THE ASTROLABEMajor Lanzi dawdled in front of the mirror, it was as if he wanted to walk into it. He resembled an art critic keenly examining the particularities of a painting to ascertain its paternal origins were different than previously believed.
He had been told his son would be arriving on the next mail boat from Naples. He hadn’t seen him in four years. He couldn’t recall his son’s physiognomy: he was looking for clues in the mirror.
In order to shoo away indiscreet or perhaps even malevolent questions, he would say that his wife never came to the colony because she couldn’t put up with the climate, which was sometimes too humid, sometimes too dry – whenever the winds from the desert swept wrathfully along the coast. It was a widely-known fact in the city that the Major kept up a r
