Reading Pushkin and Dante

One warm spring day near the end of his first year in Rome, Zariski was stopped on the steps of the university library by a friend and fellow countryman, an “eternal student” named Derechin. In high spirits, Derechin introduced him to the pretty girl beside him, a literature student at the university named Yole Cagli.

“He looked like he was starving,” Yole would remember, and of course to a rather alarming extent he was. But he must have spent a good part of his summer holidays in Kobrin just eating, because when Yole met him accidentally in the street that fall she almost didn't recognize him. “He looked very different. He'd been really fattened up by home cooking.” She helped him with directions to a shoe store, and on the way suggested that now he should begin to improve his Italian.