"Uffa," said Iacopo as he tested the weight of both suitcases. He left the heaviest—the one containing the books—for Adam to lug upstairs.

    The room was far more than he had hoped for. Large and light, it had a floor of polished deep-red tiles, a beamed ceiling and two windows giving onto a leafy garden out back. It was furnished with the bare essentials: a wrought-iron bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. As requested, there was also a desk, though no chair, which brought a sharp rebuke from Signora Fanelli.

    Iacopo skulked off in search of one, his parting glance holding Adam to blame for this public humiliation. He returned with the chair and disappeared again while Signora Fanelli was still demonstrating the idiosyncrasies of the bathroom plumbing to Adam.

    Adam declared the room to be "perfetto."

    "Perfetta,"she corrected him. "Una cameraperfetta."

    She relieved him of his passport, flashed him a smile and left. Only her perfume remained—a faint scent of roses hanging lightly in the air.

    He hefted his suitcase onto the worm-eaten chest at the end of the bed and began to unpack. She must have had the boy young— seventeen, eighteen—though you'd have said even younger judging by her looks. For some reason he'd pictured an elderly woman, small in stature and of no mean girth. Instead, he was being housed by a stringier version of Gina Lollobrigida in Trapeze.

    It was a pleasing thought.

    Another image from the same film barged its way into his head unbidden—Burt Lancaster's overmuscled physique squeezed into a leotard—and the moment passed.

    The road to Villa Docci proved to be a dusty white track following the crest of a high spur to the north of town. It rose and fell past ocher-washed farmhouses, hay meadows giving way to olive groves and vineyards tucked behind high hedgerows ablaze with honeysuckle, mallow and blood-red poppies. His mother would have been thrilled, stopping every so often to call his attention to some plant or flower. That was her way. But all Adam was aware of was the mocking chant of the cicadas pulsing in time to the pitiless heat.