For me the deepest truth was found only in things suffused with the lives of many generations, which hold the past as permanently as mason Kelemen’s wife buried in the high tower of Deva.

“I’m putting this rather well, don’t you think? Perhaps it’s this excellent bottle of Sangiovese …

“I often saw Tamás Ulpius on Castle Hill, because he lived up there. This in itself made him a highly romantic figure. But what really charmed me was his pale face, his princely, delicate melancholy, and so much else about him. He was extravagantly polite, dressed soberly, and kept aloof from his classmates. And from me.

“But to get back to me. You’ve always known me as a thickset, well-built, mature young man, with a smooth calm face, what they call a ‘po-face’ in Budapest. And as you know I’ve always been rather dreamy. Let me tell you, when I was at school I was very different. I’ve shown you my picture from those days. You saw how thin and hungry, how restless my face was, ablaze with ecstasy. I suppose I must have been really ugly, but I still much prefer the way I looked then. And imagine, with all that, an adolescent body to match—a skinny, angular boy with a back rounded by growing too fast. And a corresponding lean and hungry character.

“So you can imagine I was pretty sick in mind and body. I was anaemic, and subject to fits of terrible depression. When I was sixteen, after a bout of pneumonia, I began to have hallucinations. When reading, I would often sense that someone was standing behind my back peering over my shoulder at the book. I had to turn round to convince myself that there was no-one there. Or in the night I would wake with the terrifying sensation that someone was standing beside my bed staring down at me. Of course there was no-one there. And I was permanently ashamed of myself. In time my position in the family became unbearable because of this constant sense of shame. During meals I kept blushing, and at one stage the least thing was enough to make me want to burst into tears. On these occasions I would run out of the room. You know how correct my parents are. You can imagine how disappointed and shocked they were, and how much my brothers and Edit teased me. It got to the point where I was forced to pretend I had a French lesson at school at two-thirty, and so was able to eat on my own, before the others did. Later I had my supper kept aside as well.

“Then on top of this came the worst symptom of all: the whirlpool. Yes, I really mean whirlpool. Every so often I would have the sensation that the ground was opening beside me, and I was standing on the brink of a terrifying vortex. You mustn’t take the whirlpool literally.