‘You could turn me in and claim the reward,’ said Dovidl jocularly, smiling at the nervous Medzhiners. In his own mind, he was free to turn up at our house as if nothing had happened. He would explain his disappearance as a temporary amnesia, of the type suffered by the crime writer Agatha Christie in 1926 during a crisis in her marriage. Such episodes occasionally befall artists under stress and are readily forgiven. He would simply walk in, claiming to have slept rough for a week. In his ripped and grimy clothes and unshaven face, the story would ring true and the immensity of our relief would absolve him from detailed investigation. The prodigal’s return – not, perhaps, the most apt of metaphors to mention in Old Testament company. He must take care to avoid apocryphal allusions in the Medzhiners’ presence.

‘I can handle this,’ he told Spielman. ‘The police will be relieved to shut the case and no one will ever know where I have been.’

Spielman looked to the Rebbe, who shook his head. ‘It is not safe,’ frowned the Rebbe. ‘The police might beat him with sticks, or stand him all night in a barrel of freezing water until he confesses.’

‘But this is England, Rebbe, not Poland,’ objected Dovidl.

‘England,’ said the Rebbe, witheringly, ‘is also a Christian country.’

A huge hand fell upon his shoulder. ‘The Rebbe is unhappy,’ said Spielman. ‘We must do what the Rebbe deems best.’

A week before, Dovidl would have scorned such meekness. Now he found it liberating. He no longer needed to belong to the class that ‘makes things happen’. He could sit back and let them happen, confident in the protection of Chaim-Yossef Spielman and the wisdom of the Medzhiner Rebbe. Together, they had relieved him of the unbearable expectations of talent and admitted him to a world where all were equal in the sight of God and subject equally to His eternal laws, as interpreted by rabbis down the generations.

‘He may remain, perhaps, until the fuss has died away,’ murmured the Rebbe who, Dovidl noted, was culturally incapable of issuing an order. For all the immensity of his authority, the Rebbe ruled by inference. The Yiddish he used knew no words of command.

‘Stay with us,’ urged Spielman, ‘and we shall teach you the whole Torah while you stand on one leg, as the sage Hillel did with a sceptic. You will discover the ways of your fathers––’

‘My father was not frum,’ interjected Dovidl.