'Irish on her mother's side,' I said. 'She came out to Constantinople as a dancer and acrobat with a travelling show.'

'Acrobat?' Mister Bowles seemed solemnly surprised at this.

'The two were quite often combined in those days. Cabaret artiste was a less respected profession than it became afterwards. I don't mean sexual acrobatics. For that you had to go to the Armenian quarter.' I paused to eat the last bit of cucumber on my plate. 'Astounding agility those girls had,' I said. 'They would take on all comers. Ha, ha, forgive the pun. Including mules. Even now, if you know where to go…'

Mister Bowles nodded, and actually smiled at last, though as if humouring me. He showed no sign of wanting to follow up this topic. A pity, as I might have made a small commission.

'No,' I said, 'my mother simply varied her dancing with somersaults. I am talking about the eighteen-sixties now. All this was before the great days of the music hall, before Jane Avril and La Goulue. '

I was beginning to blame Mister Bowles for his failure to see the rare spirit behind my possibly unprepossessing exterior. Already something unaccommodating, and perhaps even self-righteous, about him was making itself felt. All the same, as before, and despite myself now, I was constrained to his version of things; saw the gesturing, wheedling person he thought he was seeing. My self-demeaning was a game, a counter-attack, but without hope of victory.

'Do you remember,' I ploughed odiously on, 'do you remember that marvellous phrase Mallarmé used about Loie Fuller?'

'No, I don't believe I do,' he said. 'What was it?'

'Fontaine intarrisable d'elle même.' I pronounced the French sonorously.

'Ah, yes,' he said. 'Would you like another drink?'

'That is very kind of you.' This offer was humiliating, of course, as were the words I used in accepting it. I should have been less grateful, more insolent. (I have stores of insolence, Excellency: it is always the resource of the weak.) But the fact is that I had instantly become suspicious of him: it is not customary for bored, uncomprehending strangers to offer one second drinks – unless they are guided by self-interest. I wondered for a moment whether he simply wanted to shut me up. In that he would not have succeeded: I was about to introduce the Goncourts into our discussion of the music hall. But no. After another moment he leaned forward and said, in a burst, 'That offer of yours, to act as interpreter, you know. Very decent of you. I may well take you up on it.'

'At your service,' I said.

'I have a spot of business to conduct here,' Mister Bowles said. 'It's a question of making an approach to the authorities.'

I think he would have said more, but at this point Biron returned with the drinks, and a moment afterwards Lydia Neuman appeared at the entrance to the verandah, and glanced round as if looking for someone. Presumably not seeing this person, she was turning back towards the door in the leisurely, indifferent way she has when she is alone and feels eyes upon her – I know her so well, Excellency. I wonder if I am the only one to find this assumption of indifference pitiful. Like all attempts to conceal vulnerability. On an impulse I waved and called her name. My voice caused a hush among those around Politis. Lydia saw me, hesitated briefly, then began to walk towards us. On her face the familiar curving, faintly derisive smile.

Lydia lives on the island, Excellency. Part of the time at least. She has a house with a studio in the Turkish quarter. She is of Jewish extraction. The family is Spanish in origin, but her parents now live in France, in Lyons. Her father is a financier of some kind, quite rich. No political affiliations that I can discover. She herself is an artist. She paints the landscapes and people of the island.

We stood up as she drew near the table. I was beginning to make the introduction, but Mister Bowles forestalled me. 'Bowles,' he said. 'Anthony Bowles.' He stood very tall and straight, looking at Lydia unwaveringly.

I wonder now why he was so precipitate. Not shyness, surely? Was there some design in it? Was he wanting to make it clear that he and Lydia had never met before? The only reason for wanting to make this clear is that they have. Probably I am being too ingenious.

' Lydia is an artist, a painter,' I said. I watched her slim, honey-coloured hand enclosed in his reddish big-knuckled one, and a slight chill, a feeling of premonition, visited me at this brief engulfment. (As you know by now, Excellency, I am a believer in signs and portents. The world of sense signals to us, but all messages are encoded. The true frisson is in perception of the pattern, the overall design, not in the detail, however glowing. It is the same with a well-constructed report.)

'Mr, er, Pascali was just telling me about his mother,' Mister Bowles said, when we were again seated.

'One of his favourite topics.' Lydia smiled at Mister Bowles, establishing an immediate front with him against me. She is swift and always unerring in this forming of alliances-when she is interested in someone. Always this eagerness, this optimism, at every new acquaintance. Me of course she has placed and fixed, long ago. She knows my devotion.

I looked at her face in half profile, at the dark strongly marked brows, dark eyes, high cheek bones, giving an effect of severity in repose – a severity cancelled at every slightest tendency of the mouth to smile. She was wearing a pale green crepe dress embroidered with white braid at the throat. To my exacting eye the material seemed too soft and clinging for the spare lines of her body, the angular shoulders, the high breasts. I know her body in every detail, Excellency, though I have never seen it with the eyes of sense. Years of lonely fevers in my room, shuddering knowledge. She and I have done everything together.

'He likes to give himself disgraceful antecedents,' she said.

Her own, apart from the bare summary I have given you, are shrouded in mystery. She was born in Vienna, she once told me, and was for some years at school in England, a boarding school in Kent. She speaks English well, though with a French accent. She makes fairly frequent trips to Europe. What she does there, I don't know. There is much I do not know about Lydia, even after so long, but one thing is certain: she enjoys powerful protection. An unveiled foreign woman, living alone, coming and going as she pleases, she is nevertheless treated with deference. When she is away from home, a bekirji is more or less constantly stationed opposite her house during the night-time hours. Whether she has friends at court or friends here I'm not sure – she does not see many people here; but friends she has, most assuredly. To take one privilege among many, small, but enviable, she is allowed to bring foreign books back from Europe without the zealous attentions of Your Excellency's customs officials. More importantly, her journeys include visits to Athens and various parts of mainland Greece -this with the full knowledge of local officials here. However, I do not want to give the wrong impression. She is an accomplished painter, and takes her work seriously.

'His mother was an acrobat,' Mister Bowles said. This fact seemed to have lodged firmly in his mind.

'Acrobat?' Lydia said. 'He told me she was a piano teacher.'

Both of them turned to regard me with the same faintly derisive expectancy. I see myself as they must have seen me: obese, quaintly dressed; in manner and gesture effusive; face slightly moist from the exertions of speech; a man who accepts drinks and gibes, without reciprocating.

'My mother,' I said, 'belonged to a more innocent age than ours. The road show she was with fell on evil days. She took up the profession of prostitute in Constantinople which in those days had nothing but very fat whores. Fatness was regarded as the sine qua non, there was no making a career without it. That is, until my mother appeared on the scene. Being in good hard training from her acrobatics, and with no superfluous flesh on her, she appealed to a special taste – one which up to then had been completely uncatered for. As you can imagine, she began to prosper.