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book and nothing that is not." A beautiful dedication, I thought. A very beautiful dedication.

In the first pages I recognized San Michele: "The blown bridge was being repaired with a snarl of riveting hammers, and eight hundred yards away the smashed buildings and outbuildings of what was now a ruined country house once built by Longhena showed where the mediums had dropped their loads."

Sixty times they dropped their load. Sixty times, and I closed my eyes remembering.

Instead of the house now no more rubble, just an expanse of white gravel. For a long time I had not found the courage to return. Then one day, suddenly, I had taken the train. As the train slowed down to take the bridge over the Tagliamento, with an effort I had turned my head and looked at my great trees, mutilated giants. Where before the outline of the house stood out, nothing. Nothing. Only the sky.

I had seen myself again, as a child, arriving at that same station in Latisana, across the river. Getting off the train, like every time running towards the carriage where, sitting on the box, old Gigi was waiting for us. The carriage crossed Latisana, skirted the embankment, passed over the bridge parallel to that of the railway and from up there you could see the women beating and rinsing their clothes, singing. On the opposite side of the river there were the houses and the red bricks of the village of San Michele, there is the monument to the fallen of the Great War - when the house was requisitioned and transformed into a hospital for the veterans of Caporetto - there is the wrought iron gate already open to receive us.

The carriage was not yet completely stopped but I had already gotten off. I immediately went to the kitchen to embrace Lisa and Stefano, my dear Stefano who had always known me. Having come...