The last time I walked up Cow Horn Hollow, it was such a hot day in August that even under the thick, towering trees the atmosphere seemed to rise and settle again as disturbed as the air in front of a fire, and the jar-flies were whirring so loud they sounded like a power line.

It seems peculiar to me that it should all have begun with winter, as if some great, simple logic were implied, but so it did begin, with no more meaning then than I know now.

Perhaps I shouldn’t count the death of Kobi, the sea otter, whom I loved and who was killed at the end of the book by a hunter 

It had started to rain outside. The water was sliding like lace curtains, one over the other, down his window as if to stop him from seeing out. But each curtain only blurred the long driveway and the three cars that were parked in front kept running all together like his watercolors on folded paper. 

They piled into the truck and started on the thirteen miles over the hard rutted dirt roads to the highway. The high sideboards with the straw still in between the cracks banged wildly from side to side, jerking back and forth the two girls who sat on the boxes at the end of the truck, 

Santa Cruz is at the top of Monterey Bay which is about 100 miles below San Francisco, and in the winter there are not many people in Santa Cruz. The boardwalk concessions are shuttered except for one counter-and-booth restaurant, the ferris wheel seats are hooded with olive green 

One March morning, at the end of a day’s journey by train, Giuseppe Corte arrived in the city where the famous nursing home was located. He had a slight fever, but chose none the less to walk from the station to the hospital, carrying his overnight bag himself.

The marquis knew that he was chauvinistic. There was nothing he could do about it. The more the twentieth century pushed France into the row of little nations, the prouder he was to be a Frenchman.

The pension dining room was cave-like, hung with fishing nets and glass floats, receding backwards to the dark kitchen. He propped up against the water carafe a book which he had taken at random from a shelf of English paper-backs in his bedroom. 

“Its only a lizard,” he muttered to himself desperately, “only a lizard.” The quick rhythm of the phrase only served to accentuate the beat of his heart and drive him further on. He walked a long way from the olive-grove, stumbling against roots, giving sudden nervous leaps.

Assunta speaks: One day my father threw me out of his house. And he threw me out even though, at that time, our family life had achieved a certain harmony; we had forsworn love of one another in favor of a new era of politeness and reserve.