He insisted on buying us beers and on our joining him at a table. We accepted the beers but insisted on staying at the bar. We didn’t want to get trapped in some corner with him. He was impossible to hear and becoming impossible to bear. He could hardly stand or speak. He had a small, round, corrupt but sentimental face which he lolled against my chest. Suddenly he said, ‘Yewish.’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Yewish,’ he said. He tried to improve his pronunciation. ‘Shewish, shewish.’ He stroked his nose.

I might have been slow but I wasn’t that slow. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘You?’

He let out a ghastly laugh. He showed me his brown teeth. ‘You, you.’

‘Yes, me,’ I said. ‘But not you too?’ I’d decided that he could easily be. I had an uncle that looked just like him.

But he was shaking his head vehemently, half laughing and half groaning. He rubbed a hand over his face. From between his fingers a few broken, incoherent sounds escaped. ‘If I tell you,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘if I tell you, you’ll chayte me.’

‘If you tell us what?’

His voice went very soft, even pathetic. ‘If I tell you what I am.’

‘I don’t mind if you’re not Jewish,’ I said.

‘No. What I did. If I tell you you’ll chayte me.’

‘Tell us and see.’

‘You’ll chayte me.’

‘We won’t.

‘You will. You will chayte me.’ There were tears in the corner of his eyes. Old tears. Green tears.

‘We won’t.’ We promised him we wouldn’t. We took oaths upon everything that was holy. We were almost as amused as he was distressed, though comedy wasn’t wholly absent from his mortification either. He was an extremely experienced maudlin drunk.

He formed some letters with his mouth. I strained my ears. ‘You—’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ll chayte me.’

‘I swear to God I won’t.’

He moved his lips again, this time very close to my face. I could smell a lifetime of rich food. ‘S.S.,’ I heard him say. Then he turned to Ros. ‘Hungarian S.S.,’ he coughed. It was such a phlegmy sound that he had to cover his mouth with his hand.

‘We HATE you,’ we both said together.