Electricity, the conferencephone, hypermagical spaces, a feminist psychologist, not to speak of destructive, ethereal symbolism – it’s all too much for one evening. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

Jacinto was slowly folding up his letter, in which he had included, quite openly (as befitted our fraternal friendship) two white violets taken from the flower that adorned his buttonhole.

‘Tomorrow, Zé Fernandes, before lunch, I want you to take a cab and bring yourself and all your luggage to No. 202, so that you can move into your room here. Staying in a hotel is so awkward and uncomfortable. Here you have the telephone, the theatrephone, books …’

I accepted at once without a murmur. And Jacinto put his mouth to one of the many speaking tubes and whispered:

‘Cricket!’

The damask-lined wall suddenly and silently split asunder, and out of it emerged his old manservant, Cricket (the same little black boy who had come to Paris with Dom Galeão), who, I was cheered to see, was in robust health and blacker than ever, looking venerable and resplendent in his stiff cravat and white, gold-buttoned waistcoat. He was equally glad to see me – ‘Master Fernandes’ – again, and when he learned that I was to take up residence in Grandpa Jacinto’s room, he positively beamed at me and at his master, pleased to be provided once more with a family to take care of.

‘Cricket,’ Jacinto was saying, ‘have this letter delivered to Madame d’Oriol. Oh, and telephone the Trèves household and tell them that the spiritualists are only free on Sunday. Oh, and I’ll have a shower before dinner, warm, about seventeen degrees. Followed by a friction massage with essence of mallow.’

Then, falling dully back onto the divan, he gave a slow, gaping yawn.

‘Yes, my dear friend, here we are again after seven years, in old Paris …’

I, however, stayed where I was at the table, wanting to finish what I had started.

‘But Jacinto what is the point of all these machines? One of the wretches even pricked me. They seem almost malevolent. Are they of any real use?’

Jacinto made a vague, languid gesture indicating their sublime utility. ‘They’re essential, my boy, absolutely essential because they do so simplify one’s work. Look …’ And he listed them one by one. This one was for removing old nibs, this one for paginating manuscripts; that one over there erased emendations … And there were others for sticking down stamps, printing dates, melting sealing wax, binding documents … 

‘But you’re right,’ he went on, ‘it is a terrible bore. All those springs and pointed ends do inflict the occasional wound. Occasionally I’ve had to discard a letter because it was covered in bloody fingerprints! A dreadful nuisance!’

Then, seeing my friend glance up again at the vast clock, I thought it best not to keep him from the consolation of that warm shower and mallow friction rub.

‘Right, Jacinto. I feel better now that I’ve seen you again, and I’ll be back tomorrow – with my luggage.’

‘Zé Fernandes, please, wait a moment. First, take a look at the dining room. You might be tempted!’

From the Library, we went into the dining room, which charmed me with its air of cool, calm luxury. The walls were lined with lacquered white wood that had the soft sheen of satin and encircled medallions of damask, the colour of ripe crushed strawberries; the sideboards, discreetly carved with flowers and rocaille work, glowed with the same snow-white lacquer; and the ample white chairs, upholstered in strawberry damask, were clearly made for those with slow, delicate, intellectual appetites.

‘Bravo, my Prince! This, Jacinto, is the most comprehensive and most restful of dining rooms!’

‘Then stay to dinner, man!

I was already beginning to grow uneasy, for at each place setting there were six forks, each more cunningly designed than the last, and my anxiety only grew when Jacinto revealed that one was for oysters, another for fish, another for meat, another for vegetables, another for fruit and yet another for cheese! However, with a sobriety that Solomon himself would have praised, there were only glasses for just two wines – the Bordeaux rosé in glass pitchers and the champagne chilling in silver buckets. The whole of one dresser, though, groaned beneath an entirely unnecessary and almost frightening array of bottled waters – oxygenated water, carbonated water, phosphated water, sterilised water, soda water, as well as others in pot-bellied bottles with therapeutic treatises printed on the labels.

‘Good heavens, Jacinto! I see you’re still a great drinker of water! An “aquatic” as our Chilean poet and translator of Klopstock used to call you.’

He cast a disconsolate eye over all that glassware with its metal caps and clips.

‘No, that’s not the reason.