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began to run again.
    â€œThese are very beautiful words,” the doctor said.
    â€œWhere in Christ is Pelo?” Copa said.
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    T HE IRON GRILLWORK of the catwalk that circles the top of the water tower had been burning for half the day and it was hot to the touch, but Bombolini never felt the burning when he crawled up onto the walk. He sank onto the iron and almost at once he slept. He had no intention of ever getting off the tower. He had prepared himself to die. He even yearned for the release of dropping softly down through the softness of the afternoon sky. He knew the people in the piazza were waiting for his last performance and he wouldn’t disappoint them, but at the moment he was too tired even to contemplate dying. That would have to wait until he woke again, unless he rolled off the walk while he slept. Until then he lay stretched on the iron slats and burned.
    When he did wake he was conscious of three things. His eyes were pressed against the open slots of the grillwork and he could see from the shadows of things far below him that time, a good deal of time, had passed. Part of his body was in shadow. He watched an ox plod along a track through the terraces. The road was ankle-deep in dust, and white and bone dry, and it looked as if it had been drawn through the green terraces by a piece of white chalk. At each step a plume of dust spiraled up behind the cart and hung in the still air of late afternoon like a white banner.
    I am thirsty, Bombolini thought. I am dying of thirst.
    He could see the people working on the terraces in the vineyards, deep among the vines, working in the shaded tunnels of fat, green grape leaves, resting in the cool of the wine-green shade. And he could hear the sound of water bubbling by his ear, just on the other side of the thin concrete skin of the water tank.
    I am being driven crazy, Bombolini thought.
    And finally he became conscious that someone else was on the tower with him. From the other side of the tank came a rhythmic sound, a soft and steady lapping like waves on the side of an anchored boat.
    Before I roll off I will find out who is on the tower, he told himself. He tried to say something, but there was no sound. He tried to move and found that it was impossible. I can’t even kill myself, he said to himself, and he sighed, and then his eyes saw the wine bottle, the cork out of the neck, standing at attention like a little soldier a few inches away from his hand.
    I will drink a little of this wine and then roll off, he told himself.
    The wine was hot from the sun, but the heat didn’t bother Bombolini. He could feel the wine run down his throat and enter his stomach and then begin to course through the bulk of his body as if it were the sun itself. The second swallow was easier and each one after that became easier, every mouthful exploding inside him like a small hot sun, the source of life itself running inside him. He could feel it go poom in his stomach. The wine was working for Italo Bombolini the way a transfusion works for a man who has lost too much blood. When he was through with the bottle he found he could sit up, and he leaned against the concrete and all at once allowed his legs to drop over the side of the catwalk, which caused a great shout from the piazza.
    â€œWho’s on the tower?” he said.
    â€œFabio.”
    The sound stopped but then it resumed, the slap, slap of the paintbrush against the concrete.
    â€œI knew it would be Fabio,” Bombolini said. It was an effort for him to talk. “If anyone would come for me I knew it would be Fabio. Fabio?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œGod shower His blessings on you, Fabio.”
    Fabio was unable to answer. Things like this embarrass the people here. It might be all right for Sicilians, but not here. They are very emotional and vulgar and sentimental, much too emotional for us.
    â€œLet me see you, Fabio.”
    â€œNo. When we both are on the same side the