He found it difficult to fall asleep on the train, shaking from side to side. He noticed that whenever the train passed a cemetery the travellers around him crossed themselves. She’s in rough shape herself. 

 

Gelato for tonsils, he remembered. Accompanying a girl and her father to have her tonsils out. She had taken one look at the ward full of other children and simply refused. This, the most adaptable and genial of children, suddenly turned into a stone of refusal, adamant. No one was ripping anything out of her throat though the wisdom of the day advised it. She would live with it in, whatever “it” looked like. He still had no idea what a tonsil was. 

 

Caravaggio stood with his valise at the far end of the hall.He put the bag down and waved across the darkness and the intermittent pools of candlelight. There was no clatter of footsteps as he walked towards her, not a sound on the floor, and that surprised her, was somehow familiar and comforting to her, that he could approach this privacy of hers and the English patient’s without loudness.