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caught up with him and killed him in 1945. That was your woman-friend’s father.’
    ‘Well, it was a long time ago. I wasn’t born.’
    ‘But the daughter was. She’s no youngster compared to you.’
    ‘Nor are you, compared to her.’
    ‘I don’t enter into it. I’ve only come to tell you that this woman’s dangerous. She’s a defector from Bulgaria and it seems to me she’s being followed. How is your steak?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘What you’re eating. Is it done all right?’
    ‘Yes, it’s all right. I don’t notice what I’m eating.’
    ‘You young people don’t. Well, she’s being followed by agents of some sort, probably Balkan. They don’t like people slipping away.’
    ‘Look, she’s only a little nobody to them—’
    Curran said, ‘She was on a group visit with some Bulgarian art teachers in Paris last year, and she left the group. They’re after her.’
    ‘The Paris police know all about her. She’s got asylum,’ Robert said. ‘All in order,’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Well, what’s it got to do with me? She’s looking for her father’s grave here in Venice, and I’m helping her.’
    ‘We’re talking in circles. You’re in danger if you’re seen with her.’
    ‘You mean,’ said Robert, ‘I’m in danger of losing your friendship if I’m seen with her. Do you think I’m afraid? I’ve got a right to have a girl. You think I’m effeminate?’
    ‘Don’t raise your voice like that. We’re probably being overheard, anyway.’
    ‘You think me effeminate. I’ve told you I refuse to be labelled,’ Robert said.
    ‘I think you masculine to a fault,’ said Curran.
    Robert looked round the room. The other diners were all of them in parties, intent on their talking and eating, their ordering and their drinking, laughing, smiling. They looked as if they had nothing else but their own lives on their minds, and on their well-dressed bodies, no virtue so penetrating even as an eavesdropping device. On the other hand, look again: maybe everybody, every single diner, could be capable of extending his range. The place could be filled with spies, how could one tell?
    ‘You know,’ said Robert, ‘I don’t believe what you’re saying. I don’t believe she’s being followed. I think it’s a cheap trick you’ve thought up.’
    ‘What for?’ said Curran. ‘Why? Why should I take trouble for you?’ He looked round the room. ‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘those people who keep following you and Lina Pancev are not here tonight. I hardly thought they would be.’
    ‘It gets me down,’ said Robert, ‘the way you look around as if you owned the place.’
    ‘How you nag!’ said Curran. ‘Just like a middle-class wife.’
    ‘What’s wrong with the middle class,’ Robert said, ‘apart from people like you?’
    ‘Men like you,’ said Curran, ‘is what’s wrong with the middle class. The English public schools used to make heroes; nowadays they turn out Hamlets:’
    ‘If you don’t like men like me,’ Robert sniped, ‘then what are you doing in Venice?’
    After dinner they walked briskly through the chilly lanes and squares, where the side-canals were ill-lit and the future beyond every few steps was murky. ‘Easy …’ said Curran, as practically every visitor to Venice says, sooner or later, ‘very easy—wouldn’t it be?—to slither a knife into someone, push him into the canal and just walk on.’ At which Robert looked at Curran in a startled way, so that Curran laughed.
    A motor-barge could be heard approaching from a side-canal ahead of them. ‘That’s the port authority,’ Curran said. A smooth-sounding motor followed it. ‘That’s the water police,’ said Curran.
    ‘You look good’ said Curran.
    ‘Go to hell.’
    Robert had found Curran in the front hall of the Pensione Sofia, seated at a table with Katerina and Eufemia. It was mid-morning. Robert had come in the front door with the English newspaper in his hand, and there was Curran chatting