Yes, they were a flamboyant crowd. One woman was barebreasted. One man wore a Napoleonic uniform. Many had crossdressed: several of the men had on what looked like chiffon bedroom wear, and several of the women were clad in ties, tweeds or dress shirts and dinner-jackets. They had a band on board, so they began to dance. There was a bar on board, so they began to drink. There was finger-food on board, so they began to snack. There were celebrities on board, so they started celebrating. There were evidently illegal substances on board, so they began to dream. There were lips and breasts and buttocks on board, so they began to neck and fondle and nuzzle and suck. They were beautiful people, and they knew they were, so they started to do beautiful and outrageous and infinitely photographable things. They also photographed themselves doing them, making their circle of unreality complete.

But amid all this glitzy excitement there was one small pool of calm, sanity and metaphysical reason. It surrounded, of course, Bazlo Criminale. We wandered round the ship – the chilly top deck, the back of the lower deck, the front saloon, the rear saloon – and at first we couldn’t find him. Then there he was, sitting stockily at a table in a corner of the rear saloon. His great erotic adventure – and, looking at Miss Belli, who sat beside him, it surely must have been a great erotic adventure seemed to have changed him a little. His humour seemed much brighter, and the air of domesticity had gone. He wore a bright Ralph Lauren sports shirt under his fine suit, and his hairstyle was no longer bouffanted in the style of Romanian dictators but had been slicked firmly down in the style of a Thirties seducer. Belli, beside him in her bright orange dress, chattered, laughed, flirted, and constantly touched him on the arm. And in a crowd of flamboyant celebrities, he seemed somehow to be the true celebrity, as perhaps the constant flash of cameras insisted. I saw now how Criminale and People magazine could somehow go together.

But he was still the hardy philosopher. As at Barolo, a crowd had gathered round, small at first, but growing all the time, listening to what he was saying. I stood on the fringes and caught some of it. ‘I read in the newspaper today a very interesting thing,’ he was remarking. ‘Always first in the morning when he wakes he reads the newspapers,’ explained Miss Belli. ‘I see the Japanese have now invented a special new toilet, the Happy Stool,’ said Criminale, ‘It takes what you drop in the bowl each morning and at once makes a medical diagnosis of it.’ ‘Bazlo, caro, you are disgusting,’ said Belli. ‘In goes your effluent, out from a slot in the wall comes your health report,’ said Criminale, ignoring this, ‘Too much vodka last night, sonny, now look what you have done with your cholesterol. Maybe even a needle comes into your rump and puts the matter right.’ ‘Bazlo caro, eat something,’ said Miss Belli, pushing forward a tray of canapés, ‘All this blasted lovely food and you don’t take any!’ ‘After I read this, how can I eat something?’ asked Criminale, ‘You see what it means, there is no secret anywhere any more.’

‘“Bazlo caro, eat something,”’ said Ildiko, beside me, mim­icking, ‘See how she pushes him around? Poor man, he might as well have stayed with Sepulchra, yes?’ ‘Belli has quite a few qualities Sepulchra lacks these days,’ I said, watching as Miss Belli began stuffing small morsels into Criminale’s upturned mouth. ‘Oh, you wish you could run away with her as well?’ asked Ildiko. I looked at her; her attitude seemed increasingly strange to me, but it was clear that the sight of Criminale on his erotic holiday had done her no good at all. I took her by the arm and led her outside onto the deck. It was chilly by now, and nearly dark. Our bright-lit steamer was thumping on down the lake, Swiss flag flying out behind. Where were we headed: Geneva, Evian, Montreux? I saw we were close to the shoreline, and there were odd illuminated glimpses of finely latticed vineyards sloping down to the edge of the lake. We must have been going toward Vevey and Montreux.

‘Don’t they look happy?’ asked Ildiko, very bitterly, I thought, ‘I remember once when he was just like this before.’ ‘When was that?’ I asked. ‘When he first left Gertla for Sepulchra,’ said Ildiko. ‘Gertla?’ I asked. ‘His second wife, you remember her, I think,’ she said, ‘You saw her nude in Budapest.’ ‘I did what?’ I asked. ‘Her photograph,’ said Ildiko, ‘You saw her nude in Budapest. He was married to Gertla many many years. Oh, some affairs, of course, he is a Hungarian man, after all. Then one day Sepulchra walked into his life. Not as she is now, she was a painter, very very pretty. So they had this nice thing, you know about these nice things, and he left Gertla. He was all excited, happy, looking quite different, just as he is here.’ ‘Well, why not?’ I asked. ‘Because it is when he is with women that Bazlo always destroys himself. Now he does it again.’ ‘Destroys himself, how?’ I asked. ‘He lets them make nonsense of his life,’ said Ildiko.

This rather baffled me: the last thing the Criminale I had just seen resembled was a man who was destroying himself, making nonsense of his life. Although I was no expert on love (a fact that must be fairly clear to you by now), it seemed to me that any rational man (and Criminale was above all things a rational man), faced with the choice between fat, fussy Sepulchra and beautiful Miss Belli, would be likely to make the same decision. No doubt I saw only what I wanted to see, as we all do, and Ildiko saw something else (in fact she must have seen quite a lot else). ‘Anyway, I think it’s time one of us spoke to him,’ I said. ‘But he will think we are following him,’ said Ildiko. ‘We are following him,’ I said, ‘Now we have to get in closer. Anyway, I thought you wanted to warn him.’ ‘I warn him?’ asked Ildiko, ‘Why?’ ‘About little Miss Black Trousers,’ I said. ‘Let her have him if she wants to,’ said Ildiko bitterly. ‘I thought you were worried for him,’ I said. ‘Why should I worry?’ asked Ildiko, ‘He is looked after so nicely by this other person.’ ‘You came all the way from Budapest to talk to him,’ I said. ‘Well, now I don’t like to,’ said Ildiko, Talk to him if you like, but do not tell him I am here. Do whatever you like, but all I like is to be left alone and get something a little to eat, okay? Do not come.’

And Ildiko walked angrily off, disappearing inside the ship. I stayed there chilly against the ship’s rail, feeling very confused. I was a young man then – I still am to this day, this very day – and the truth is that for all my fondness for Ildiko (and I was, and still am, very fond of her indeed) I was finding her very difficult to handle and understand. In fact I wasn’t an inch anywhere nearer understanding her complicated and mercurial temper than I was on the day I met her with Sandor Hollo in Buda at the Restaurant Kiss. Of course I too had my own faults and failings. I’m something of a New Man, of course, but I realize from the magazine articles that I do lack some of the graces and subtleties I probably ought to possess. And when it comes to the crunch no one would admit more readily than I will that I’m not always the most thoughtful of lovers or the most understanding of friends. I had my obsession, of course, as she presumably had hers. If Ildiko was difficult, I suppose I was too.

So, there at the rail, I tried to think what had gone wrong with our joint quest for Criminale, and why we were at cross-purposes. It was true that, in the simple matter of finding adequate hotel accommodation, I had been less than an ideal travelling companion when I found us single bunks at the Hotel Zwingli. I regretted it already, and I’d made up my mind to shift camp next day down to the Hotel Movenpick, a very modern-looking chain hotel I’d spotted just a little way further down the Ouchy promenade, where good old-fashioned Swiss Calvinism was more likely to be tempered by some good old-fashioned Swiss commercialism. But even then of course it would be nothing like the splendours of the Beau Rivage Palace, which I could never provide. In fact nobody could, except for Bazlo Criminale. But perhaps that was the point. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure something more than a bad room in a bad hotel was making Ildiko behave in this angry and temperamental way.