[...] A young woman, blonde, wearing a leather skirt and a white ribbed jumper tight over her breasts, was standing alone at the bar drinking coffee, her light mac folded over her arm because the night was warm. The bartender didn’t seem to know her. Perhaps she was a prostitute; Alex wasn’t confident that he could read the signs, in a strange country. Anyhow, he liked her pale skin and defined, small features, faintly cruel and impersonal – he thought of a Venus in a Cranach painting. She asked him for a cigarette and when he lit it for her she tilted her head and dropped her glance in a certain way – at once flirtatious and withheld – which made him nostalgic, as if it were a gesture from an old film. The bartender was cashing up, the bar was closing.