Because it was true that Livia had had more than her fill. In fact, she’d had enough to fill a whole boatload of shipping containers. But how was it possible that his conscience only showed up in dreams, ruining his sleep? All the same, he thought, the fact that Livia had no intention of coming down to Sicily for his funeral was not right, whatever her reasons might be. In fact, it was downright mean.

When he got into the car to go the station, he noticed that the sea had come almost all the way up to the house and was less than a couple of feet from the parking area. He’d never seen the water come up this far. The beach was gone. It was all one great expanse of water.

It took him a good fifteen minutes and a couple of hundred curses before the car’s engine decided to do what it was supposed to do, and this, naturally, only aggravated the state of his nervous system, which was already on the ropes from the nasty weather conditions.

He’d gone barely fifty yards when he had to stop. There was a line of traffic extending as far as the eye could see-or, rather, as far as the windshield wipers, which couldn’t quite manage to wipe away the pouring rain, allowed the eye to see.

The column of traffic was made up entirely of cars headed towards Vigàta. In the opposite lane there wasn’t so much as a motor scooter.

After about ten minutes of this, he decided to pull out of the jam, turn back, and, at the junction with the Montereale road, take another route into town. It was longer, but it would, at least, get him to his destination.

But he was unable to budge, as the nose of his car was wedged right into the back of the car in front of him, and the car behind him had done the same to him.