Karol, embracing them all, left just after midnight. Franklin and Laurence followed a few minutes later, everyone in a mood of gentle melancholy at the recollection of joys that belonged to such a distant past. Kurt and László stacked the dishes in the kitchen, then Kurt retired to the bedroom where, before bed, he would perform certain complicated yoga exercises. László went back into the dining room, turned off the lamp and extinguished with wetted fingertips two of the candles. He did not feel tired. He sat in the light of the remaining candle. The Calvados had given him slight heartburn, and the discussion of happiness had set him off on an arc of thinking he would have to reach the end of before he could rest. It was true, the stories in themselves were somewhat banal – a fish, a tin of soup, running out of a bar, a soccer match – but happiness was a subject as elusive as love, and one that required a similar subtlety of lexis and category. To begin with, it could be divided into two broad types: the happiness when you know yourself to be happy, and that which is only apparent afterwards, the type Franklin had described with the young soldiers on the beach. Then there was public happiness, such as the day of the football match, joy reflected back from the faces of everyone he saw. And secret happiness, as when he was in love with Peter, almost a burden, as though he had won the lottery yet could share the news with no one. Pure happiness was rare, confined in most cases to infants, drug fiends and religious ecstatics. More common, though just as disturbing, was the condition Karol had touched upon – happiness woven into its opposite; that paradox of wars and revolutions when the heart is so inflamed it gives birth to entirely new emotions. Terror-bliss. Grief-lust. Tender, sentimental hatreds. In Hungary that year, the year the Russians came back, as many as three thousand lost their lives and thousands more their liberty. Yet those who had been there – most of them – were glad of it, proud of their effort and their sacrifice. They had played their part: history had not caught them unprepared. And while nothing could compensate them for the loss of their country and their friends, the remembrance of those October and November days was an article of faith.