I hardly touched my supper. Dad tried to cheer me up by showing me a book about the history of Panhard cars, with lots of colour photos of saloon cars in the snow, at the seaside, in the city. I listened with half an ear as Dad explained that some PL17s had a revolutionary reclining seat system called “Relmax”, short for “relax maximum”. I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm, but I thought it was good that he had a hobby all the same. Being passionate about Panhards, chess or music, or even collecting things, seems to me like a sort of self-protection mechanism: it helps to keep other people at arm’s length and stops you getting too involved with them. That way you can avoid feeling compassion, which is a most uncomfortable emotion.

I brooded all evening. I tried to be methodical, as our teachers were always telling us to be:

What should we fear?

EVERYTHING.

What can we hope for?

NOTHING.

It was as simple as that. There’s no denying it, method makes things clear. If Van Gogh was behind this business, he definitely had something up his sleeve. I was going to have to deploy the Nimzo-Indian Defence once again, and develop an understanding of the dangers ahead of us that would exceed the dangers themselves. That’s called foresight and it’s an essential quality in life. So thanks for that, Mr Nimzovich.

This is where I’d got to with my thinking when I stopped by at Haisam’s lodge very early the next morning. My head was bursting: I wouldn’t have been surprised if my brain had started coming out through my nostrils. Haisam was setting up his chessboard, very slowly and systematically.

Before he could say anything, I launched straight in.

“Tell me about Nimzovich – you know, the guy who survived by defending himself.”

He raised his great head and I could see from his expression that he’d understood everything. He was a bit irritating. He smiled.

“Well now, Aron Nimzovich’s great discovery was to recognize the effectiveness of the negative game. Do you follow me?”

“Which means what exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Which means undermining your opponent’s moves before thinking about going on the attack yourself. His motto was ‘Restrain, block, and destroy!’”

“Good plan. And how did he end up, your Nimzovich?”

“He died in 1935, of pneumonia, stupidly, when he was forty-eight.”

In the silence that followed I reflected in a philosophical way that strategies were useless against some opponents, who couldn’t be outwitted even by the most intelligent chess grand masters.

I thought my Egyptian had forgotten I was still there, but I was wrong, because after a moment he said in a very low voice, “You’re going to get a summons later.”

It was hardly a surprise. I’d almost run out of emotions. I was wrung-out like a floor-cloth.