In a bar outside Rome

Picture it. It’s 1937 and you’re sitting in a bar in the outskirts of Rome. The buses don’t run out that far after dark and it’s winter, so it’s almost always dark. You see me from the dark corner you've chosen to occupy and you're trying to acquire a taste for Grappa, unsuccessfully.

Everyone’s in uniform so you know what they are: pimps, traffic wardens, soldiers, prostitutes, petty government clerks who still live with their parents, the barman. Everyone eyes everyone up. Everyone has a price that we try to guess.

The beer is warm and the air greasy and the barman asks me what uniform it is I’m wearing because he doesn’t recognise it. I’m a spy I tell him. He asks me for what country. I tell him and he laughs and I reach over the bar and grab him by the ear which comes off in my hand and I think he’s trying to make me look stupid in front of the Bishop who’s trying to teach three prostitutes to pray on their knees out the back.

The generator packs in and everything goes dark and quiet till the bishop lights a candle, but he tells the prostitutes to keep their eyes shut. More spies arrive on Vespas, three of them, but I don’t recognise their uniforms and the barman tells me they’re Greek.

I tell the barman that I know a cure for pimples that always works. His nose is covered in lots of pimples all sitting there looking sick and ready to burst. He gets interested. I tell him to peel three cloves of garlic, dip them in chili oil and then apply them suppositorially. He grabs a whole head of garlic and disappears out the back.