‘Sleep,’ said Kurt, good-humouredly. They were old lovers now and failure was part of the repertoire. This was Tuesday night.

On the Wednesday afternoon, having decided he would walk to the Monde Arabe, László chose to come up the rue de Rennes on to the boulevard St Germain, rather than cut through by the Panthéon and run the risk of encountering colleagues from the university. At three-thirty the day was hot, the cafés crowded with gleeful Americans. Backpackers stared at maps, and outside the St Germain Métro the hurdy-gurdy man ground out sentimental tunes while his little dog slumbered in its basket. Walking, László rehearsed his speech to Emil Bexheti, which he would be at pains to ensure was neither too indulgent, nor overly stern. I am a playwright, my friend, and my function is to observe, and then to write as honestly as I can. That is all. Naturally I sympathize with your cause. But seriously, what do you expect of me? If it’s a matter of signing a petition, or even perhaps of writing to a newspaper, these things I am prepared to consider, though you should not overestimate my influence. Above all, do not ask me to meddle in other people’s business. Such actions, however well intended, end badly...

He imagined them concluding the meeting with glasses of mint tea at the terrace café, after which he, László, would go home and tell Kurt everything and they would laugh and open a bottle of Sancerre and put Puccini on, and life would go its way with barely a ripple. How simple it was! And this fiction comforted him for several minutes, almost as far as the tower of the Monde Arabe itself, which, standing by the river in its cladding of steel tiles – each with an aperture like a camera’s, narrowing or expanding according to the strength of the light – was, he conceded, an admirably theatrical choice for a rendezvous.

Inside, glass-walled elevators ferried the visitors to the library or to the roof, and László ascended in the company of an Arab scholar – a tall, bearded, effortlessly superior type – and two teenage Parisiennes who wore the kind of tight cotton camisoles that might have earned them a flogging in some parts of the world. (He himself, or course, in such stern theocracies, would not escape so lightly.)