“I’ll never die,” the baroness said once to Archimboldi. “Or I’ll die at ninety-five, which is the same as never dying.” The last time they saw each other was in a ghostly Italian city. The Baroness Von Zumpe wore a white hat and used a cane. She talked about the Nobel Prize and she also complained bitterly about vanished writers, a custom or habit or joke that she believed to be more American than European. Archimboldi was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and he listened to her carefully, because he was going deaf, and he laughed.
