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went behind the bar, and without Leonardo saying anything made him a cappuccino without froth. When it was ready he put it down on the bar and, giving an expressionless glance at the dog’s snout sticking out of Leonardo’s pocket, went back to his cards. His companions had totaled the score and dealt the cards for the next hand. All four looked contrite, as if only playing to punish themselves.
    “But I think,” the man with the postman said, “they must be found. We have to know what they look like and find out what they plan to do.”
    Leonardo looked down at Bauschan’s smooth head. A fly had settled on one of the dog’s ears; he smiled and blew it away.
    “I’d like to know what the professor thinks,” the postman said.
    Leonardo looked at him. In the first months after his return, the postman had come every morning to deliver letters from the lawyer, the court, the publisher, and readers offering either support or expressing disappointment at what had happened, but with the passing of time the only letters that kept arriving were written in his own hand and returned by the woman to whom he had sent them. A correspondence that made sure Leonardo and the postman still met roughly once a week.
    “About what?” Leonardo said.
    “We know you’re just back from a trip. You must have some idea about what’s going on.”
    “The professor has other things to think about,” said one of those at the table. “Unlike the rest of us.”
    No one laughed, but the men near the fridge exchanged glances with the card players. Leonardo took a sip of coffee and wiped his lips with a napkin from the dispenser.
    “I saw nothing unusual,” he said.
    The postman drank from the glass of white wine he had on the freezer.
    “You must have been lucky,” he said smiling. “To listen to this group it seems they’re everywhere.”
    An alarm went off. Danilo pressed a button on his big wristwatch and the alarm stopped, then he went to the counter and used a remote control to switch on the television in the corner of the room. The other players had already put down their cards and turned their chairs to face the screen. After the music introducing the broadcast, a woman newsreader with an expensive hairdo commented on images of an encampment in the middle of a forest with shacks of cardboard and sheet metal hidden in luxuriant vegetation. The camera showed men in uniform circulating among these rudimentary shelters with their camp beds and improvised pallets, blankets, gas cookers, and other objects.
    Finishing his cappuccino, Leonardo walked toward a wall with two doors, one leading to the toilet and the other marked PRIVATE . A man with a shaved head was sitting on the floor in the space between two video poker machines. His sharp, serious face was like a tool used for prying open doors. His eyes were black but not at all malicious.
    “Will you come to supper with me, Sebastiano?” Leonardo asked.
    The man looked up but did not move. His legs were drawn up to his chest, hiding his mouth.
    “Please come, we’ll make some pasta,” Leonardo said.
    It seemed to take Sebastiano a long time to get to his feet, and he made Leonardo, himself more than one meter eighty tall, look tiny. Sebastiano was as thin as a rake. He had large bones and hairy legs sticking out from a pair of Bermuda shorts stained with fruit. He looked like nothing so much as an enormous prehistoric bird.
    “Can I pay?” Leonardo asked, turning to the bar.
    Without taking his eyes off the television screen, Danilo placed the palm of his hand on a black book beside the till to indicate that he had marked it down. Now the newsreader with the expensive hairdo was giving the latest news about the eastern front, while a small panel was showing images of a roadblock where three National Guards armed with machine guns were forcing several unkempt and very dirty people to get out of a car.
    Before he left the village, Leonardo gave Elio the money he should have