The scene before him looked as flat and notional as a theatrical backdrop, two dimensions passing uneasily for three. Above, the azure sky, streaked with diaphanous shreds of white haze. Below this vast benignity, the clustered ombrelloni, their bright primary colours an ensign declaring the ownership of each strip of beach. The ones in the foreground were all green, as were the chairs and loungers, but behind them came serried ranks of red, yellow, blue in various shades. The white poles beneath acted as the only vertical element in the scene, breaking the seemingly endless stretch of beach into manageable rooms and apartments lacking only walls and a ceiling.

Horizontally, the divisions were still more strongly marked. Each bathing establishment had an internal passageway in the form of a boardwalk bisecting its allotment. There were two rows of ombrellone on either side, each centred on its own parasol positioned exactly two and a half metres from its neighbours. At the end of the boardwalk, below the high tide line, was the sea, but no one except the children paid much attention to that. The sea was merely a necessary pretext for everything else: the sensual languor, the total indolence, the studied informality of manners, the varying degrees of nudity on display. If anything, the sand -immaculately cleaned, smoothed and groomed each morning by Franco and his two sons – was the more palpable attraction.

Soaking up the sun each day, until by lunchtime a pair of sandals became a necessity for those with sensitive soles, then radiating it back through the late afternoon and early evening, the dense expanse of tan granules responded to the serene sky above, the precession of the shadows cast by the parasols marking the progress of another flawless, utterly predictable day at the beach.

There were people in view too, of course. Indeed, the bagno was surprisingly hill for a weekday. But Zen was an outsider to all the complex and overlapping cliques, circles and extended families, so for him the human element was of less interest and importance than the setting, mere extras dotted about as part of the background.