Then, the real customers started to wander down from the Ponte Garibaldi and the Ponte Sisto. After half an hour, the patch of sand between the embankment and the floating platform was as busy as an ant-hill. Nando1 was sitting on the swing, his back to me. He was about ten years old, scrawny and misshapen, with a large tuft of blond hair above his narrow face, on which a large mouth smiled brightly.

Romolé careened into the city marketplace. He was pedaling hard, staring straight ahead without looking right or left; he had decided that if a cop yelled at him to show his permit, he would pretend not to hear.