“Turned up at last, has he?” Behind me, Bertie had put a hand on my shoulder.

“Hello, Bertie,” I said. “Where’s your princess?”

“In the loo. So I thought I’d say hello. I hate staring at an empty table, don’t you?”

“Join us,” Dr. Maglione said.

“No, no, she’s quick as a bunny usually. I don’t know how you do it,” he said to my mother. “All those layers.”

My mother laughed.

“And where did you get to last night?” Bertie said to me. “Now you see him, now you don’t.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt. You were about to go into confession.”

“And so should you, once in a while. I know I don’t want to be caught unawares. Between the old stirrup and the ground.” He looked at me. “You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you? Heathen. A fine job you’ve done, Grace.”

“Still, he went to the Accademia,” Gianni said. “So maybe that was his church today.”

“Did you?” Bertie said, looking at me, letting the phrase hang in the air.

“Would you join us for dinner?” Gianni said, polite. Or was he already beginning to tire, seeing the evening before us in our odd triangle, idling talking about Veronese but looking at one another, wary, pretending to be a family?

“Molto gentile, but you’d never forgive me. The boredom of her. Old hunting days in the Piedmont. You don’t want to hear it, I promise you.”

“What about you?” my mother said, laughing.

“Well, I have to. One of life’s little crosses. The husband was a peach, you know. Funny how people find—oh, look sharp, the Inquisition. Been up to anything?”

I turned to find a thickset man in a natty suit coming toward the table. Neatly trimmed mustache and shiny face, a man who might just have come from the barber’s. Gianni stood up, frowning.

“Dottore,” the man said to him. Then a stream of Italian, obviously friendly. He put his hand on Bertie’s arm. “And Signor Howard. I’m sorry, don’t let me interrupt.”

“No, no. My friend Mrs. Miller. Her son Adam. Grace, Inspector Cavallini.”

Cavallini bowed, a stage gesture.

“Inspector?” my mother said. “Police inspector?”

“Yes. Have you done anything wrong?”

“Do people tell you?”

He smiled. “No, usually I have to catch them.” He nodded and touched my hand halfheartedly, glancing at Dr. Maglione.

“And he does. Always,” Bertie said.

“Here? At Harry’s?” my mother said.

“No, here I take Prosecco. Off-duty.” He was enjoying my mother. “You don’t think it would disturb the customers?”

“I think it would make their night.”

He laughed, then said something in Italian to Gianni that I took to be a word of approval, and bowed a leavetaking to the rest of us. “Signora, a great pleasure. Signor Howard, you are behaving yourself?” He wagged his forefinger teasingly.

“Me? I’m one of the good. As you know. Practically Caesar’s wife.”

Cavallini smiled. “Yes, practically,” he said, and headed for the frosted glass door.

“Bertie, give,” my mother said, interested. “How on earth do you know him?”

“I’m a foreign national, you know. We had to report during the war.”

“Report? I thought they locked you up.”

“Irish passport, lovey. Thanks to me dad. So there’s that to be said for him anyway. Convenient being a neutral just then.”

“But weren’t you both?”

“Not here. Green as a clover. Had to be. Otherwise, you know, I’d have had to leave. My pictures, my house. Then what?”

“Yes, then what?” I said.

He looked at me sharply, then back at my mother. “Anyway, they couldn’t have been nicer. Came to the house, had a drink, and that was it. Never even had to go to the station. Now that it’s over, I rather miss it, the little visits.”

“Oh, Bertie, you don’t mean it. He’s creepy.”

“You don’t find him charming?” Bertie said.

“The police?”

Gianni smiled. “Police are men too. In America maybe it’s different.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, they’re not drinking at Harry’s. How can he afford it, aside from anything else?”

“Grace, dear,” Bertie said, “that is exactly the sort of question one should never ask. Not here.”

“You mean he’s—” My mother started, eyes wide, imagining, I suppose, black-market storerooms and goods hidden under raincoats.

“Bertie makes a joke, I think,” Gianni said, calming her. “It’s not so expensive, one drink. Even at Harry’s.”

“But imagine a policeman at ‘21’,” my mother said, still toying with it.

“There she is,” Bertie said, spotting the principessa. “What did I tell you? Less time than it takes to—fresh lipstick too. She’s a wonder. Enjoy your dinner.” He hurried away, intercepting her at their table and helping her with her coat.

“We must go too,” Gianni said. “Have you finished your drink?” He turned, surprised to find me looking at him.

“How is it that you know him?” I said.

“Inspector Cavallini? Sometimes they come to the hospital for help. Medical evidence.”

“Really?” my mother said. “Did you ever solve anything?”

Gianni smiled. “Not yet. Shall we go?” He leaned over to wrap my mother’s fur around her shoulder.

I got up. Dizzy for a second, I pressed against the table for support.

“Are you all right?” he asked, a doctor’s voice.

I nodded. “Just a drink on an empty stomach. I forgot I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Too busy looking at art,” my mother said, amusing herself.

The dining room at the Monaco was formal and starchy—waiters in black tie, silver serving trolleys, soft, flattering lights. Gianni made a pleasant fuss ordering us schie and polenta to start, a winter specialty, then took his time with the wine list. I had a cigarette and looked around the room—a light crowd, off-season, but dressed for an evening out, elegant, as if they, like the quails on the serving cart, had somehow been preserved in aspic. The room was almost as warm as Harry’s, immune to fuel shortages. There were arrangements of winter branches, like abstracts of flowers, ice buckets, the smell of perfume. At one point I noticed Gianni smiling at my mother, and I followed his eyes, wanting just for a minute to see what he did and realized that for them the room was somehow erotic. Not cheap hotels and tepid baths, worn sheets and bare skin, nothing that had made my afternoon exciting. For them the furs and perfume and rich food were part of what sex had become. He was looking at money.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I said, drawing their attention back to the table. “Is he an inspector now?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And he has been—I mean, he consulted you on cases. So that means he was working for the Germans.”

“Technically. At the end. We were an occupied country.”

“But he’s police. Not a doctor or a waiter or something. Police. Why hasn’t he been thrown out?”

“For doing what?”

“Enforcing German laws. And before that—”

“Fascist laws? Yes, you can say it. Well, who knows if he enforced them?” He tasted the wine, the waiter hovering. “Yes, very nice.” We said nothing as the waiter poured.

“But if he didn’t, what makes you think he’ll enforce new ones now?”

Gianni smiled. “Well, it’s a question, yes? But you see, you make the problem for yourself. I don’t expect him to enforce them—not too many anyway. Just the ones we need to live. The others, we bow, we tip our hat, we ignore. Shall we make a toast? To happier times?”

“Yes,” my mother said, raising her glass.

We clinked glasses—celebrating what?

“You’re still troubled by this?” Gianni said, looking at me.

“But if he was a police officer, he must have been a Fascist. I mean, in the party.”

Gianni nodded. “It was required. But what was in his heart, I don’t know. People do things to survive. So we must give them the benefit of the doubt.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” my mother said lightly.

Gianni smiled. “Well, innocent, maybe that goes too far.” He looked at me. “I understand what you mean. But how can I explain it to you? To live under—you know the word tyranny is from the Latin tyrannus. So we have known how to live with this for a long time. You bend. Maybe you think we bend too much, but we look at history and it tells us, the important thing is to survive.” He opened his hand, gesturing. “And we did. Now with this good wine. In this beautiful city. All still here, still beautiful. It’s the Germans who have gone. We survived them too. For us it’s a kind of strength, to bend.” He paused. “When it’s inevitable.”