The knowledge that the dictation machine is much too heavy for him to move safely on his own awakens an obstinacy in Vincenzo which topples over into a kind of rage. ‘Stand back,’ he shouts, as he propels the Imperator across the parquet on its squeaking legs. By the time Vincenzo’s negotiated the door to the hallway, the old man has changed his mind. The sun, shining through the fanlight above the front door, makes Notovitch look weak and spindly. His slippered feet make a pathetic sound on the hall tiles. One panel of the machine has been scratched against the doorjamb. Notovitch looks at the mark with wary eyes, but says nothing. Vincenzo drags it back into position.

‘Emerson says the English have no faith in God. Do you find that to be the case?’

Where Vincenzo lives, the nonconformist churches are full on weekends, Salvation Army bands play hymns at the Tube station, and he tells Notovitch so.

‘That’s a pity,’ the old man says. ‘I was rather hoping to find a nation of agnostics. An absence of dogma would make them more receptive to the Pali gospel. It’s easier to fill an empty cup. The Great War, of course, turned many back to religion.’

Seated in a wingback chair, Notovitch shuffles the papers in his lap. ‘I will be going back to Paris, the week after next,’ he announces. ‘I am sorry to be leaving, but the venture that brought me to London has not met with success. I was hoping to find a buyer for my business. However, this – our more important work – is close to its conclusion. I will need to ask your help in arranging for a transcription of the cylinders. It will be much easier to find an English stenographer here than in Paris.’

Vincenzo nods, wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, and starts the Imperator.

‘Did I mention to you that I saw Kuryagin again?’

The Bolshevik coup in 1917 brings a flood of Russian refugees to Paris. Nicolas is bewildered to hear the unfamiliar sound of his native language being spoken in the streets of his adopted city. One day, in Montmartre, he sees Kuryagin, the mill-owner from Ivanovo, walking uncertainly in a fine but threadbare suit, arm in arm with his daughter.

Without a second’s hesitation, Nicolas approaches them and greets them in Russian. His salutation dies in his throat when he sees how much they’ve altered. The daughter’s fresh beauty has burned up in the fire of revolution. Her face is haggard. Kuryagin stares sightlessly though glaucomatous pupils the colour of cooked egg white. His hand tightens on his daughter’s arm. ‘Is it a friend, sweetheart?’ Even his voice has altered: more weak, more tremulous.

Moved by their obvious destitution, Nicolas opens his wallet and pleads with the young woman to take fifty francs. She accepts the money tearfully.

‘The French are so kind,’ her father murmurs. ‘We are obliged to your goodness, sir.’