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we’d succeeded. I went out, followed by the shiny beetle eyes of the policemen.
    It was a good plan, I thought; I was pleased with myself for having arranged it. And suddenly I wanted Arthur to know how clever I’d been. He always thought I was too disorganized to plot my way across the floor and out the door, much less out of the country. I was the one who would charge off to do the shopping with a carefully drawn-up list, many of the items suggested by him, and forget my handbag, come back for it, forget the car keys, drive away, forget the list; or return with two tins of caviar and a box of fancy crackers and a half bottle of champagne, then try to justify these treasures by telling him they were on sale, a lie every time but the first. I would love him to know I’d done something complicated and dangerous without making a single mistake. I’d always wanted to do something he would admire.
    Remembering the caviar made me hungry. I crossed the market square to the main grocery store, where you could get tins and packages, and bought another box of Peek Freans and some cheese and pasta. Outside, near the café, there was an ancient vegetable truck; that must have been the horn I’d heard earlier. It was surrounded by plump housewives, in their morning cotton dresses and bare legs, calling their orders and waving their bundles of paper money. The vegetable man was young, with an oiled mane of hair; he stood in the back of the truck, filling baskets and joking with the women. When I walked over he grinned at me and shouted something that made the women laugh and shriek. He offered me a bunch of grapes, wiggling it suggestively, but I wasn’t up to it, my vocabulary was too limited; so I went instead to the regular vegetable stand. The produce wasn’t as fresh but the man was old and kindly and I could get away with pointing.
    At the butcher’s I bought two expensive, paper-thin slices of beef, which I knew would have a pallid taste. It was from yearlings, because no one could afford to pasture a cow for longer than that, and I never did learn to cook it properly, it always came out like vinyl.
    I walked back down the hill, carrying my packages. My red Hertz Rent-A-Car was parked opposite the wrought-iron gate that led to the path. I’d got it at the airport and there was already a scratch on it, from a street in Rome that turned out to be one-way,
senso unico
. Some of the town’s children were clustered around it, drawing pictures in the film of dust that covered it, peeping through the windows almost fearfully, running their hands along the fenders. When they saw me they drew back from the car and huddled, whispering.
    I smiled at them, thinking how charming they looked, with their round brown eyes, alert as a squirrel’s; several had blond hair, startling against their olive skin, and I remembered having been told that the barbarians used to come this way, ten or fifteen centuries ago. That was why all the towns were built on hills.
    “Bongiorno”
I said to them. They giggled shyly. I turned in at the gate and crunched down the path.
Two
dwarfish hens, the color of shredded cardboard, scuttled out of my way. Halfway down I stopped: I was trying to remember whether or not I’d locked the door. Despite my apparent safety, I couldn’t afford to get careless or lazy. It was irrational, but I had the feeling that there was someone inside the flat, sitting in the chair by the window, waiting for me.

CHAPTER FOUR
    B ut there was nobody in the flat. If anything, it was emptier than ever. I cooked lunch without mishap, nothing exploded or boiled over, and ate it at the table. Soon, I thought, I’d be eating in the kitchen, standing up, out of the pots and pans. That was how people got when they lived alone. I felt I should try to establish some sort of routine.
    After lunch I counted my money, some in cash, some in traveler’s checks. There was less than I’d thought, as always; I’d have to get down to business