boy walking home late at night claimed to have been set upon by a howling animal, a human on all fours. But I laughed. You don’t believe in werewolves, do you? Oh yes. “There used to be many werewolves in Taormina,” he said, his gray eyes regarding me steadily; then, with a disdainful shrug, “Now there are only two or three.”

And so autumn came, is here at this moment, a tambourine wind, a ghost of smoke moving between the yellow trees. It has been a good year for grapes; sweet in the air is the smell of fallen grapes in the mold of leaves, new wine. The stars are out at six; still, it is not too chilly to have a cocktail on the terrace and watch, in the bright starlight, the sheep with their Buster Keaton faces coming down from pasture, and the goats, whose herd-movement makes a sound like the dragging of dry branches. Yesterday men brought us a wagonload of wood. So I am not afraid of winter’s coming: what better prospect than to sit by a fire and wait for spring?

1951

The End