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He laughed. ‘That was being a tough guy. Come with me.’ In his study was a classic English desk. Along three walls stood bookshelves that were filling up nicely. On the fourth hung a photo of the six of us on the summit of Mont Ventoux. He went over to the photo and pointed at Peter. ‘He has been marked out, but he doesn’t yet know it. To paraphrase Death in the poem: ‘That on Ventoux I saw the man / I must fetch at night in Isfahan.’

‘Carpentras.’

‘Doesn’t rhyme.’

I touched Peter’s face with my finger.

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V

Joost made a valiant attempt to explain the rudiments of string theory to me. We were sitting in Huis De Bijlen. He faltered now and then and waved his hands about. Then he stopped abruptly. ‘I can’t explain string theory. For the simple reason that there are no words for it. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the theory.’

The fact that even Joost could see there were no words for something proved that we were in a deeply abstract world.

‘It’s a mathematical concept so complicated that there aren’t many people in the world who really understand anything about it. I sometimes don’t even know if I understand the real finer points. And I’m not talking about the reality behind the theory itself, because that is far too complex to be thoroughly understood by anyone. I am making a contribution to the mystery. There are scientists who call string theory a religion.’