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in the draft. The azaleas in the conservatory. Afternoon light. Have a good trip.
    Alice turned and walked through the garden, out to the street, and to the cab. She got into the back, rolled down the window and waved. Maja waved back. She said somethingto the child, the child waved too. The cab started up. Maja stepped inside the front hall with the child, closing the door behind her.

II
Conrad

    They had directions for getting there. Conrad had sent them to Alice in Berlin the old-fashioned way, by mail: the address, telephone number, and a little sketch of the house in which he and Lotte lived, a white rectangle, and the yellow house south of it. Conrad’s handwriting was delicate and shaky, already familiar to her. How quickly you can get to know someone’s handwriting, Alice thought, much more quickly than the person himself. The sketch was in her lap. She was wearing a crumpled, flowered skirt and sitting in the passenger seat. Anna was sleeping in the back, her head leaning against her backpack, her arm over her face. The Romanian was driving. Ever since they had crossed the border into Italy, he had been speaking Italian.Seemed to have become another person. He asked, Know what the word for cream is in Italian? Alice said she didn’t know. Why of all things, cream? Incomprehensible.
    And the other way round – from Italian into German –
macchiato
?
Latte macchiato
?
    I don’t know, Alice said Aren’t you listening to me? I don’t know it the other way round either.
    Stained milk, the Romanian said. Stained milk.
    They took the Rovereto Sud exit. Continuing in the direction of Riva, still thirty kilometres to Gargnano Bogliaco. Then the mountains opened up to a view of the lake. Glorious. Dark blue. Countless white sails, a flotilla. It got hotter and yet at the same time cooler – all you had to do was look at the water. The water is ice cold; it’s a mountain lake, after all, said the Romanian who had been here before.
    Frosta
or something, Alice said irritably.
    Something like that, the Romanian said, smiling to himself. He’d also been holding the wheel differently since they’d crossed the border, more relaxed, with just his left hand, steering with just his left hand into a tunnel. Its blackness took her breath away until she realised that she ought to take off her sunglasses. Anna, in the back seat, woke up. They were gliding out of the tunnel again – cypresses to the right, the lake to the left, blinding light and very sharp turns, then another tunnel. Can you sense your pupils contracting, Alice said to Anna, turning round, and she felt how sweaty she was.
    This is crazy, Anna said. We’ve got to stop, right now. I feel really sick.
    They stopped after a bend in the road. Anna and Alice stood next to each other beside a stone parapet and looked out over the water, so misty in the distance, you couldn’t see the other shore. Palm trees. Lemon trees. The mountains, dark and gloomy. There was nothing but the mountains, then the road, then the water. Actually no landscape, little space for people, cramped and spacious at the same time.
    Do you think this is beautiful? Anna asked.
    I don’t know, Alice said. It probably is very beautiful. Isn’t it?
    The Romanian, standing somewhere behind them clicked the shutter of his camera. They could hear it. A panoramic view: Anna and Alice at the lake.
    OK, Alice said, you have to keep your eyes open now. I think we’ll be there soon.
Attenzione, capito?
    Five o’clock in the afternoon on the road between Gargnano Bogliaco and Toscolano-Maderno. Seen from above, a little car on the road that runs along the shore of the lake – Anna in the back, the Romanian and Alice in the front, baggage in the boot, water bottles rolling around on the floor and ashtrays full of cigarette butts, paper ice-cream wrappers and foil from packs of cigarettes. The excitement now infects all three, the car windows