‘The first one was. Martha told me.’

‘I didn’t know she’d read it.’

‘It was quite well known, wasn’t it? She said there was a particularly fascinating chapter on Chinese cookery.’

Anton laughed so much that he began coughing. He felt Charlotte’s hand on his arm. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes … I …’ He drained his glass. ‘I haven’t laughed so much for years. It took me by surprise.’

He looked down at the table where the cutlery caught the light among the shining glasses. He wanted to take Charlotte by the arm, forget about Christmas, enact something delightful and true – the thing that Vienna had never found a proper place for. He knew that she’d enjoy it. So why …

‘If we’d read other books, by chance, then we’d be different people. Wouldn’t we?’

Anton collected himself. ‘I imagine so.’ He drank some more wine.

‘Suppose I’d read only Jules Verne, for instance.’

Recovering further, Anton said, ‘Or Sherlock Holmes. You’d think every suburban villa had a body.’

‘And I wouldn’t want to live in Carshalton Beeches.’

‘Or Freud. You’d think every mental anguish could be solved by a set formula. Or by its opposite. Or both, selectively.’

‘Who made the most impression on you?’ said Charlotte.

‘Journalists, I suppose. Foreign correspondents.’

‘You’re teasing me.’

‘Not really. I tried to ignore all those sex writers in Vienna before the war. Weininger and people. They saw humans as animals. Even the fiction writers. Schnitzler. Musil, too. That story about the military academy where they do awful things to that young man.’

‘Well,’ said Charlotte, ‘I do think if I hadn’t read Balzac or Jane Austen I would have a different understanding of what goes on in people’s heads. And my own.’

‘And Shakespeare?’

‘He’s a case apart, isn’t he? My father had a theory that by having characters explain their thoughts and desires he made people aware for the first time in history that they all had minds of their own. Before that, they appeared to one another as two-dimensional. That woman was often angry. That man was often sad. He kept sheep, she made shoes. They gave each other names to signify these things.’

‘Are you saying he invented human nature?’

‘It’s what my father thought.’

‘So every play-goer standing in the mud thought himself a Hamlet?’

‘Once you’re awake to the possibility, it’s hard to forget. It’s a thought you can’t un-think. Like the moment the first man or woman achieved self-awareness. There was no going back, no return to what our ancestors might have been.’

‘Oh, God. There’s going to be a speech.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s Franz. He keeps it short.’

Bernthaler’s speech was little more than words of welcome and an outline of events the next day. He hoped as many guests as possible would go skating on the lake if it was frozen hard enough. Martha would be the master of ceremonies and certain rituals would be followed; these included the famous late buffet lunch. He seemed to be on the point of sitting down, when a thought detained him.