‘Hey, maybe that would solve the energy crisis they’re always busting our balls about – we’d get a cheap renewable source of energy out of burning them, we’d never have to worry again . . .’

‘Ha, ha, ha! You’re your father’s son all right! Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!’

In other circumstances I would have been only too happy to wander through his brain, I’m sure I would have found charming grottos and ravines the bastard didn’t know he had, there’s clearly no end to cretinism, what I had seen was only the tip of the iceberg. I felt like . . . like . . . nothing. You don’t kill madmen, you don’t exterminate the mentally handicapped, you pray for them. But for all his madness, his sickness, he managed to hurt me with that line: ‘You’re your father’s son all right!’ It was like an electric shock to my heart. I thought of him as his father’s son, offspring of Jean 92, good Samaritan to Nazi fugitives, saviour of murderers, and he had reminded me that I was my father’s son, offspring of SS Gruppenführer Hans Schiller, the angel of death.

On the train back to Paris, the phrase ran through my mind – I am my father’s son . . . I am my father’s son . . . – over and over, to the steady monotonous clacking of the train, until it deafened me, devastated me, until I fell asleep. I think I might have said it aloud, might have shouted it. I was caught between two nightmares, two spasms, two impulses: to die here where I sat, or later, when I had drained the cup to the dregs. I thrashed about in darkness. But I know I heard a voice from somewhere in the carriage whispering to his neighbour, ‘The fact he needs to say it means he must have doubts,’ and another voice reply, ‘The question is, does his father know?’ And suddenly all these good people, the tourists and travellers started laughing, giggling behind their hands, chuckling behind their newspapers, others snorting half-heartedly. I laughed myself. It was a good joke, these were good people, but just as the laughter petered out into hopelessness I got to my feet and, addressing the assembled company like a prophet of doom, I whispered, ‘Let he who knows where his father is raise his hand.’ A chill ran through the carriage. It brought me back to life.