'It didn't come from in here. It came from the other side.

Across the canal. Just like that damned boat.'

Zen took her by the arm, which felt alarmingly fragile.

Widowed by the war, his mother had confronted the world alone on his behalf, wresting concessions from tradesmen and bureaucrats, labouring at menial jobs to eke out her pension, cooking, cleaning, sewing, mending and making do, tirelessly and ingeniously hollowing out and shoring up a space for her son to grow up in. Small wonder, he thought, that the effort had reduced her to this pittance of a person, scared of noises and the dark, with no interest in anything but the television serials she watched, whose plots and characters were gradually becoming confused in her mind. Such motherhood as she had known was like those industrial jobs that leave workers crippled and broken, the only difference being that there was no one mothers could sue for damages.

Zen led her back into the musty bedroom she occupied at the back of the apartment, filled with the furniture she had brought with her from their home in Venice. The pieces were all elaborately carved from some wood as hard, dark and heavy as iron. They covered every inch of wall space, blocking up the fire escape as well as most of the window, which anyway she always kept tightly shuttered.

'Are you going to stay up and watch the rest of that film?' she asked as he tucked her in.

'Yes, mamma, don't worry, I'll be just in there. If you hear anything, it's only me.'

'It didn't come from in there! Anyway, I told you who did it. The skinny one in the swimming costume.'

'I know, mamma,' he murmured wearily. 'That's what everyone thinks.'

He wandered back to the living room just as two o'clock began to strike from the churches in the Vatican. Zen stood surveying the familiar faces locked up on the flickering screen. They were familiar not just to him, but to everyone who had watched television or looked at the papers that autumn. For months the news had been dominated by the dramatic events and still more sensational implications of the 'Burolo affair'.