(By the way, these are photos Stella collected for me, amused by the acquaintances and friends she and my mother had in common without knowing each other . . . Would mentioning that increase my credibility? It would for S., but what about Christa?)

Schwab’s rapt attention and Christa’s long-suffering skepticism: if she wanted to, she could counter my myth with one of her own, a less exotic one, of course, but all the more tangible. Its guarantors come to tea on a regular basis and it didn’t need to be documented picture by picture. Photographically it was already a new generation that shot its pictures from the hip, so to speak, in a habitual routine. That created a somewhat less emotional, less intoxicated background, which in Christa’s case was no less grand, not at all: East Prussian lake district, the light and air harsher but clearer above golden waves of grain, the views more expansive, setting out fresh for bright mornings on horseback. And the view down the long suites of rooms in the castle, their walls also lined with ancestral portraits (ancestors documented and not merely imagined!). There were uncles as well, genuine ones, and aunts, all from the same family and not plucked from hedges and fences like mine. Legitimate genealogies, no gaps even in the prewar period. Aristocratic grandparents and progenitors, white haired and bent under the weight of their dignities and duties . . . Here too a park with giant centuries-old oaks—“and they strung up Grandpapa from the thickest branch . . .”

“Our kind doesn’t make a big deal about it,” Christa would say, if she ever mentioned it. After all, it’s history and not some mythic land. Their flight before the Russian advance was interesting. They tried to get carried along in the retreating stream of Wehrmacht soldiers but couldn’t keep up. The German retreat was flowing faster than the refugees could flee and the Russian tide advancing even faster . . . “Naturally there were marauders among the half-Polack populace and you had to hide from the Gestapo too; they stayed behind on the lookout for traitors’ relatives—guilt by association, you know. So we traveled only at night in a wagon abandoned by the reserves, pulled by half-dead horses, and during the day we hid in the hayloft of any barn we could find. Uncle Heribert was terrified—he was well over eighty—and we made a joke out of frightening him: ‘Uncle Heribert, the Russians are here!’ And he peed in his pants every time! Lord, how we laughed . . .”

I concede that’s more believable and true to life. I run out of steam: “No, the man next to the baby carriage isn’t my father—why, do I look like him? because that’s what many people say. . . it’s probably just mimesis, a little boy’s simian imitation. No, it’s my uncle—all right, so-called uncle, on my mother’s side, so to speak—Uncle Bully Olivera, the tin magnate from Bolivia, as I said—or hang on for a second—no, my mistake, it’s Uncle Jean Fégonsac—sometimes I confuse the two of them; they look like twins in their polo togs . . .”