ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS

After the meal we came back to Modica and went up to San Giorgio where a son et lumière was taking place. It was based on Italo Calvino's Le Città Invisibili. San Giorgio was beautifully lit for the occasion, there was medieval music playing and there was a graceful dancer on the steps. Every now and then a sort of will-o'-the-wisp lighting effect was projected onto the side wall of the church.

It was a perfect cool, breezy, starlit Sicilian evening. Giovanna and I ambled through the old, narrow streets, looking up at the Baroque balconies bathed in moonlight. The heady perfume of jasmine was all around us.

Later I sat on the wall near San Giorgio, watching the dancing with the candles glowing on the steps and the soft lights of Modica Alta on the hill above me. And I thought, "Yes, when I am in some ghastly old folks' home, propped up in a high-backed chair with a rug over my knees, staring into space and dribbling away, I shall smile to myself: for I will have the memory of this jasmine-scented Mediterranean night to hold in my heart."