriate, this is a good girl, a college girl, and that if things were not conducted with full discretion, everything may be ruined, and as much as he hated to mention the past, the painter should not forget the many favors he owed him, he even defended him in court a few times without asking for anything in return, and if he didn’t give him the key now, he wasn’t a friend. The painter answered that it was the lawyer himself who was not behaving as a friend should, because true friends share everything, especially girls, but in the end, he was persuaded to give him the key, but he asked him to at least let him see the magnificent Swede, when he came to pick up the key.

The lawyer went back out and didn’t see the girl in her place. Maybe she went to the bathroom to touch up her makeup after eating. In the meantime, he asked for the bill, and while waiting, he sat down, and naturally he kept fantasizing about the girl at the sea and the hut and of what would be the best adventure of his life, but the girl did not return, could it be that she felt unwell in the bathroom, because she truly did drink too much, and that would really be a drag. “Did you see the young lady who was with me?” he asked the waiter who brought him the bill.

With calm, that considering the occasion could even be considered insolent, the waiter gestured toward the road. “She left”, he said.

The lawyer felt his heart contract. Left? Where? And why, more importantly? As the waiter would not be able to answer these questions, the lawyer hurried to the road, or to the car he left parked in the yard, he wasn’t even sure himself, but the waiter held his arm respectfully, “The bill, sir.”

More than right. But it was this trivial request that caused the lawyer his second, and not less painful, contraction of his heart, as he could not find his wallet in the back pocket of his trousers, where he usually kept it, or in any other pocket of his suit. Now, at least to all outward appearances, the wonderful and sole adventure, so longed for and planned, was reduced to a theft, a pickpocketing, something painful and ridiculous at the same time, but as at present he was unable to see the funny aspect, the lawyer was caught by rage.

While he was recklessly driving down the last and quite difficult part of Cassia Vecchia road, on the way to the Ponte Milvio, at the entrance to Rome, lawyer Adami was completely dominated by the desire to strangle the girl, and not only because of the 70,000 or more Lira that he had in his wallet, but for the actual fact that she was so unprecedentedly evil. This powerful impulse was quite natural, not to say legitimate, but he understood that, to act on it, it was first necessary to get the hold of the girl. Now, there were two options: either she stopped a passing car to take her God knows where in the city, or she took the 201 bus that went along the Cassia Vecchia, ending at Ponte Milvio. If lawyer Adami was driving so recklessly down a dangerous road and with many speed limit signs, it was not so much to release the overwhelming storm in his mind, but mostly to try to overtake one of these buses. He succeeded in doing so, and stopped at the terminal, ready to pounce on the girl the moment she appeared. But she didn’t come off that bus or the next one, and the lawyer’s fury, rather than subside, increased, as was his pigheaded determination to find her again, however unreasonable it was. He would look for her all over Rome and at any event, at ten to midnight he would catch her at the train leaving for Calabria, although, coming to think of it, the Calabria story could also be one of the many lies the girl told him, and in fact it was almost absurd that a delinquent of this kind, for whom the skill of stealing was a real profession, would have given him the correct information to help him catch her. No, he could only look for her in Rome, and with this clear purpose the lawyer started the car again and drove into the city of two million inhabitants, hot like an oven at the end of a summer day.

The assumption, in the lawyer’s way of thinking, was not easy, but neither was it so senselessly difficult as it may have appeared to those less expert than him. In fact, the search could be, by following common sense, restricted to ten or a few more places that foreigners visit in Rome. Assuming that criminal was a foreigner, the lawyer thought bitterly, actually, anything was possible, she could even be from Milan or from Venice, but no, Italy does not produce hair so blond or eyes so light, and in conclusion, he was certainly the first Italian victim of a Swedish pickpocket in his own country. She had to be caught, even from the point of view of national pride.

Following a clear plan, the lawyer explored first the area of Castel Sant’Angelo and St. Peter’s Basilica, he then climbed Mount Gianicolo, then went down to the Colosseum and the Imperial Fora and then climbed another hill, the Campidoglio. In every place he stopped to look with a wild-eyed look for a girl in jeans, slim and blond, with the false look of a good girl. From the Campidoglio he went down to Piazza Venezia, and then, progressively discouraged, he drove along many roads and piazzas in the center, now full of cars and of people who came out to enjoy the relatively cool evening. He also drove past the Central Post, which, although it was not a beautiful monument, is one of the places that foreigners visit most. He then returned to a more touristic itinerary, visiting Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo, until, when the sun was almost down, he thought that the little thief could be on the Pincio terrace, where sunsets are enjoyed, and where a pickpocket can always find some work.

Pincio was so busy it seemed like a fair, it was especially full of girls, but none of them was in jeans, and mainly, none of them was slim and blond and with a sweet face full of childish innocence, so sweet in his memory, that the lawyer found himself missing her sharply, against his will, whoever she was, with her dark soul. He only wondered how come God had allowed such a terrible mixture of physical beauty and moral depravation. And by appealing to God, in some ways he cleared her of at least part of her sins, and he felt that now, if he happened to find her, he would not strangle her or drag her to the first police station, but would simply try to understand why she was so perverse, and once he understood this, he would let her go, maybe even with the sixty or more thousands of Lira. Everything had become bitter for him, in the evening that was so sweetly descending, and not only because of her, as after all, she was just a symbol of the too many things in the world that are wrong, and that one is not quite sure why they are wrong.

Totally pervaded by this desolate thought on life and the whole universe, the lawyer got back into his car, drove aimlessly for a while through the alleys of Villa Borghese, sensing the sharp smells of the lime trees like metaphysical bile, seeing even the children playing with dogs on the grass as decaying mortals, and finally, especially in order to escape the disappointment that even nature seemed to give him, he drove to Porta Pinciana and entered Via Veneto, that at the time was shining with lights and signboards, clogged with cars and full of people walking like in a procession along the two sidewalks crowded with coffee shop tables. And it was right there, in the middle of the crowd, between two newsstands, that he, having stopped thinking of her as a natural being, saw her, or rather, noticed a blond head, and from the turmoil of conflicting feelings that caught him all of the sudden, he felt immediately sure it was her. Without thinking twice, he jumped out of the car, pushing through the crowd, progressing like a lunatic until, before even reaching her he realized that her blond head was not hers, the blond did not even remotely resemble hers, but in the meantime he already caused quite a lot of trouble as half of Via Veneto was honking horns and an angry policeman was whistling his whistle like the God Aeolus whistling up a storm at the reckless driver who left his car in the middle of the road during rush hour.

The lawyer complied with the command to move his car to a side road and there, furiously aware of the risk of ending up in prison for verbal assault of a policeman, he prepared to start an argument with the policeman, not so much because he thought he was even slightly in the right, but because this incident, happening at the highest point of a particularly baleful day, truly exceeded the daily amount of bad luck that a man can reasonably tolerate. Therefore, when the policeman began by asking if he wasn’t by any chance crazy, he exploded, shouting that he, a respectable professional, did not allow anyone to doubt his mental stability, and that the policeman needed to learn to respect tax paying citizens, and do his duty, if he cared about it, without making a fuss, because he had no time to lose. The policeman, with that superior smile that only people in a position of power have, did all he could to waste his time as much as possible, and started by asking him to show his documents: his logbook and driver’s license.

The lawyer, who due to his profession had a good understanding of the law, understood that he managed to get himself into big trouble, because he suddenly remembered that his license was in the wallet and he no longer had possession of his wallet. He also could not say his wallet had been stolen between three and four in the afternoon because, aside for the trouble with his wife, once she learned of certain details of the story, his duty would have been to report the theft as soon as possible and without prompting.

The lawyer, after a very quick mental analysis of the situation, reached the conclusion that in order to get out of the situation in the best possible way, he had better put on an act. With a confident gesture, he brought his right hand to the back pocket of his trousers to pull out his wallet, and immediately made an angry face, but mostly confused, as if he was surprised not to find it. Then, with professional ability, he changed his expression slightly, adding a touch of lost look, and in the meantime saying to himself, but loudly enough so the policeman could hear him, “Strange, I can’t find my wallet… A little time ago I had it… I really don’t understand… I hope I didn’t lose it, my license was inside…”.

The policeman sneered in triumph, and it was even possible that he thought he was dealing not with a lawyer but with a car thief. “Try to look for it better”, he said, without even trying to hide the irony in his voice. “Maybe you will find it.”

The lawyer was now trapped in an absurd situation that he caused himself. Dramatically, with growing agitation, he searched all his pockets, sighed and shook his head, even smiled at the policeman, trying desperately to defuse the malevolence, but he continued to say, with an increasingly nasty expression, “Look for it, look for it better”.

Then, the lawyer, feeling like a clown, and worse than a worm, left the car, took off his jackets, showing he was hoping the wallet would miraculously appear from somewhere, and because the policeman still did not seem satisfied, he started looking also inside the car, between the seat and the backrest, and then even under the seat, and there, not even hidden, he found the wallet that he evidently dropped after paying for gas at Acquapendente, and inside there was everything, his license and over seventy thousand Lira.

Hidden behind one of the pillars supporting the roof of platform 7 at Termini Station in Rome, the lawyer saw, at a quarter to midnight, the slim and blond girl arriving, preceded by a porter carrying her large back pack. She got on the train for Reggio Calabria, and almost immediately looked out of the window and remained there for a full five minutes until the train left. Looking melancholic and maybe a little worried, as if she was waiting, but without much hope, for someone to come to say goodbye to her.

The lawyer waited behind the pillar until the train left, then left the station, got into his car and drove home, to his wife and daughter and his destiny, and he was also feeling a little melancholic, but with that right amount of melancholy that every human cannot refuse to carry. Now he knew that the girl was truly wonderful, as he thought she was, and if she escaped in that strange way it was because for her, for her too, that adventure that started almost like a joke, had crossed the boundaries allowed for an adventure and it was not right to complete it, having to remain one of the things that don’t happen, and that therefore remain perfect in a way that things that happened cannot have.

 

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© Giuseppe Berto Estate. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with The Italian Literary Agency, Milano, Italy.