‘You say your home is in Reinickendorf – you realise that is in the French sector?’

Max Stein asked whether that mattered.

‘Is that where you want to go?’

‘I want to find some family – maybe my brother’s family, my wife’s sister may still be alive, cousins perhaps: I doubt it, but I need to know.’

The officer said he had the perfect solution. ‘You know the old synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse?’

Max Stein said that of course he did. ‘My uncle used to worship there.’ The officer was being so pleasant to him, he wondered if he was Jewish himself. He’d heard the terrible rumours that half the Red Army officers in Berlin were Jews. That was all he needed.

‘It’s where Jewish refugees go. We’ll take you straight there.’

It was the last place Wolfgang Steiner wanted to be, and as he self-consciously entered the building, he worried that people were looking suspiciously at him. He asked to be shown to the toilets, and further down a corridor found a side door that led to the street. It was mid-afternoon but getting dark, and a bitter wind whipped around him. He wondered whether he should have stayed for a few minutes to get a warm drink and something to eat, and maybe some papers, but he decided to hurry away from Oranienburger Strasse. At least he was in Mitte, which was not far from his destination.

The destruction of Berlin was quite beyond anything he’d imagined. He’d seen what the bombing had done to Munich and Dresden, but as bad as that was, those were cities he was unfamiliar with. Berlin was different: it had been his home for seven years and he’d grown quite fond of it. In many ways he’d felt it had more soul to it than his native Vienna, lacking the latter’s suffocating formality.

Now it felt as if it wasn’t just the city’s buildings that had been destroyed but its heart too. There was no atmosphere; it was as if the remains of the place had been transported to an alien landscape.

The destruction was so bad he had trouble finding his way round. He’d got to know the city very well: during the curfew, he’d enjoyed strolling around it in the dark, enjoying the privilege of being able to do so thanks to his rank. But now it wasn’t just the street signs that were missing; it was the streets themselves, and the buildings and other landmarks that had helped identify them. He was reluctant to ask other pedestrians for directions: no one seemed to be in a mood to talk.

Eventually his instinct led him in what he hoped was the direction of Prenzlauer Berg. The house he was looking for was in Grenadier Strasse, just off Horst-Wessel Platz. But along with the name of the square, the house was missing too, as were half its neighbours. The street was like an old man’s mouth: foul-smelling, half open, with unsightly gaps between the teeth.