I found this bewildering. Did the bewitching Miss Belli have a certain grip on power? She didn’t seem the Jackie Kennedy or Joan Collins type to me. ‘No, sex is not so amazing,’ Criminale went on, ‘It is what we confuse ourselves with on the way to something better. It misdirects us and empties us. It is our unfortunate necessity, our incontinence, our error, our folly. Now the women don’t want it anyway.’ ‘That’s very depressing,’ I said, thinking that if this was his current state of mind it must be still more depressing for Miss Belli. ‘It is not an original observation,’ said Criminale, ‘Maybe not even quite true. But truer than I imagined when somewhere a long way from here I set out on my small life adventure.’ ‘And where was that?’ I asked, realizing that this was a chance to find out what I could. ‘A place you have never, heard of, a place you will never visit,’ said Criminale. ‘Veliko Turnovo?’ I asked. He turned and looked at me. ‘You know more about me than I thought,’ he said.

‘I read some magazine articles about you,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure whether they’re true.’ ‘Most definitely not,’ he said, ‘But that is so, yes. It was a place to be born in, also a place to leave if you wished to live a significant life.’ ‘You’ve certainly done that,’ I said. ‘You think so?’ he asked, glancing at me, ‘You know, the other day a very nice young lady wrote to me and said she had read my book Homeless, and it had changed her life. I thought about it. How? I wrote it, and it did not change mine.’ ‘You’ve influenced a lot of people,’ I said, ‘Including me.’ ‘Well, it has made me famous, and rich,’ he said, ‘And I suppose one should not despise these things, although I think I do. It has even made me erotic, you know.’ ‘I suppose fame is erotic,’ I said. ‘But let me warn you, the love life of celebrities, which fills up all the newspapers, is never quite what it seems,’ said Criminale, ‘The image is a deception. The description is nothing like the reality. Celebrity is a public delusion for which the world will make you pay. And now where in the world have we got to?’

‘Where in the world?’ I asked. I thought at first he was posing me some philosophical question, but he waved his hand grandly at the lake in front of us. ‘Oh, on the lake,’ I said, ‘I think those lights must be Vevey.’ ‘Ah, yes, Vevey,’ said Criminale, ‘Once the exile home of a very great man.’ ‘Oh yes?’ I asked. ‘Charlie Chaplin,’ he said, ‘Do you know Adolf Hitler’s men had strict orders that the Führer must never watch his movies, for the fear that he might think the fool he was watching up there on the screen was himself?’ ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Those two were born in the same year, 1889, by the way,’ he said, ‘Think of it, Hitler and Chaplin, the fascist and the clown. If you are a photographer, then you must visit the Chaplin Museum here, you know.’ ‘You’ve been there?’ I asked. ‘Of course, I opened the centennial exhibition of last year there myself,’ said Criminale, ‘I found it quite moving, by the way.’ ‘You seem to be a great traveller,’ I said, ‘I gather you go everywhere.’

‘No, no, I am not a traveller,’ said Criminale, There are no travellers now, only tourists. A traveller comes to see a reality that is there already. A tourist comes only to see a reality invented for him, in which he conspires.’ ‘Yes, we live in a placeless world,’ I said. He turned and looked at me in a half-puzzled way. ‘Did I perhaps say this to you before?’ he asked. I felt he was just beginning to recognize me; in fact perhaps I was half-teasing him to do so. I thought it was time to tell him a little of the truth (all of it is more than any of us can manage) and perhaps even hint at the reasons for my interest in him. ‘Something like it,’ I said, ‘I heard you lecture the other day at Barolo.’ ‘Really, at Barolo?’ he asked, looking at me over the top of the cigar he was lighting, ‘Well, I was there. You also? So what did I lecture on?’

It seemed an odd question: was he testing me, or had he in his high-mindedness managed to forget what he said? ‘You spoke about the end of history,’ I told him. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Criminale, ‘You see, my dear young fellow, history always goes on, always takes a shape, whether we like it or not. Perhaps you misunderstood me.’ ‘That’s possible,’ I said. ‘No, no, of course, I remember it now,’ said Criminale, excitedly shaking his cigar at me, ‘What I was talking about, I think, was the end of homo historicus, the individual who finds a meaning or an intention in history. Yes?’ ‘something like that,’ I said. ‘Oh, there are old men in China who still think history is made with the barrel of a gun,’ he said, ‘But they will go soon to their forefathers, and that will be that. And for the rest of us, well, the past embarrasses us, the future is a chaotic mystery. So we are condemned to an eternal present. We know nothing, we remember nothing. And so we cannot tell good from evil, reality from illusion. And who can guide us to another way? Perhaps you like a cigar?’

‘Thank you,’ I said, taking one from the elegant case he presented to me. I put it into my mouth, nibbling the end. ‘No, no, not like that, my friend, these are from Castro, they must be respected,’ he said, taking it back and shaping it neatly with his pocket knife, ‘You see, we have no great story for ourselves, and so we go nowhere. Isn’t it true?’ ‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ I said. And so we stood there, two friendly passengers, our cigar ends glowing, staring out over the rail as the lights of Vevey and then Montreux slipped brightly by. ‘You know, I like this lake,’ he said after a moment. ‘Yes, it’s very pleasant,’ I said. ‘The lake of exiles,’ said Criminale, ‘The people who loved it most were mostly exiles, like myself. All came looking for what you can never find. Rousseau came, looking for human innocence. It was not here. Byron came seeking political liberty. Not here. Eliot came wanting a relief from the madness of the modern. No good. Nabokov came and thought he would find Russia again. He found Swiss hotels.’ He wasn’t the only one, I thought.

I looked at him sideways. One thing, I realized, was certain: whatever erotic delights this famous and fortunate man was enjoying – or perhaps not enjoying – in the warm arms of Miss Belli, they had not diminished by one jot his teacher’s unquenchable desire to instruct and explain. I was full of questions; I wanted to ask him things, to ask him everything about his childhood, his politics, his philosophy, his experience under Karl Marx, his life, his loves. But I settled for listening, and why not? That was what you did with Bazlo Criminale. After all, in the middle of an egotistical world, very short on dignity (the photographers behind us were now turning the party raucous), he had the gift for deepening and dignifying any occasion, for adding presence and value to any thought. I found now, as I had at Barolo, that I liked the sound of his talking voice, the slow, ironic tone of his ideas, that I liked him. I liked his seriousness, his human flavour, his sense of history. He came out of confusion, but he brought a sort of order. At moments like this I knew there was nothing wrong with Criminale.

‘But the best book of this lake was Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He finished it here, a very great book. You have read it, of course?’ ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘Do it one day, to please me,’ said Criminale, ‘A book that shows that to all historical epochs there is a finite cycle. Also a book that began the modern re-interpretation of history. Just as I sometimes think I must someday begin the re-interpretation of philosophy.’ ‘That’s quite a project,’ I said. ‘Well, I think we were put on this earth to perform quite a project,’ said Criminale, ‘I am not like many philosophers today, who think we were put here to perform nothing at all. Of course they have a reason. All those who tried the great project in modern times have failed. Nietzsche found confusion and it drove him mad. Heidegger was deluded by those Nazis, whom he mixed up with great philosophers when they were really bully-boys, thugs. Sartre, naive like some girl with all those Stalinists, I knew those people and how they used him. But of course a philosopher is there to be used.’