«At the editorial office of Schweizer Illustrierte, the young lady who greeted me was very kind, wanted to see some photos and brought an envelope with a story behind a brown door, then reappeared and invited me to go inside.
Mr. Maier rose with difficulty from his chair and came toward me. He was fat, huge, slow, but his eyes were too bright behind heavy eyelids not to notice his mental quickness.
He told me he was very glad to see me, offered me a cigar, a coffee, and then asked me about Italy, certain beaches in the South, Rome, etc. And while he was talking quietly, he was looking at photographs, talking and flipping through pictures so as if nothing really interested him except that friendly conversation, that talking maybe useless and nice things. And I looked at him and answered from time to time and from time to time he asked me about some pictures, just like that, as a courtesy.
And it was then, as I was explaining to him about a certain religious rite on the Ganges, in India, that I felt at home, among civilized people, as I had always been accustomed to in my private life. As I certainly had not felt in Milan in the rococo editorial offices of the big Italian publishers, where the crude joke had given every meeting a heavy tone.
When I left the editorial office of Schweizer Illustrierte, I had sold five stories and had about 1.2 million liras with me. Even now, Herr Maier, when he meets me, asks me why I work more for the foreign press than for the Italian press. And I mention to him, in such cases, a certain misunderstanding, a difficulty, and he looks at me with curiosity, and he doesn’t quite understand».
Calogero Cascio