‘It’s never been very real, particularly if you happened to be a “stateless alien” of Hungarian or Jewish origin. But it does exist. And some of the things that happened there definitely weren’t imaginary.’

‘Like what?’

It was Flavia’s turn to rise, though with evident reluctance, to the perceived challenge.

‘Like the sealed rooms. They couldn’t afford gas chambers, so they just locked them up and left them to suffocate.’

Rodolfo leaned over her and took a cigarette.

‘What’s all this got to do with Vincenzo, precisely?’ he enquired in the pedantic tone, unwittingly borrowed from Professor Ugo himself, that he employed in the latter’s classes.

Flavia took a long time to answer, as though her reply had to travel all the way back from the planet she had been observing earlier, situated at a distance that made even light lame.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last. ‘I know only that he is very strong. So am I, but I may not be here to take care of you. And you are not strong, caro mio. You’re very sweet and intelligent, but you’re weak. The man you are living with is none of those things. So be careful.’

4

Gemma Santini stood in her nightdress, dispassionately surveying the ravages of time in the mirror above the dressing table. Not too bad, all things considered, was her conclusion. Some decorative details might have succumbed to wear and tear, and the odd patch of pediment gone missing, but the Goths and Vandals had yet to lay waste to everything in sight. In short, she still felt reasonably confident that she could get a date, if it should come to that.

Which it very well might, she reflected. This was an uncomfortable thought, but Gemma had never felt at ease with anything but the truth, however inconvenient it might be. Facts had to be faced, whether they were the facts about her own face, as reflected in the bedroom mirror, or about the man in her life, as reflected in the kaleidoscopic sequence of grotesque and disturbing patterns into which their life together had recently disintegrated.