Kurt squeezed László’s hand; László squeezed back. He was never entirely comfortable with this way of walking, and he reserved it for those moments of especial tenderness when something more than mere proximity was required. It was not that he was ashamed of Kurt. On the contrary, he was often joyfully incredulous that such a sweet-tempered young man should agree to stay with him. But László was a homosexual who retained a certain abstract disapproval of his tribe. In San Francisco, during his tenure at the Théâtre Artaud, he had been appalled at some of the things he had seen, men using each other much as dogs use table legs, a corrupt and worthless version of the Dionysian. In truth he had never really thought of himself as queer or Gay. A mariposa. A fruit. His case, he believed, was much simpler. There had in his life been certain people, beginning with Peter, whom he had needed, and who happened to be men. He did not want to make a vocation of it, to go on marches, wear badges. And anyway, he was from a time and a place where the notion of ‘coming out’ had been utterly unimaginable. Homosexuality was illegal in Hungary until years after he had left. His parents might have stood it – they were doctors, liberals, readers – but the Party would have destroyed him. Two men in a bed in the act of adoring each other was as subversive as a secret printing press, and it had not been much easier when he came to France – except in the theatre, of course, where nobody cared what you got up to, or who.

But tonight he wanted to think of the past he shared with Kurt Engelbrecht, rather than the one he possessed alone, and where, increasingly, he felt himself a ghost among ghosts, a wanderer in the Fields of Asphodel. At the apartment on rue Delambre he threw open the windows, lit the candles and fetched a bottle of Sambuca from the drinks cabinet beside the bookshelf in the dining room. He filled two small glasses, added a coffee bean to each, and with his lighter heated the surface of the liquor until it ignited with ghostly blue flames. He passed one of these entertaining glasses to Kurt. ‘Venice,’ he said.

‘Venice,’ replied Kurt, grinning.

‘La Fenice e des Artistes.’

‘Murano.’

‘San Michele.’

‘The Cittadi Vittorio...’

‘Ah!’

They had not done this for a while, this resuming of those ten or dozen stories that constituted the official history of their intimacy. As always, it began with Venice, and the morning they woke in their hotel to find the city furled in freakish snow, and had sat, wrapped in blankets, watching it for hours, wonder-struck as ten-year-olds.