I knew why Jenö was concerned about Charlotte; so were Otti and Anni, although to herself Charlotte’s pathology was probably invisible. The fast, the coke: both were a means of erasure. Whereas everyone else’s personalities, high, were both vastly elaborated and also comically dishevelled, Charlotte was to be found on these nights semi-tranquillised, looking out to the benign world which could not touch her. She liked not to feel anything. She liked remoteness. Had it been naturally induced it might have been called enlightenment, but instead it was a system of neglect. She grew thinner.

After so much of this business, Otti, with a look of concern that turned her face mournful, told Charlotte she had to get back to work, but Charlotte wasn’t interested. For days the loom had gone untouched. Anni, too, said she was worried.

‘She won’t be able to stop herself,’ said Otti, in my bedroom, a rolled-up cigarette behind her ear, and one in her mouth. She wore round black beads and her outfit didn’t look warm enough for the weather. Perhaps, at home in Zmajevac, this was more like spring. ‘You know she gets into these things,’ Otti said. ‘She likes being emptied out.’

‘Otti’s right,’ said Anni, who sat under Charlotte’s weave, a blackened window. ‘It’s no good for her.’

‘What am I meant to do?’

‘You have to persuade her to stop.’ Anni picked up a newspapered wrapper from my table. ‘Or at least set an example.’

‘Charlotte can do what she likes. She’s old enough to decide.’

‘Of course she is,’ Otti said, ‘but that doesn’t mean she’ll make the right decision.’

I looked at the two women. Both were small, both thin, and their dark hair offset their paleness. Neither smiled as Anni pressed home her point. ‘The Director wants us to be productive. Charlotte’s not been in the Weaving Workshop for a week or so. People will start to notice. Gossip will get around. The Director won’t look warmly on it.’

Teaching high was something of a rollercoaster. Sometimes I ran out of things to say or do. At other moments I went way over time, and the students would look at me perplexed, wondering, I think, what had happened to the man who had so surely told them to eradicate the past.