Volchkov empties the wine pitcher into his glass and signals to the waiter for more. ‘You’re nitpicking. Under an anarcho-socialist-syndicalist system of workers’ collectives, everyone would be paid to do what they wanted. I’d get a wage from the government. I could use my talent to entertain the proletariat. Photopeinture would be at the forefront of revolutionary art.’

‘Good luck with that,’ says Nicolas, with uncharacteristic bitterness.

‘For the first time in my life, I experienced writer’s block.’

It’s not that the words won’t come. The words come all right, it’s just that they’re the wrong ones. And Nicolas has two sets of publishers breathing down his neck for the Tsar book: Osip and a Parisian firm that is keen to take it too.

One morning he just stays in bed. We’re all at it, he thinks: the making of stories. It’s just words, words, words, no matter from the heart. The Tsar, a bra, catarrh. Behind it all flap the big black wings of unmourned grief for his father.

His moods shifts before lunch and he rouses himself to salvage something from the day. On the way to the library, his attention is caught by a flash of blue shawl in the crowd: like the azure of a kingfisher or a damselfly, hovering on the surface of a grey pond. He hastens to give chase. She’s carrying a basket and is moving with surprising speed. Finally, he’s behind her. ‘Excuse me—’

She turns: that oval face; demure, brown eyes peer from beneath her lids. ‘Monsieur?’ The Russian accent in her voice is like the smell of home: specifically, lilacs and chestnut blossom.

‘I believe you are a friend of the prince?’

‘What of it?’

‘May we speak?’

‘She had trained as a midwife in Kiev.’

She lets him buy her a slice of cake, which she eats hungrily. She works among the city’s destitute. Her eyes glisten with tears when she talks about the joy of delivering children. There’s outrage in her voice when she speaks of the conditions of the poor. ‘It’s a crime. The lack of sanitation. The poverty and ignorance. We should all be equal in the eyes of God.’

‘If there was a God,’ Nicolas adds carefully, feeling rather pleased with himself.

Her face wrinkles into a smile that displays big ivory teeth. Her nose strikes him as perfect and quite peppered with freckles. ‘You are right. An old habit. My family are Jews.’

‘Mine too,’ says Nicolas. He can’t believe this. The revolutionary activism aside, this is someone he could take home to his mother. ‘You heard about the attacks, the pogroms?’

She nods. ‘Pierre says anti-Semitism is the template for all forms of intolerance.’

‘Does he?’ Nicolas wishes that Pierre hadn’t said something that sounds quite so intelligent; and he wishes she wouldn’t look so worshipful when she mentions his name. ‘He’s probably Jewish too,’ he says, aware of a note of envy in his voice.

‘No, he’s not.’