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as RUE JERRY ROTH (MARIN ÉMÉRITE). The street sign was displayed on a faded red barn, now turned into a garage for three wonderful cars: a wood-paneled station wagon, a Volkswagen van, and a sleek silver two-seater, Japanese and new. One evening, while walking along the highway, I was passed from behind by the wood-paneled station wagon, and my heart quickened involuntarily, as though I’d seen a star.

I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me that my heart beat the way it did. For having walked by his house so many times, and gleaned with such pleasure all the small and large details of the world he had made, I admired him. I would have liked him for a friend. Even more, I would have liked him to gather me into his family, a family I imagined as manifesting the same humor and whimsy and discernment that was evident everywhere in his house and on his land. For I knew there must be a family, moving through the clean rooms of the house, laughing and groaning, just beyond the reach of what I could see.

That same evening I returned to the farmhouse, still elated by the sight of the station wagon, to find that there was swordfish for dinner. And tired of my own reticence, I decided I wanted to talk about Jerry Roth. Not to the woman who had cooked the swordfish, with whom I usually talked, but to the people who were eating it with me. I think I would have liked the farmhouse much more if it hadn’t been for those eight other people, who would emerge from their rooms at the end of the afternoon, looking dazed and replete. They took turns walking to the village to buy bottles of wine that were opened and poured at dinner. I had to wait for a pause in the conversation; the wine made them talkative, and they had hit again upon a favorite subject: the other farmhouses, castles, villas, and cottages where they had been guests in the past.

Potatoes. At every meal, said Laszlo. Boiled or fried. Or cold, cut up in little chunks and mixed together with a herb I couldn’t identify.

But it’s Italy! Anna cried.

My point, Laszlo said irritably, and jiggled the wine in his glass. Not what one would expect.

Mary spoke: The first week with the baronessa, I could barely eat, she made me so nervous. And all those little dogs underfoot. I was sure I was going to step on one and cripple it. But the food was good; there were no potatoes.

Ah, so you’ve been to Santa Maddalena, Laszlo said with a small sigh of resentment.

The platter of swordfish was heaved up into the air and then made its precarious way around the table for a second time.

They are fattening me up here, Cesar said, helping himself.

Haven’t you seen that great big oven there in the back? Behind the barn? Erga said. We’re going to be plump and delicious when we’re done.

She was looking at her plate as she said this, and without eye contact, I could not tell how merrily she intended it. We ate in silence, and for a fleeting moment it seemed possible that we had all been tricked, that this gift of quietude was in fact a term of captivity and terror.

Have you tried walking? I asked them finally. I find that walking helps.

Mary wiped her mouth and gently pushed back her chair.

I just run, she said, I run as fast as I can.

And so it was that I was running the next time I saw the house of Jerry Roth. By that point the running had become painful and strange to me. At first, when I began to run, I felt surprised by my lightness, I felt young and strong, I felt like a child running ecstatically, for no reason at all. But soon that feeling changed and my breath started to disappear. I had to pause to hitch up my jeans and wipe the fog from my glasses. Then, out of perversity, I began running again. Just to that tree, I told myself. And after the tree, an electrical pole, a mailbox, a NO TRESPASSING sign. I kept promising myself that upon reaching these landmarks I would stop, yet I didn’t stop, I continued to run, trying to be swift, becoming more damp and anguished as I passed each marker and found another just a little farther on. I must have been bleeding for some time before I noticed it. I suppose I thought the wetness slipping down my legs was sweat. So what made me notice? Maybe the smell, the faint animal smell, a smell that has always made me think of wounded prey in the underbrush, or a mother licking afterbirth off her young. Foolishly, I had not been expecting it. In the deepest part of me, I had not believed that my body would return to normal, or that one day I would be well again.

I’m not sure if it was the thought of being well or the memory of getting sick that affected me. But either way, I bent over and started to cry. For the first time I wanted help, but predictably no one was near; there was a detached humming in the air, coming from the hidden insects or the electrical lines overhead. The horses and cows were absent from the fields. The sun burned indistinctly behind a thin screen of clouds. I limped out to the middle of the road, but I couldn’t see any trucks in the distance, approaching me at dangerous speeds. I was at a loss. I didn’t even know what to call the place where I had stopped. There was a route number posted on a sign a few hundred yards ahead, but that number had no meaning for me.

Standing there in the road, I was visited by an idea, startling and clear. It was the idea of crisis; the idea that I was in the midst