Sandro was the biggest little one, and I recounted Treasure Island for him. I told him how, departing from the Admiral Benbow Inn, I had sailed off on the schooner Hispaniola, along with Lord Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and Captain Smollett, but by the end his two favorite characters seemed to be Long John Silver, because of his wooden leg, and that poor wretch Ben Gunn. His eyes grew big with excitement, he began seeing pirates lying in wait in the shrubs, kept saying, "More, more," and then, "That’s enough," because once we had gained Captain Flint’s treasure the story was over. As compensation we sang Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest-Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum over and over.

For Giangio and Luca, I did my best to conjure up the naughtiness of Giannino Stoppani from The Diary of the Hurricane Boy. When I inserted the stick up through the drainage hole in the bottom of Aunt Bettina’s pot of dittany, or when I yanked Signor Venanzio’s last tooth out with a fishhook, they laughed endlessly, though who knows how much sense those stories made to three-year-olds. The tales’ best audience may have been Carla and Nicoletta, who had never been told a thing (a sad sign of the times) about Gian the Hurricane Boy.

But for them, I was more interested in explaining how, in the guise of Rocambole, I had eliminated my mentor in the art of crime, Sir William, now blind but nonetheless an embarrassing witness to my past, by throwing him to the ground and driving a long, sharp hat pin into the nape of his neck, and I had only to remove the small spot of blood that had formed in his hair for everyone to think he had had an apoplectic stroke.

Paola yelled that I should not be telling such stories in front of the children, and thank God nobody kept hat pins lying around the house these days, otherwise they would probably try one out on the cat. But more than anything she was intrigued by the fact that I had told all those things as if they had happened to me.

"If you’re doing that to entertain the kids," she said, "that’s one thing, but if not, then you’re identifying too much with what you’re reading, which is to say you’re borrowing other people’s memory. Are you clear about the distance between you and these stories?"

"Come on," I said, "I may be an amnesiac, but I’m not crazy. I do it for the kids!"

"Let’s hope so," she said. "But you came to Solara to rediscover yourself, because you felt oppressed by an encyclopedia full of Homer, Manzoni, and Flaubert, and now you’ve entered the encyclopedia of pulp literature. It’s not a step forward."

"Yes it is," I replied, "first of all because Stevenson isn’t pulp literature, and second because it’s not my fault if the guy I’m trying to rediscover devoured pulp literature, and, finally, you’re the very one, with that business about Clarabelle’s treasure, who sent me here."

"That’s true, I’m sorry. If you feel it’s useful for you, go ahead. But be careful, don’t get drunk on what you’re reading." Changing the subject, she asked me about my blood pressure. I lied: I said I had just had it checked and it was 130. That made her happy, poor thing.

When we returned from our outing, Amalia had prepared a lovely snack, with water and fresh lemon for everyone. Then they left.

That evening I was a good boy and went early to bed.

The next morning, I revisited the rooms of the old wing, which I had only breezed through the first time. I went back to my grandfather’s bedroom, at which I had barely glanced, daunted by some reverential awe. There, too, as in all the old bedrooms, was a chest of drawers and a large wardrobe with a mirror.

Inside the wardrobe I found a tremendous surprise. In the back, almost hidden behind several hanging suits to which the scent of old mothballs still clung, were two objects: a horn gramophone, the kind you crank by hand, and a radio. Both were covered with pages from a magazine, which I reassembled: it was the Radiocorriere, a publication devoted to radio programs, an issue from the forties.

An old 78, covered with a layer of dirt, was still in place on the gramophone. I spent half an hour cleaning it, spitting on my handkerchief. The song was "Amapola." I set the gramophone on the chest of drawers, cranked it, and a few muddled sounds came through the horn. You could barely make out the melody. The old gadget had by now attained a state of senile dementia, nothing to be done. After all, it must already have been a museum piece when I was a boy. If I wanted to listen to music of that era, I would have to use the record player I had seen in my grandfather’s study. But the records-where were they? I would have to ask Amalia.

The radio, though it had been protected, was nonetheless coated with fifty years of dust, enough that you could write on it with your finger, and I had to clean it with care. It was a nice mahogany-colored Telefunken (that explained the box I had seen in the attic), with a speaker that was covered in a coarse grille cloth, which may have helped the sound resonate better.

Beside the speaker was the station panel, dark and illegible, and below that three knobs. Evidently it was a valve radio, and when I shook it I could hear something rattle inside. It still had its cord and plug.

I took it into the study, set it gently on the table, and plugged it into an outlet. A near miracle, and a sign that back then they built things to last: the station-panel bulb, though weak, still worked. The rest did not; the valves must have been shot. I knew that somewhere, perhaps in Milan, I could find one of those enthusiasts who are able to refurbish these receivers, because they have warehouses of old parts, like the mechanics who put cars of that period back together using the good bits of junked cars. Then I imagined what an old electrician full of good common sense might tell me: "I don’t want to steal your money. Look, if I get it working again for you, you won’t hear what they broadcast back in those days, you’ll hear what they broadcast today, and so you’re better off buying a new radio, and it’ll cost you less than fixing this one." A clever man. I was playing a losing game. A radio is not an antique book, which you can open and discover what people thought, said, and printed five hundred years ago. That radio would have subjected me, with all its crackling, to horrendous rock music or whatever they call it these days. Like pretending to feel again the fizzy touch of vichy water on your taste buds as you drink a bottle of San Pellegrino just purchased from the supermarket. That broken box in the attic promised me sounds that have been forever lost. If only I could bring them back, like the frozen words of Pantagruel… But although my brain’s memory could conceivably return someday, the memory that consisted of Hertzian waves was now irrecoverable. Solara was of no help when it came to sounds other than the deafening noise of its silences.

But I still had the illuminated panel with the names of the stations-in yellow for medium-wave, red for shortwave, green for long-wave-names that must have mesmerized me as I moved the station indicator in search of unfamiliar sounds from magical cities like Stuttgart, Hilversum, Riga, Tallinn. Names I had never heard before, which I may have associated with Makedonia, Turkish Atika, Virginia, El Kalif, and Stambul. Had I daydreamed more over atlases, or more over that list of stations and their whispers? But there were also domestic names like Milan and Bolzano. I began humming:

When her radio broadcasts from Turin, it means: I’ll wait for you down by the Po, but if she suddenly changes the station, it means: Be careful, my mother is home. Radio Bologna means: I am dreaming about you, Radio Milan means: You feel so far away, Radio Igea, I feel like I’m dying without you, Radio San Remo, I’ll see you later today…