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MARTINO AND GIANNI were waiting for Lea to finish adding cheese to the polenta. There was something about her that was difficult to put a finger on, something confusing. Still, she was behaving as usual: quick, almost brusque. She opened a window to air the kitchen, which was hot because of the cooker.

“You’re shining like polished silver tonight. What’s gotten into you?” asked Gianni.

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Really, Lea, you haven’t had a little tipple while you’ve been cooking?”

“No, but I’d love one now.”

Gianni poured her some red wine, a drop for Martino, too, just enough to wet his lips. It seemed horribly sour to him—tongue-curling—and he immediately ate a piece of cheese to chase it down. He decided they wouldn’t be suspicious if he tried to talk about Silvia. They’d never imagine him capable of playing a double game like a secret agent.

“In your opinion, if someone runs away and hides and doesn’t come out, are they crazy?”

“Are you thinking about the teacher?”

“Yes,” he admitted. He must not have been very subtle.

Gianni took him seriously. He said he couldn’t speak as a doctor, a psychiatrist, only as someone who observed people and read books. Madness, in his view, wasn’t something that existed outside people of sound mind, but as a possibility within each of us.

“Maybe that’s why it makes us uneasy. When we’re extremely sad, disappointed, frightened, or angry,” he said, “we may step into it. The possibility can become reality for a minute, weeks, sometimes years. There are things that really scramble your brain: losing someone you love or being mistreated as a child. Some of us can withstand the blows and some can’t. I know people, for example, who have sunk into great sadness. It’s called depression. They literally don’t eat or get out of bed. Are they ill? Are they crazy? That’s not important: the most important thing is to understand whether they want help and how they want it. Of course, there are also more serious, more obvious cases. Where it’s easy to say: crazy. People who are convinced that they’re Napoleon reincarnated, who slap themselves, or cut off two fingers with an axe like Guerino, that old man, just because he was ordered to do so by the voice of his father, who’d been dead for twenty years.”

“Who? That old guy carried around by a donkey?” asked Lea.

“That’s the one.”

“But someone who hides . . .” Martino took it up again.

“Martino, it’s best to be honest,” his mother interrupted. “What’s most likely is that the teacher put an end to her life. That she’s not coming back.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “These are tough things, I know. I know, Ratìn.”

Martino looked at Gianni, who held his palms up as if to say: anything is possible. But he looked blank.