Vincenzo ploughs on, disregarding the icy look that has lowered the temperature in the room, formulating the thoughts that are finally taking shape. ‘Perhaps the Third Section is real. Perhaps you really did some work for them. But you didn’t care about Renan’s objections. I think something else happened to you. Who knows what? At some point in your life, you realised that what Rachkovsky said and what you believed was wrong. You realised that none of us is free to choose exactly who we are.’

‘You seem very sure of this, Mr Dittami.’

‘I know this, sir, if I may. Perhaps I may tell you something of myself. Some things I have understood from my own life. I was raised in an orphanage. It’s merely a fact. I don’t want your sympathy for it. I’m free to marry a duchess. If I have money, I can send my children to the finest school. Who knows? But I am not free to tell my story in any way I like. Whatever I do, Vincenzo Dittami will always be the priest’s bastard from Genoa.’

Notovitch nods, like a fencer acknowledging the unexpected speed of a circling parry that instantly turns defence into attack. He is even more surprised by the directness of the thrust that follows.

‘You will always be a Jew from Crimea. Nothing can change that. You wanted to be a writer, you chose to convert to Christianity, but some part of you, maybe the best part of you, kept faith with the child you were. You couldn’t stop being a Jew, but you could try to change what being a Jew meant.’

‘Laughable. Almost, may I say, Rachkovskyan in its contempt for the truth.’

‘I think you wrote a version of the gospel that you thought should be true.’

‘That’s your story.’

‘And what is yours?’

There is a pause. In the silence, the sound of a woman’s laughter is audible from the pavement beyond the window. Notovitch looks down at his hands. In this moment, he is suspended between two distinct versions of himself. He sees the outlines of his other lives, ghostly possibilities that will never be fulfilled in this world. His resistance has been briefly weakened. Something about Vincenzo’s honesty has moved him, his willingness to embrace the humiliation of his own identity. The priest’s bastard from Genoa. Notovitch glimpses the relief of confessing everything. It would be so easy. But that isn’t what his life is about. It’s partly the acquired habits of spycraft, the unwillingness to let go of an assumed identity because only bad will come of it. But it’s also an act of faith, the belief that by willpower our stories can overcome the laws of nature. The world is sustained by myths. One replaces another. There are only better and worse. The stone rolls back, the body’s there. The stone rolls back, the body’s gone. One small adjustment and the contingent reality is completely altered. You can’t give up now, he thinks. The future depends on it. This has cost him too much. There must be a best story.