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they were given a lecture of indoctrination by a representative of the regime. Something in their eyes, though, told me they were far from brainwashed, and now and then a particularly savage old dissident lying in a corner intervened with a caustic witticism, delivered in the most cultured of English accents and with the bite of an incisive mind. Thus Nestorius might have spoken, I thought, during his exile at El Kharga.
    The European
    I met a man so allegorically Dutch that I deliberately engaged him in what I hoped would be allegorically Dutch conversation. He was a tall man with military moustaches, deep-blue eyes and a proper burgher’s paunch, but he did not talk about Rembrandt, tulips, dykes, the German occupation, Queen Beatrix, the new season’s herrings, Admiral de Ruyter or what was playing at the Concertgebouw that evening. No. He talked about unemployment, too many Asian immigrants, keeping his weight down and his hopes, earlier in life, of being a professional footballer. He was a citizen of the Netherlands, but I have met him all over western Europe, and that’s what he always talks about.
    Hero of the Soviet Union
    The most dramatic as well as the most diligent conductor in the world is to be seen in action at the Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Odessa. He is an elderly man, but passionate. All around him as he works peculiar things are happening. Behind, in the half-empty auditorium, a constant buzz of homely conversation underlies the score, and three ill-shaven Levantines in the second row seem to be in the throes of opium dreams, squirming and sighing in their seats. In front, the stage is alive with minor mishaps–trap-doors mysteriously closing and opening, fans being dropped, iron accessories clattering, while the cast of La Traviata smile resolutely across the footlights with a treasury of gold teeth.
    The conductor is unperturbed. Majestically he sails through the confusions of the evening, impervious to them all, sometimes grunting emotionally, sometimes joining in an aria in a powerful baritone, throwing his fine head back, bending double, conspiratorially withdrawing, pugnaciously advancing, with infinite variations of facial expression and frequent hissed injunctions to the woodwind. Nobody in the socialist bloc fulfils a norm more devotedly.
    The choice
    â€˜Are you a man or a woman?’ asked the Fijian taxi driver as he drove me from the airport.
    â€˜I am a respectable, rich, middle-aged English widow,’ I replied.
    â€˜Good,’ he said, ‘just what I want,’ and put his hand upon my knee.
    A Gypsy kiss
    In the evening the entire population of Tirana seemed to emerge for the twilight passeggiata, strolling up and down the main avenue, sitting on the edges of fountains, milling around funfairs, wandering haphazardly across highways. I loved the louche insouciance of it all, the immense hum over everything, the quirks and surprises. Once I felt a small dry kiss on my arm, and turned to find a Gypsy child irresistibly importuning me for cash.
    Understanding the truth
    What would happen, I asked a fundamentalist predicant of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, if an African walked into one of his services?
    â€˜I would have him removed. My church is for Europeans, and it would be wrong to allow a native to worship there. God divided the races for His own purposes, and it is not for us to doubt His wisdom.’
    â€˜Or if a Chinaman turned up one day, or an Eskimo?’
    â€˜No, my church is not for Asiatics. I would send them away. But now you must not misunderstand me,’ he added earnestly, tapping his knee with his forefinger. ‘I don’t say they shouldn’t have a service at all. If there was no other church for them to attend I would hold a service myself, notinside my church, of course, but in a field if necessary. I feel this very strongly: that no man, whatever his colour, whatever his race, wheresoever he cometh from,