‘Most of the team left after ’56.’ said Karol.

‘Yes. Czibor and Kocsis played in Barcelona. Puskás joined Real Madrid but he went back in ’81, back to Hungary.’

“Well, almost a happy ending,’ said Franklin. ‘Give or take a revolution or two.’

‘Egeszsegedre!’ cried Kurt, who had learnt a dozen words of Hungarian. They raised their glasses.

Karol was the eldest of them. He said that each phase of a life had its own kind of happiness. From childhood he could remember sleeping on his mother’s lap in the kitchen – the sheer animal comfort of the warmth of the stove and of the woman who of all women will love you best. Then, in the Prague Spring, there was the excitement of resistance, the erotic fervour of revolt, the thrill of being really afraid. The opportunity to be brave! Later, the sober happiness of work, of writing books and seeing them admired and respected. Lucidity. The satisfaction of a profound ambition achieved. The relief at not having failed.

‘And lastly,’ he said, knitting his thick grey brows, ‘there is a happiness that is truly floating, and is very hard to name, for it blows around the world like a magic dust. You know, it happened to me just a few weeks ago. I had given a reading in Dusseldorf. I met some old friends there – you know Krüger, László – and had a glass or two of wine, no more. Then the car came to take me to the station and we drove through a part of the city I didn’t recognize. It was a cloudy spring afternoon, quite cool and breezy. I was thinking about the most ordinary matters. What I would read on the train. Whether I would have time to call my daughter. I looked out from the side window of the car. We were crossing a bridge, a very ordinary stone bridge, not in any way beautiful or remarkable. And quite suddenly I experienced a sense of wellbeing that overwhelmed me in the way certain melodies heard at just the right moment can do. It lasted no more than a few minutes. It felt as though I had been seized by the present and shaken out, or had sensed – forgive me – my own immortal soul, something I find hard to believe in most days of the week. And all the while my driver made his way through the traffic quite oblivious to this little epiphany taking place behind his neck.’

László glanced up at the bookshelf, where the shot volume of Rilke was hidden in the shadows.

‘“And we,” he began, “Who always think / of happiness rising / would feel the emotion / that almost startles us / when a happy thing falls.”’