‘The greatest privilege of childhood’, she said, ‘is to live safely in the present.’ — Simon Sebag Montefiore

War was simply a slaughterhouse on wheels, he thought. For most men, soldiering was tragedy expressed as a profession.

‘Do you know Ovid’s poems on love?’ she said. ‘He wrote that the bedroom is the only place where you can do exactly what you please, and truly be yourself.’

Nikolasha and Rosa had died for the romantic delusion: totalitarian love as reckless melodrama and desperate possession, an orchestra of trumpets and thunderbolts. Now he saw clearly that the real poetry of love was a meandering river, an accumulation of accidents, the momentum of details.