“Harry is Billy Crystal. Sally, Meg Ryan.”

“Wait, how did it go ... the bit with the dream about the Olympics?”

“ ‘Had my dream again where I’m making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I’d nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me 5.6.’ ”

She bursts out laughing. How I love her laugh, I thought.

A person’s laugh is important because you can’t cheat. To know if someone is genuine or fake, the only sure way is to watch – and listen to – his laugh. People who are really worthwhile are the ones who know how to laugh.

She made me jump by touching my arm.

“Tell me your three favourite films.”

“Chariots of Fire, Big Wednesday, Picnic at Hanging Rock.”

“You’re the first who’s ever answered like that ... quickly. Without thinking.”

“This favourite film game is one I often play myself. So you might say I was ready for it. What are yours?”

“Number one is Blade Runner. No doubt about it.”

“ ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. And all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time – to – die.’ ”

“Well done. It’s said just like that. ‘Time – to – die.’ With the words spaced out. And then he releases the dove.”

I nodded and she went on talking.

“I’ll tell you the other films. American Graffiti and Manhattan. Tomorrow perhaps I’ll tell you a couple of others – Blade Runner is a fixture – but that’s them for today. I’ve often said Metropolis, for example.”

“Why these for today?”

“I don’t know. Come on, shall we go on playing?”

“All right. Let’s try this game. An extraterrestrial arrives on our planet and you have to give him an example of what’s best on earth, so as to persuade him to stay. You must offer him an object, a book, a song, a quote or, well there’d also be films but we’ve already done those.”

“Good idea. I already know the quotation. It’s Malraux: ‘The homeland of a man who can choose is where the biggest clouds gather.’ ”

We remained for a moment in silence. When she was on the point of speaking, I interrupted her.

“You must do me a favour. Will you?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“If you fall madly in love with me, I’d like you to tell me at once. Don’t trust me to know instinctively. Please. Is that all right with you?”

“Fair enough. Does the same hold good for me?”

“Yes, it does. And now tell me the other things for the Martian.”

“The book is The Catcher in the Rye. I’m pretty doubtful about the song. ‘Because the Night’ by Patti Smith. Or else ‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen. Or ‘Ain’t No Cure for Love’, by Cohen again. I don’t know. One of those. Perhaps.”

“And the object?”

“A bicycle. Now tell me yours.”

“The quote is really a quick exchange. From On the Road. It goes like this: ‘We gotta go and never stop going till we get there.’ The reply: ‘Where we going, man?’ ‘I don’t know but we gotta go.’ ”

“The book?”

“You’re sure not to know it. It’s The Foreign Student, by a French writer—”

“I’ve read it. It’s the one about a young Frenchman who goes to study in an American college in the 50s.”

“Nobody knows that book. You’re the first. What a coincidence.”

Her eyes flashed for a moment in the darkness of the car, like little knife blades.

We were parked on the cliffs, almost sheer above the sea at Polignano. Outside it was February and very cold.

Not inside the car though. Inside the car, that night, we seemed to be sheltered from everything.

“I’m glad I came out with you this evening. At the last moment I was about to call you and say I wasn’t feeling up to it. Then I thought you must have already left home and that anyway it would be bad-mannered. So I said to myself: we’ll go to the cinema and then I’ll ask him to take me home and I’ll get an early night.”

“Why didn’t you want to go out?”

“I don’t want to talk about it now. I only wanted to tell you I’m glad I came. And I’m glad I didn’t ask you to take me home right after the cinema. Let’s play some more. I like it. Tell me the song and the object.”

“The object is a fountain pen. The song is ‘Pezzi di vetro.’ ”

“Can I say something about the book?”

“What is it?”

“I’m no longer sure about The Catcher in the Rye.”

“You want to change?”

“Yes, I think so. The Little Prince. It seems more appropriate, maybe. What does the fox say to the little prince when he wants to be tamed?”

“ ‘The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat ...’ ”

She turned and looked at me. In her eyes was a childlike wonder. She was very beautiful. “How do you manage to remember everything by heart?”

“I don’t know. It’s always been like that. If I like something, I only have to read it or hear it once and it sticks in my mind. But The Little Prince I’ve read lots of times. So it’s not really fair.”

“What do you think is the most important quality in a person?”

“A sense of humour. If you have a sense of humour – not irony or sarcasm, which are different things entirely – then you don’t take yourself seriously. So you can’t be catty, you can’t be stupid and you can’t be vulgar. If you think about it, it covers almost everything. Do you know any people who have a sense of humour?”

“Very few. On the other hand, I’ve met a lot of them – men especially – who take themselves a hell of a lot too seriously.”

She had a moment of hesitation, then added: “My boyfriend is one of them.”

“What does your boyfriend do?”

“He’s an engineer.”

“Pompous person?”

“No. He can make you laugh, he’s nice. What I mean is, he’s intelligent, he makes funny remarks and so on. But he can only joke about other people. About himself he’s always tremendously serious. No, he hasn’t got a sense of humour.”

Another pause, then she went on, “I’d like it if you had a sense of humour.”

“I’d like to have one too. To tell the truth, in view of what you’ve just said, I’d sell my mother and father to the cannibals just to have one. Without taking myself seriously, of course.”

She laughed again and we went on chatting like that, in the car that protected us from the wind and the world. For hours.

It was past four in the morning before we realized that we ought to get back.

When we arrived outside her place, in the centre of town, the sky was already beginning to lighten.

“If tomorrow you think you still want to come out with me, phone me. If you call, I’ll give you a book.”

Sara took my chin between finger and thumb and gave me a kiss on the lips. Then, without a word, she got out of the car. A few seconds later she had disappeared through a shiny wooden door.

I gave myself a couple of light punches in the face, on one side and the other. Then I started up the car and drove away, music playing full blast.

It was a long time since I’d been able to memorize songs, passages in books or parts of films just by hearing or reading them once.

Among the many things gone down the drain there was also that.

So I had to go home at once, hoping that among the books I had brought away with me I would find The Little Prince. Because at that hour there were no bookshops open and I was in a hurry, I couldn’t wait till the next morning.

It was there. I turned to near the end, where the little prince is about to be bitten by the snake and is saying farewell to his airman friend.