And he drank coffee-she’d already told me this. By the end of the day they’d only done about half a page. He rewrote it, changing every word, again and again, making her read the same sentence over and over. What was he writing? A new novel? What was it about? A novel, yes, about a sect of religious assassins. Or so it seemed for now, at least. She had lent him an annotated Bible of her father’s, so he could check a quotation. And what did he think of himself? What did I mean? she asked. Did he consider himself superior? She thought for a moment, as if trying to remember something specific, some remark, something slipped into the conversation. “He’s never talked about his books,” she said doubtfully, “but one day, as we were going over the same sentence for the tenth time, he said that a writer had to be a beetle and God at the same time.”

At the end of the first week, as I paid her, I noticed in the way she looked at the notes-the sudden focused attention, the satisfied care with which she put the money away-an intensity, a wave of interest, that made me see her for a moment in an unexpected light. Recalling her remark about how much Kloster paid her, I realised with surprise and slight alarm that money really did matter to the lovely Luciana.

What happened next? Well, a few things. There was a series of very hot days, an unexpected return of summer in mid-March, and Luciana swapped her blouses for short vests that exposed her shoulders as well as expanses of stomach and back. When she leaned forward to read from the screen I could see the gentle arch of her spine, and below the hollow of her back a spiral of blond downy hair extended to-and I could see it perfectly-the tiny and always troubling triangle of her panties peeping from her jeans. Was it deliberate? Of course not. It was all entirely innocent and we still looked at each other with the same innocent eyes, carefully avoiding touching in my narrow kitchen. It was in any case a new and very pleasant sight.