He called at the Writer’s Bookshop on Liszt Ferenc ter, drank an espresso at the cafe there, then turned towards the river, passed the new Bank Centre on Anany János ut with its slabbed marble hide, walked through Szabadsag ter, and came out on to Steindl Imre utca, where immediately he felt some barometric shift in the atmosphere, as if the density of the known, the familiar, the ingrained, had subtly increased. Behind the new coats of paint and the rows of German and American cars (not the latest models, of course, and it was not hard to find old Skodas and Trabants), this was the old neighbourhood where the past of fifty years ago loomed like a tinted print under tissue paper. And it was here, in ’91, that a voice had called out his name and he had turned to see the face of his old school-friend, Sándor Dobi – Sándor the questioner! – and though that face had grown slack with time, darker, less nervously resolute, there had been no hesitation in László’s response. They had embraced, and over lunch become as drunk as students, stumbling over their stories. Sándor had spent twenty years in America – the construction industry, then a small restaurant business – and had two daughters in Minneapolis, and two ex-wives with whom he was still on excellent terms. ‘Fine times,’ he said, as they broached a fresh bottle of Palika. ‘But my dear Laci, in the end you have to come home. Nowhere in the world will fill your heart like the place you first saw the light.’

Was Sándor still alive? He had confessed to prostate trouble (‘a year ago, my friend, I thought “prostate” was something you went to a lawyer for!’). Had he meant cancer? How many of them were there now, scattered like ashes over the widths of the Earth? Lives such as theirs had not been conducive to longevity.

At the end of the street he crossed a line from shadow into broad sunlight. Ahead of him were the Buda hills, Fishermen’s Bastion, Matthias church, and away to the right, almost out of sight, the river split at the prow of Margarits island and poured its tons under the wings of the bridge. Cruise boats, the sleek and the frankly chaotic, were moored by both banks, and advertised trips to Visegrád or Esztergom, some of them promising lavish dinners, and even erotic shows, as if witnessing a Russian or Romanian teenager wiggle her hips to a tape of gypsy violins were the acme of old Hungarian romance.