The Duomo… They'd started building it in the fourteenth century, and hadn't finished till the twentieth. That seemed- that was-an awfully long time, but they got it right. Yes, it glorifled superstition. So her teachers said, at least half a dozen times a day. But glorify it did.

In the square in front of the Duomo stood a statue of General Secretary Putin. Old Pointy-Nose, people called him. Not counting the base, he stood four meters tall-twice the height of even a tall man. All the same, the cathedral had no trouble making him seem like a midget.

At the moment, a pigeon perched on his outstretched right forefinger. Gianfranco pointed to it. "Looking for a handout," he said.

"Good luck," Annarita said. "The bird better hope that fist doesn't close." Even though Gianfranco grinned and nodded, she wished she had the words back the second they were out of her mouth. Vladimir Putin was seventy years dead, yes, but making any kind of joke about him to a Party man's son wasn't smart. But everybody knew the Russians were so much better at taking than giving.

Fiats and Russian Volgas and smelly German Trabants and Workermobiles from the USA crowded narrow streets that hadn't been built with cars in mind in the first place. A century and more of Communism hadn't turned Italians into orderly drivers. Annarita didn't think anything could. A Volga stopped in the middle of the street to wait for an old woman on the far curb. It plugged traffic like a cork in a bottle. A trolley had to stop behind the Volga. More cars jammed up behind the trolley. The motorman clanged his bell. The drivers leaned on their horns. The man in the Volga ignored them all.

The old lady tottered over and got in. The Volga zoomed away. The trolley got moving, too. The swarm of cars behind it would take longer to unknot.