‘All right,’ I said, ‘What did you spend? How much did you buy?’ ‘Ah, you want to see all these?’ she asked, opening up an Armani leather suitcase I had never seen before, and unpacking from it plastic shop bag after plastic shop bag. ‘All that?’ I asked. ‘Look,’ said Ildiko, ‘You know I only bought it all for you.’ I looked. What Ildiko had bought for me was the following: three dresses in Day-Glo colours; shoes of electric blue; anoraks of outrageous purple; racing drivers’ sunglasses; a baseball cap saying ‘Cleveland Pitchers’; skin-tight Lycra bicycling pants with startling pink flashes; Stars and Stripes knickers; Union Jack bras; a tee-shirt that said on it ‘Spandau Ballet’, and another that declared ‘Up Yours, Delors.’ ‘Do you really like them?’ she asked. ‘Frankly?’ I asked. ‘Yes, of course, frankly,’ said Ildiko. ‘Well, frankly, I like your Hungarian miniskirt much better,’ I said.

Ildiko stared at me, dismay in her eyes. ‘You like it better?’ she said, ‘But that is just from Hungary. These are from the West. They are from shopping.’ ‘Ildiko, you’ll just look like everybody else,’ I said. ‘Don’t you like me to look like everybody else?’ she asked, ‘Beside, when I go back to Budapest I will not look like everybody else.’ ‘I liked you best the way you were when I first met you,’ I said. ‘If you don’t like my clothes, that means you don’t like me,’ said Ildiko. Another passage in Henry James came to mind, about clothes and the self. ‘No, it doesn’t. You’ve only just bought them, and anyway your clothes aren’t you,’ I said, though I was not sure I believed it; Henry James, I recalled, had never seen an ‘Up Yours, Delors’ tee-shirt. ‘They are me, they are my style,’ said Ildiko, ‘I think you don’t like me any more. You are mad with me. Just because I told you I had a little affair once a long time ago with Criminale Bazlo.’ At once I felt a brute, as I was supposed to. ‘I’m not mad with you,’ I said, ‘I’ve no right to be. You had your own life to live. I don’t mind what you did with Bazlo Criminale.’

‘Then you do really like me?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, ‘You know I like you, I like you a lot. I like your clothes, I like you even better when you’ve got no clothes on at all.’ ‘Okay, show me,’ she said. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘No, but wait, first I put on for you this new brazer and these pants.’ She pulled off her dress, stripped to the buff, and then strapped herself round bosom and crotch with the bright colours of the British and American red, white and blue. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘For you I am British now.’ ‘Take them off,’ I said. ‘Now?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Because here we go, here we go, here we go.’ And go we did, there on an ancient, tired Italian bed in the dusty back-room of the Gran Hotel Barolo. Ildiko’s shopping-bags lay all around us, spilling with packaged clothes. It was, of course, a pleasing experience, a little spiked with a certain half-anger we felt for each other. But I have to admit to you that even our lovemaking itself no longer had quite the same paradisial feel as before, that our very nakedness with each other had lost some of its splendour, now that we had been expelled from the Villa Barolo. ‘They destitute and bare of all their virtue; silent and in face Confounded long they sat,’ says John Milton of very similar circumstances, and I think I know just what he means.

Only later, when we had taken lunch and were sitting on the hotel terrace over coffee, was I able to bring Ildiko’s mind to the realities of our situation. We sat staring out across the wintry lake, misted over but calm as a mirror; it had returned to its usual pearly grey, though branches floated in the water, and debris ruffled the surface everywhere. ‘I don’t think today you are in such a nice mood,’ said Ildiko. ‘No, maybe not,’ I said, ‘That’s because we can’t go back to the villa, we’ve got no money, and we’ve lost touch with Bazlo Criminale.’ ‘We could take a trip,’ said Ildiko, ‘I brought back some brochure.’ ‘Please, Ildiko,’ I said, This is work, not a holiday. I have to make a programme about Criminale. And now this bastard Codicil has come along and destroyed everything.’ ‘Why would he like to do that?’ asked Ildiko. ‘Because he doesn’t want old stories raked over, because he’s afraid I’ll find out something I’m not supposed to know.’ ‘What are you not supposed to know?’ asked Ildiko. ‘That’s the trouble,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m not supposed to know, and whether I know it already or whether I was about to find it out. I just know there’s something I mustn’t know. There has to be, to bring Codicil flying down here. Where did you meet him last night? Was he waiting at the villa when you came back from . . .’

‘Shopping?’ asked Ildiko, ‘No, he was just there.’ ‘Yes, I know but where’s there?’ ‘Well, first, I went shopping,’ said Ildiko, ‘Then because I had bought so much thing, I had to take taxi.’ ‘A very big taxi, I should imagine,’ I said. ‘I came to the pier for evening hovercraft, they are really very nice, those boats. And here was this big fat man in green overcoat, and hat with little feather in it, waiting there also.’ ‘So there he was, Professor Codicil,’ I said, ‘Did you already know him?’ ‘No, of course not,’ said Ildiko, ‘I had never met him before. He said he has never been in Budapest. He asked if I spoke German, I said, yes, I do. Then he asked if I knew where was the Villa Barolo, where there was a very big congress.’ ‘So nobody met him,’ I said, ‘He just turned up out of the blue.’ ‘Yes, I think from the blue,’ said Ildiko, ‘I told him I went there too, I could show him the way. I took him on the boat and we came back, just before the storm.’ ‘And on the boat you talked to him?’ ‘Yes, I am a very polite person,’ said Ildiko.

‘Did he explain all about himself?’ I asked. ‘He said he was a very important professor,’ said Ildiko. ‘I bet,’ I said. ‘Also he mentioned Monza,’ said Ildiko, ‘He said he was another very important professor and an old mate colleague.’ ‘So those two are buddies,’ I said. ‘I don’t think buddies,’ she said. ‘So who received him at the villa?’ I asked, ‘Not Monza, he was at Bellavecchia.’ ‘I think Mrs Magno,’ said Ildiko, ‘They had no room for him but he had long talk to her, and then she told the servants to find him something. Why do you ask me all these questions?’ ‘Because it’s strange,’ I said, ‘This is a closed congress, there aren’t supposed to be any extra participants. They warned us people would be turned away if they didn’t get to Milan on the first day. Codicil’s not on any of the lists. He’s not down to give a paper. The congress is more than halfway finished. Mrs Magno wasn’t expecting him. So what makes him turn up suddenly to a congress where he hasn’t been invited and no one is expecting him?’ ‘He said he was late because he had been examining his students,’ said Ildiko. ‘Oh, yes?’ I said, ‘If Codicil ever actually met one of his students, he wouldn’t know him from Schopenhauer. He’s so busy politicking around with the government he never sees his students. That’s why he has all these assistants, to do what people usually call teaching. No, someone must have tipped him off. Maybe his buddy Monza.’

‘Monza tipped him off what?’ asked Ildiko. ‘I mean, told him that I was here,’ I said, ‘That’s the only reason I can think of for him to come flying all this way.’ ‘You really think you are so important,’ said Ildiko, laughing, ‘He said he came because it was very proper he should be here. After all, Criminale was the guest of honour and he had written the great book on Criminale.’ ‘Except we know he didn’t write the great book on Criminale,’ I said, ‘And that’s strange too. Why turn up and say he had written the book, right in front of the man who actually had written it?’ ‘So who do you think wrote it?’ asked Ildiko. ‘Criminale wrote it himself,’ I said, ‘Then he got it out to Vienna, and it was published under Codicil’s name.’ ‘Who told you all this?’ asked Ildiko. ‘I thought you knew,’ I said, ‘Sandor Hollo. He took the book to Vienna.’ Ildiko began to laugh. ‘Hollo Sandor?’ she asked, ‘You don’t believe that one, I hope. He never told the truth in his life. I know him very well.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I rather thought so. But if Criminale didn’t write it, then who did?’ ‘Professor Codicil,’ said Ildiko. ‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘He told me last night,’ she said, ‘He tried to make a contract with me to get it published in Hungary. How could he do that if it was written by Criminale?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He said the book was a great achievement, and it had made him sweat for many years.’ ‘I still think that was the central heating,’ I said, ‘But it’s true he’d hardly come and say he’d written it in the presence of the real author. Unless he knew Criminale had gone already.’