‘That’s not the point!’ The young Roman had finally given up his pose of ironic detachment. ‘What you want, signore, this famous “order” of yours, is something un-Italian, un-Mediterranean. It’s an idea of the North, and that’s where it should stay. It’s got no place here. Very well, so we have a few problems. There are problems everywhere in the world! Just look in the newspaper, watch the television. Do you think that this is the only country where life isn’t perfect?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with perfection! And as for this beautiful Mediterranean myth of yours, signore, permit me to say that…’

The man at the window looked away at the blank wall of the Campo Verano cemetery on the other side of the tracks. Neither this further delay nor the argument to which it had given rise seemed able to touch the mood of serenity which had been with him since he awoke that morning. Perhaps it had been the dislocation of routine that had done it, the shock of finding himself not back in Rome but inexplicably stalled at Mestre, five hundred and sixty kilometres further north. For a moment it had seemed as though reality itself had broken down like a film projector and soon everyone would be demanding their money back. After a blind tussle with his clothes in the cramped darkness of the sleeping compartment he had stepped out into the misty early-morning air, laden with the salty stench of the lagoon and the acrid odours of petroleum and chemicals from the heavy industry he could hear murmuring all around, and wandered along the platform to the bar, where he pushed his way into a group of railwaymen, ordered an espresso laced with grappa and discovered that no trains would move out of Mestre until further notice due to a dispute regarding manning levels.