Zen boarded the middle carriage, its floor stepped like a stairway, and opened his copy of II Mattino. The headlines had a distinctly second-hand air, following up on stories which had made their debut earlier in the week: the controversy over future plans for the site of the steel plant at Bagnoli, the initiative by the mayor to retain various measures hastily instituted to clean up the city in time to host the Gj conference, the disappearance of a former minister in the regional government who was under investigation for alleged association with organized crime.

The morning rush hour was long over and the train was almost empty, conveying mostly students and a few elderly women heading for the shopping streets around Via Toledo. In theory, Zen should have been at work over an hour and a half ago, but he did not appear at all concerned by this fact. Once again, his hand strayed to his pocket, as though he had mislaid something. It was now two weeks, three days and ten hours since he had smoked his last cigarette, but old habits die hard. The craving for nicotine had passed surprisingly quickly, but at certain ritualistic moments of the day — over a coffee, when reading the paper — he found himself reaching for the ghostly pack of Nazionali he could still hear calling out to him faintly.

Halfway down the hill, the train shunted on to a loop to pass its opposite number on the way up. On the sprayed concrete walling of the tunnel, Zen made out the slogan strade pulite — 'Clean Streets' — crudely daubed in black paint. It sounded like an allusion to the 'Clean Hands' investigation into institutionalized corruption which had brought down the political class that had governed Italy since the war. But it was hard to see what 'Clean Streets' could mean, particularly on emerging from the funicular's lower terminus into the filthy, teeming, chaotic alleys of the Tavoliere district, where the morning market was in full swing.