all that, I am sick of all that. I am done with the past; at a certain point when I look back a line is drawn stark across the view, as if a landslide had happened there. The girl was following me at a careful, fixed distance. Whenever I stopped she too would stop and turn her head away and stare at something intently. The dark dress and thonged sandals that she wore gave her an Attic look: Electra astray in the city of tombs. I pushed myself onward, and presently arrived again in the little piazza before the Carignano palace. The afternoon had woken from its lunchtime torpor. Little cars buzzed in and out of busy streets. Here was the bronze plaque on the wall I had been seeking. Three steps led up to a narrow, tall door. When I pressed the bell a voice squawked at me from the grilled mouth of a metal box on the wall and the door lock clicked. I stepped inside. Grey walls, and the musty, hot smell of an airless indoors. Cass Cleave was still crossing the street; I considered letting the front door swing shut in her face, as I had tried to let the door of the caffè knock over Carrot Head, but I relented, and held it open for her, grudgingly. Yet as we climbed the stairs I saw myself in my imagination stop and turn and take her in my irresistible grasp and rip apart her clothes to press the length of myself against her. Even her nakedness would not be enough, I would open up her flesh itself like a coat, unzip her from instep to sternum and climb bodily into her, feel her shocked heart gulp and skip, her lungs shuddering, clasp her blood-wet bones in my hands. At the top of the third flight the ferrule of my walking stick lodged itself in a crevice in the scuffed marble step and as I levered it wrathfully back and forth in the effort of freeing it I had a vision of the entire building rocking and swaying and tearing loose of its foundations and crashing forward in an avalanche of falling masonry into the astonished and cowering piazza.
Here was a door of frosted glass. I rapped on the pane with the handle of my stick. No response. I cleared my throat, Cass Cleave cleared hers. I pointed to the name painted on the glass of the door in gold lettering. “Fino,” I said, nodding. “You see? That is the family who rented him a room.” We waited. I knocked again, and at last the door was opened by a diminutive, homuncular young woman wearing a drab dress like Cass Cleave’s and old-fashioned spectacles with heavy black frames. She sidled forward and quickly drew the door to behind her, closing off whatever might have been glimpsed of the room, although a faint smell of something cooking did escape. She greeted us diffidently and stood looking sidelong down at our feet, incurious and still. She held her hands joined before her, moving them about each other in a slow, caressing, washing motion. I asked if we might be allowed inside to see the room where the philosopher had lived. She frowned, and her hands stopped moving. “Nietzsche,” I said, loudly. “Friedrich Nietzsche!” The name sounded absurd, like a sneeze; it was swallowed in the stairwell and rang back an echo that seemed to snigger. The young woman pondered, still with her eyes on the floor. There was a small, furry mole beside her left nostril toward which my eye kept straying. She shook her head slowly. No one of that name lived here, she said. She had a strange, low, sibilant way of speaking, pausing for a second on a word and making it buzz deep in her throat, a sound like that which a cat makes when it is being stroked. “I don’t mean
now,
” I said, fairly bellowing. “A long time ago! He lived here.
Il grande filosofo!
” I pointed again to the name on the door, I mentioned the plaque on the wall outside. She would only keep on shaking her head, remote, unapologetic, immovable. Once she raised her eyes sideways for a second and with a flicker of interest took in Cass Cleave’s naked throat and the twin pale folds of freckled flesh where the
Here was a door of frosted glass. I rapped on the pane with the handle of my stick. No response. I cleared my throat, Cass Cleave cleared hers. I pointed to the name painted on the glass of the door in gold lettering. “Fino,” I said, nodding. “You see? That is the family who rented him a room.” We waited. I knocked again, and at last the door was opened by a diminutive, homuncular young woman wearing a drab dress like Cass Cleave’s and old-fashioned spectacles with heavy black frames. She sidled forward and quickly drew the door to behind her, closing off whatever might have been glimpsed of the room, although a faint smell of something cooking did escape. She greeted us diffidently and stood looking sidelong down at our feet, incurious and still. She held her hands joined before her, moving them about each other in a slow, caressing, washing motion. I asked if we might be allowed inside to see the room where the philosopher had lived. She frowned, and her hands stopped moving. “Nietzsche,” I said, loudly. “Friedrich Nietzsche!” The name sounded absurd, like a sneeze; it was swallowed in the stairwell and rang back an echo that seemed to snigger. The young woman pondered, still with her eyes on the floor. There was a small, furry mole beside her left nostril toward which my eye kept straying. She shook her head slowly. No one of that name lived here, she said. She had a strange, low, sibilant way of speaking, pausing for a second on a word and making it buzz deep in her throat, a sound like that which a cat makes when it is being stroked. “I don’t mean
now,
” I said, fairly bellowing. “A long time ago! He lived here.
Il grande filosofo!
” I pointed again to the name on the door, I mentioned the plaque on the wall outside. She would only keep on shaking her head, remote, unapologetic, immovable. Once she raised her eyes sideways for a second and with a flicker of interest took in Cass Cleave’s naked throat and the twin pale folds of freckled flesh where the
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