‘So it was an advantage.’

‘I think so. But when the war was over I then had two large and unresolved experiences to deal with. The only way I could think of managing them was by doing nothing. I worked, I went about my daily business. I hoped that the rhythm of normality would help, that it would wear them away.’ Anton shifted in the chair. ‘Perhaps five years went by and I kept myself busy writing my book. I poured a lot of undigested things into it, then took them all out again when I revised it. It was published nearly ten years ago.’

‘And that was a turning point?’

‘Not in the way you might think. Not because it made me a little money and gave me a fraction more standing in my profession. But because it brought to an end what I’d thought about the world before the war. So it freed me to think about what had happened since 1914, since the Caillaux trial and all those closed chapters of another age.’

‘So you were in the foothills of a new mountain.’

‘After all I’d lived through, that’s where I found myself. At the very bottom.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I went out to find myself a lover.’

‘So easily?’

‘Not so easily at all. The sisters of old army friends, women glimpsed in bars or introduced at the theatre, the whole connected world of Vienna … I had a couple of dalliances, but I quite quickly saw that I didn’t want to spend weekends at music festivals or visit some family who meant nothing to me. I wanted intimacy. Burning closeness.’

‘Not so easy to find, I suppose.’

‘I decided to pay for it. Don’t be shocked.’

‘I’m not. I’m listening.’

‘I had this crazed conviction that there was a number, a figure that I could reach and once I was there the memory of Delphine would finally be burned away. Some of the women did nothing for me, but some counted double – when there was something of her about them. When you love someone so much, it’s hard to know which bits, which parts of the body, which habits of mind are essential and which ones could be replaced without loss.’

Anton stopped talking and coughed for a few moments. When he had regained his breath, he looked over to see how Martha was responding. If she had been embarrassed, she showed no sign of it.

‘In retrospect, I think my plan was to convince myself that Delphine was not unique. By building a new version of her with parts taken from other women. And then it might be that I could also convince myself that what I loved about Delphine was no more than something itself made up of things I’d encountered before – in looks and eyes and voice and touch. Even from women seen in books or dreams. So that she too was in some way a composite – not a unique compound, but a mixture that could be made again.’