In his first enthusiasm, these creams had seemed to László one of the western world’s most seductive achievements. He had even claimed, in a not entirely flippant essay for Le Monde, that it was precisely such a product, fruit of a playful science, that had made communism untenable and helped bring about the collapse of its empire. Who could care about collective agriculture, presidiums, space labs or Five Year Plans when the face of everyone over thirty looked so withered and unloved, while those on the other side of the curtain could rehydrate and nourish their skins with luxurious creams? Wasn’t that what we feared about time, about death, its assault upon our vanity, the grinding out of whatever measure of physical loveliness we had enjoyed? How much more effective it had been, this creative narcissism of the West, than all the Minutemen missiles or the corruption and stupidity of the Party stooges. True, the lotions, teased into his skin with gently circling fingertips, had not made him look any younger, but he was convinced they had retarded the process of decay, protecting him a little from gravity and toxic air, from the effects of too much smiling or frowning, even perhaps from that scourge of all faces: guilt.

The petit four of this banquet of self-attention was a dab of Aqua di Parma, a perfume once used by both Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant – quite reason enough for any lesser mortal to indulge. The bottle had been given to him as a parting gift by Guilleme Bernadi, producer at the Teatro Argentina in Rome where they had put on Flicker in the spring of 1995, and the scent, with its tones of honey and sherbet, unfailingly reminded László of the night tour in Guilleme’s Spider soft-top, Beatles tapes on the cassette, warm Roman air, real southern air, blowing over their faces as they turned down streets so narrow and crowded with 2 a.m. revellers he had had the sensation of driving through the midst of an endlessly extended open-air restaurant.