‘Come on, Poppa, you’ve got your writer’s pride too. You know, sometimes I think the man has made it after all. He wasn’t born a Generalkonsul, with his soap and his safe and everything. He’s always telling me what a comfortable life he’s had – which means he hasn’t. He probably had a lot of lean years before they let him get at the cream. And now he’s licking his chops . . . What? Of course he’s forgotten the lean times. They all do. Memory, my boy, memory . . . it’s like an old barrel organ. Nowadays people have gramophones! If only you could find out what it’s like when someone makes it to the top – someone like my boss . . . He’s not married . . . but even if he was, his wife wouldn’t be able to tell you either, she wouldn’t have noticed anything. For her, success would be only natural, and people just don’t want to know about a hard grind to the top, because that would be admitting that their own ancestors were running around without a visor. Promotion . . . they just say that when they don’t want to give you a pay-rise.’ Thus spoke the sage Princess Lydia, and concluded her speech with a magnificent –

The Princess began to hiccough.

She wanted me to lift her up but with a beautifully athletic bound she stood up by herself. Slowly we crept back through the forest. We stopped at every little glade and made speeches, each of us pretending to listen to the other, and to admire the forest, and really doing both. But, if we’d been asked, we’d have had to confess that in our hearts, although we weren’t in Berlin anymore, we weren’t yet in Sweden. But we were together.

We passed the first house in Mariefred. A gramophone was scratching away.

‘It’s come here to convalesce,’ said the Princess in hushed tones. ‘You can hear it – it’s still quite hoarse. But the air here will do it the world of good.’

‘Are you hungry, Lydia?’

‘I’d like . . . Peter! Poppa! Oh, God! What’s the genitive of Smörgas . . . I’d like some Smörgassens . . . Oh blast!’ All this kept us occupied until we were sitting down at table, and the Princess had gone through the declension of the Swedish hors d’oeuvre.

‘What shall we do after lunch?’

‘What a question! After lunch we’re having a nap. Karlchen always says there’s such a lot of fatigue trapped in one’s day clothes . . . you have to take them off and have a proper rest. And you sleep. That restores your energy.’

‘Tell me, is your friend Karlchen still polishing his chair at that Revenue Office in the Rhineland?’

I said he was.

‘And what’s special about him, then?’