Deepest darkest Germany is really dark and deep, much more so than France, which is open to the four winds, bounded by the seas and the mountains. Its last hidden beauty spots ruthlessly exploited by tour operators and estate agents. Tourism is a tragedy for any country. The hidden depths of a country need to stay silent and hidden; if not, they’re just cardboard stage-sets for open-air theatre. In the hidden depths of Germany, which are vast and deep and Lutheran to boot, there is a mesmerizing stillness, a dread that harks back to earliest times where everything was in the mystery of stones and the contemplation of souls. What we see here seems set down for all eternity, and for those of us afraid to face tomorrow, that is the worst thing we can imagine. I drove through still suburbs, past still villages, still meadows, saw people standing motionless in their doorways, in their fields, hunched over motionless machines. I saw solemn black-frocked crows perched high in hieratic trees and, in the distance, through the mist, empty roads disappearing into the beyond. Movement is confined to the autobahn but the autobahn is obviously not a part of the country, it is a late addition, a concession to the foreigner and, above all, a means of keeping him at arm’s length. I had come to look deep into the eyes of Germany and already everything seemed infinitely remote, irrevocably secret.

Then, suddenly, I happened on people – people moving, talking, laughing loudly, eating heartily, walking briskly, scolding their sulky children or lecturing them in voices that were not bullying, but simply unequivocal. The German language lends itself to certainty and quickly oversteps the mark: ‘Befehl ist Befehl.’ The scene seemed so alive, so familiar, so ordinary, so colourful, so utterly in keeping with the country I have visited so often. But hardly had I left the petrol station, the restaurants, the shops, when stillness and silence closed around me again. I felt obscurely angry that, for a while – the time it took me to eat lunch – these Krauts had made me believe everything was normal, mundane, predictable, when even they, with their bulbous beer-drinker’s noses, did not believe it. They sat at their tables, staring, wondering what this pretentious, pathetic Franzose was doing so far from home just as I was wondering how they could seem so cheery in this landscape heavy with significance. And then I realised: I carried the mystery inside me, my point of view was defined by my investigation, I was an investigation, the investigation. I was looking at this country through the eyes of a wounded man whose very existence was threatened by the history of their country. It was hardly surprising I seemed strange to them.