Wolfie had many contacts in the Grande Armée, similarly keen and cunning men, of sharp eye and moral indifference. Through these subterranean associations he’d been able to procure tobacco, brandy, meat, new boots—even a lotion for his itch. He’d also come to hear about Colonel Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean, a count and a uniquely mild man, loved by his soldiers and, as it turned out, a committed collector of beetles, willing to pay cash for any six-legged specimens that came a soldier’s way. To distract Johannes from trying to run off and get himself shot, Wolfie convinced him to catch beetles for the colonel.

‘You’ll get pins, glass vials and boxes,’ Wolfie said. His heart gladdened when he saw interest spark in the boy’s eyes (it was a memory, the room in Berlin filled with specimens and cabinets, and Beatrice, and the girl, yes, the other girl in the window).

‘Scientific equipment?’ Johannes said. ‘Out here?’

‘I just said, didn’t I?’

Johannes looked into Wolfie’s eyes, which were the colour of rain clouds. And then his friend smiled and his face broke into a thousand granite lines and crevices and crags. And there in all that stone, in all those sharp planes and weathered edges, Johannes saw the kindest face that had ever been shown him before.

‘Trust me,’ Wolfie said. He patted Johannes on the shoulder, then pushed him away, unable to endure his own affection for the boy.

A few days later, a lieutenant from Colonel Dejean’s regiment came with the equipment. His name was Gustave and he showed Johannes how to glue pieces of cork into the inside top of his shako and then pin the beetles there as he found them.

‘Just try not to get shot or blown up,’ Gustave said. ‘At least, not until you’ve got the specimens to us.’ His face was serious. ‘And understand the difference in species. We don’t need any Porcellio scaber, or that kind of thing, right? Don’t bring me any of that crustacean in the order of Isopoda shit, because I’m not interested. What we want is beetles, in the order of Coleoptera, so count the fucking legs, for Christ’s sake, right? Anything over six, forget about it.’

Johannes Meyer began collecting beetles.

The days were no longer an eternity. They possessed a beginning, a middle and an end. The nights, too, passed restful and dreamless. Hunting for the beetles took his mind off war and death. The world acquired scale again.

And he fell in love with the beetles. They were little gods in gleaming armour, blue-black and purple, red and coppery bronze, iridescent, beautiful. Johannes was disappointed at having to hand them over (‘It’s money!’ Wolfie said) and so he began to sketch them in a notebook that Wolfie procured for him, along with a nib and a bottle of India ink.