because she had worked for decades as a translator of fiction and non-fiction from english and german to italian. Anna Marai Giusti was familiar with a wide range of subjects. Her most recent translation had been an American self-help book about how to deal with conflicting emotions. Though the superficial idiocies she had encountered - which had always sounded sillier when she put them into Italian - had occasionally reduced her to giggles, some of the text returned to her now, as she climbed the stairs to her apartment.