but this is only a short digression, after which we return all the more assiduously to the business at hand. He rapidly becomes impatient whenever I show lacunae in my education. He is slowed down by having to localize every last detail and connect it to the others: “Well, naturally, they got to know each other better at Titi’s wedding, because he’s a cousin of Mutzi’s—in Rome, of course, where else!” An intake of breath, with which he controls unruly stirrings. Then relief, because he thinks of something that excuses me: “But I keep forgetting how young you are. J’ai une mémoire admirable, tu sais: j’oublie tout . . .”

Which, needless to say, is pure coquetterie. In fact, his memory is fabulous, worthy of a cabaret act. It enables him to focus on the titanic chore of keeping the inventory of the Middle Kingdom. The material is gigantic: “une mer à boire,” as he himself admits. Scientific meticulousness requires that every detail be recorded of the happy inhabitants of that reality vanishing into legend: the tonnage of their yachts and the horsepower of their sports cars; the names of their horses and dogs, their pedigrees; the jewelry, hair color, and liver spots of the women; the cock sizes of the men; the quality of the silver used at this or that gala dinner; the names and vintages of the wines that were drunk; the bizarre wanderings of the jewels important enough to have destinies of their own (“Well, first Toto inherited it from his mother, an Aldobrandoni, and he gave it to his wife, Nini, and then she gave it to Lazzi when she had an affair with him, because he had gambling debts, and that was why Lazzi sold it to Joshi for a song, and then Joshi gave it to a Parisian dancer at the Lido; he was madly in love with her, a girl named Yvonne; and then she . . .”).

The catalogue of the Middle Kingdom is like the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, and, like this key opus of modern literature, it is bound to end in sheer mathematics. Uncle Ferdinand’s reports grow more and more abstract. The Middle Kingdom is dematerializing. It makes no difference that its de facto survival is endangered. Uncle Ferdinand appears less disturbed by the realization that Poland is lost once again (“despite the stubborn assurance to the contrary in her national anthem”) and that he will probably have to write off Stash and Wanda, Kotja and Olga, once and for all, and with them the fantastic wild boar hunts in Volhynia. He is much more worried about whether roulette and other games of chance are really still elegant. Who is still playing them? Of the friends in the innermost circles, only the Greeks and a couple of Sicilians and Spaniards (he lists them by name).