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would say, is your area of special competence?’
    ‘Love.’
    ‘No, I meant academically.’
    ‘The European love lyric.’ Her laugh was surprisingly youthful. ‘I’m a guest of your Comparative Literature Department. They sponsor my visit here. The famous Dick-stein Lectures, you know. Five days in New York, three public addresses. Then for me it is off to Russell Square for a week of grinding at the British Library. Indeed, I hold a Dozentur at Heidelberg.’
    ‘Of course, I should have realized. Perhaps I know some of your work.’
    ‘Not much has been translated,’ said Diotima doubtfully. ‘But who knows? You read German?’
    ‘
Aber natürlich
.’
    ‘And speak it too. But the accent, so slight… Viennese? You’re not an American? No, of course not. Herr Robert Poore-Moody is a man of mystery. Let me see…’ Diotima put a wrinkled finger to a recessive chin, held her head to one side, and smiled flirtatiously. ‘Poore-Moody, Poore-Moody … hmmm. Poehr-Mutig? Of course, of course! The old duke, one sees it in the nose. Turn your face, so, a little more, yes, the profile. Wait, yes, and the Esterhazy chin. One does not expect to encounter the best of the old aristocratic blood here in the New World. You are appearing incognito, your nobility?’
    ‘Ahem.’
    ‘Fear not, your nobility, I am mum.’ She put a finger to her lips and then wagged it at him impishly. ‘But I must find out all about you. The spirit of scholarly inquiry demands it. From which side of the blanket did Childe Poore-Moody emerge? What will I find in the
Alamanach de Gotha?
It is certain that you have a past.’
    Kraven created on his face an expression to suggest hidden sorrows, private griefs. This in his view was one of his better expressions. The thing was to create a
formula
, that is, to visualize with the mind’s eye a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events that evoked a particular emotion.
    ‘Jesus, Nick, you look rum, must be something you ate. I keep telling Liz she puts too much ipecac in the dip. For that matter, watch out for the meatballs when they finally reach the groaning board. Trust me, it will not groan alone. Tabasco, that’s the secret of the Elizabethan meatball. But don’t let on I told.’
    Solidly ursine, Aristotle Papadakis lumbered up behind Diotima and dropped a pale hairy paw on to her shoulder. His face looked as if it had been crudely etched on a bag of damp putty, or perhaps as if there were within the head some independent yeasty matter that, swelling after its nature, had minimized the definition of the external features. At the moment he had on the side of his neck what appeared to be a large fresh hickey.
    ‘You’re a sly son of a gun, Nick. You’ve found the prettiest girl in the room, and you’re keeping her all to yourself.’ Diotima fluttered her eyelashes madly. ‘Missed your lecture today, Di, damn it. What was it again?’
    ‘The Imagery of Self-Abuse in the Poetry of German Romanticism.’
    ‘Right on!’ Papa Doc rather liked such expressions, his use of which placed him, he thought, at the barricades with the seekers after a better world. (Earlier that evening he had greeted Kraven at the door with a manic ‘Hey, man, what’s happening? Gimmee skin!’)
    ‘Ari, my dear chap,’ said Kraven, ‘a message from the fair Liz. She has present need of you. Tell him, she said, to get his fat ass into the kitchen. Those were her very words.’
    ‘Good fucking Christ! Can’t she even put together a goddam fucking buffet without me!’
    Papa Doc had exploded into a general conversational lull. Heads turned in their direction from every part of the salon. Over by the window Gosson, the emeritus, dribbling, raised his glass to them. ‘Up yours,’ he said amiably. Talk picked up again.
    Shocked at his outburst, Papa Doc strove to recreate his earlier bonhomie. The fire was leaving his cheeks and, but for the hickey, his neck. The old familiar pallor was reasserting