You must know him better than I do. I understand simpler things about him. For example, when Cesare was a very young child, he went to the dentist every three months. He was healthy, except for his bad teeth. His great-grandfather on his father’s side had the same bad teeth as a child, his parents said, adding that his great-grandfather did not have the fortune of modern dental care. His parents immigrated to America in favor of modernity without leaving their rural thoughts behind. Anything that they were unable to give a respectable explanation for was answered in such a way; that one was born with it, or that it was destined by something nebulous and uncontrollable. Cesare was never interested in myth, only in truth. At the dentist, he dreaded the specificity of the gleaming instruments beside his chair, arranged like slim predators on a table draped with a slightly spotted cloth. He found that if he asked questions about all of the instruments, their origin and application, he could find momentary peace. The dentist, a dumb man, found this amusing. While meticulously prodding his delicate young gums until they blushed, then oozed, the dentist addressed him as “Mr. Auditore” in a most patronizing tone. Cesare would leave with an indescribable ache in his mouth that prevented him from forming anything other than short, garbled sentences for the next few hours. The ache spread to his inner ears and neck and down to the stale lollipop dangling between his fingers.

It may also be interesting to know that Cesare grew up in a dry, hilly region. He became close to that dark, sumptuous, nearly feral landscape, observing it at night with great curiosity, sometimes slipping out of the house to take extended walks beyond their backyard, through the narrow alley of rocks and dirt, into paths of unworked soil. There was an astonishing amount of wilderness; so much uncultivated land, so close to the decency of houses. The moon never interested him much; though he acknowledged it was incredibly pretty most of the time, its luminosity never penetrated his heart. It was the sensation of winding through trails of dirt at night, alone, that attracted him. He was a little afraid when he saw no footprints on some of the trails, but the indifference of the air braced him.