She runs out or runs to a window seeing Cara-vaggio too in the corner of her vision, and they will see the sapper waving lazily towards the house, not even turning around from the herb terrace.

He is always humming or whistling. “Who is whistling?” asks the English patient one night, having not met or even seen the newcomer.When he steps into the seemingly empty villa he is noisy. He is the only one of them who has remained in uniform. 

Immaculate, buckles shined, the sapper appears out of his tent, his turban symmetrically layered, the boots clean and banging into the wood or stone floors of the house.

He seems casually content with this small group in the villa, some kind of loose star on the edge of their system. This is like a holiday for him after the war of mud and rivers and bridges. He enters the house only when invited in, just a tentative visitor, the way he had done that first night when he had followed the faltering sound of Hana’s piano and come up the cypress-lined path and stepped into the library.