and splashing. Italians, he had always supposed, were devoted to art. Now he knew better: they were devoted to motorboats and tennis and jazz, with a devotion as whole-souled as that of the young Marples and Daggetts and Sipes of the North Shore. And how unutterably wise of them!
A young lady from Genoa, who lived at a shady hotel with means of support only too visible, rolled her dark eyes at him one evening on the street at Rapallo and walked toward a summer cafe which was built on a platform over the sea, and he followed her to her table as though he were the most accomplished flaneur in Europe. Together they drove in a carriage down the winding coast road to view the festa being celebrated in a neighboring village. Priests and children and fishermen paraded past them, all in robes of white and red, bearing the image of an agonizing saint and a silver Christ on the cross, while the band at the head of the procession blared out an ancient march of Sousa and Grover drew into his nostrils a pungent odor compounded of incense and a provocative scent of Bertelli's. The sky was ablaze with rockets shot off to the glory of God, and Grover kissed his new acquaintance straight on the mouth, as they drove back to the shady hotel, and when they awoke it was time for the morning swim. And I don't care if I drown, he said from the depths of his soul.
Tiring of one village he would journey on to another, trying new dishes, sending colored postcards to
