Day in, day out, waking or sleeping his nostrils register the world and convey it to his simple brain. Like many, Vincenzo moves between thinking his life a torment and thinking it a joy. The fruit is a dirty yellow colour, not much larger than golf balls and just as hard. There are almost no leaves. While Vincenzo's wife complains bitterly about the lemons, he is grateful that there is one less smell to torment or gladden him.
Spring is the worst.
Vincenzo often joins his neighbours on the surgery porch hoping for some relief, not unlike that prescribed for hay fever. But aside from breathing continually through his mouth, which of course cannot be healthy, swathing his nostrils in scented cloths, or wearing an oxygen mask, there is nothing that can be done for him. And he suffers. Rotten fruit, rat filth, chickens. At night Vincenzo smells the sewers and drainpipes of the city after the first rains come and feels he is in a cave that has never been opened.