Watermark

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any moons ago the dollar was 870 lire and I was thirty-two. The globe, too, was lighter by two billion souls, and the bar at the stazione where I'd arrived on that cold December night was empty. I was standing there waiting for the only person I knew in that city to meet me. She was quite late.

Every traveler knows this fix: this mixture of fatigue and apprehension. It's the time of staring down clock faces and timetables, of scrutinizing varicose marble under your feet, ofinhaling ammonia and that dull smell elicitedon cold winter nights by locomotives' cast iron. I did all this.

Save for the yawning bartender and im­mobile Buddha-like matrona at the cash regis­ter, there was no one in sight. However, we were of no use to each other: my sole currency in their language, the term "espresso," was al­ready spent; I'd used it twice. I'd also bought from them my first pack ever of what in years to come was to stand for "Merde Statale," "Movimento Sociale," and "Morte Sicura": my first pack of MS. So I lifted my bags and stepped outside.

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