Giuseppe Hoof, on his deathbed, remembers his childhood. From the first night he was big enough to climb down the stone stairs his mother would rouse him at three and load his arms with baskets of  hot sweetbreads. 'Run to the wharf,' she'd say, 'before your grandfather's ship disappears.' He'd clamber down the seven flights and run through the whistling streets, under the chilly lamps whose light leaped and dived, past the blue hedges whose vines reached and writhed, to the big black harbour that sucked and sighed. His grandfather waited at the plank's end to scoop him up and tuck him under his beard, and he'd rest there in the warmth while his grandfather ate. Then Grandfather would load Giuseppe's arms with the empty baskets and tumble him back down the plank, just as a finger of grey touched the sky and the ship slipped its ropes from the wharf.

Giuseppe Hoof's deathbed is soft, warm and dark. The nurse has gone away because he would not let her change the sheets. There's the smell of the spattered oils; and winter is here; the floorboards whistle and the weatherboards groan....