Such was the template. He had no idea how many other nights there had been. A hundred? Five hundred? But of all the things that happened to László in those years – and much else did happen: lovers of both sexes, trips to Italy, Spain and America, winters in ateliers dangerously heated with paraffin stoves, working on draft after draft of play script – those rambles with Franklin and Laurence, the mood a mix of high seriousness and high foolery, were the reason why ’61 to ’69, the Algerian crises to the Apollo moon landing, had for him now, looking down from the height of his fifty-ninth summer, an almost intolerable glow of nostalgia. The years before belonged to another world entirely. Cold schoolrooms. Youth parades. Speeches on the radio. His grandparents’ stories of Admiral Horthy on his white horse. The seamed and weary faces of his parents, both of them doctors at the Peterffy Sandor hospital. And the revolution, of course. Sweet Budapest.