It started halfway through July; a firm but invisible hand blocked the sea with a wall of grimy white haze, turning the temperately hot Mediterranean coast into a brutal miasma. No matter how early you rose in the morning, a scorching wind was already blowing. The thermometer zoomed upward and stuck there. The weather was often the lead item on the news, the forecasters being called upon to explain the inexplicable in half-menacing, half-apologetic tones. Worse yet, the travel tax was suddenly doubled, forcing mass cancellations by those planning to seek relief abroad. Despairingly people flocked to the beaches, among them Molkho, who hadn’t been to the seashore for years and was only halfway through a diet meant to enhance his romantic prospects. For days on end, he ate nothing but blotchy, seedless watermelons, staring angrily every morning at the stubborn scales that registered his weight loss with agonizing slowness. The thought of all the good food that he was missing or sometimes reluctantly left on his plate enveloped him in a thin web of gloom.
