Krüger was twenty-four, pear-shaped like his mother, with narrow sloping shoulders adding emphasis to the thighs and buttocks. His blue eyes had often earned him a second look, but so far he’d been in love only once. He claimed to be from a small town in Westphalia, but nobody had ever heard of it, and later, when he left, the regulars at Otto Kessler’s on Taubenstraße agreed that his accent wasn’t even close to Westphalian.

‘And so,’ Krüger said, ‘thereby, our conclusion: the inevitability of passing through where all and one have already been before and, in fact, must and will be, forever.’

LOVE IS RECOGNITION

Johannes Meyer couldn’t recall everything Krüger said that night, nor did he understand much of what he remembered; but now, as he looked up from the couch and saw Elisabeth von Hoffmann’s face in the window, framed in warm light, pale gold, beautiful, eternal, some impression of the man’s words made him suddenly think: Yes!

Their youthful eyes met and exchanged the moment, unrestrained, fluid, full. Their youthful eyes held and locked together. Johannes Meyer had been here before, that was the feeling, and he knew the girl, or must have known her once, or would do so, or . . . or, otherwise, why this overwhelming sense of her?

‘Listen,’ Krüger had said finally at Otto’s that night, though by now only Johannes and two or three others were listening to him. ‘The heart, not the mind, sets all criteria for truth, and love is its ingenium. And love is recognition: recognoscere, cognoscere, to know. Yes? All that is behind us, and all that is before us, is here, always, already, to know. You know it. You already know what’s true. You already know.’

Johannes Meyer looked up and he knew. And the girl in the window, she knew it too. And though they neither had any idea what it was that should be known, the revelation that something was known and could be known seemed more than enough.

LOVE IS LOSS

Beatrice pulled the boy down and held him tightly in her arms. She closed her eyes, so the world was as small as it could be.

She’d noticed, seen it straight off, Johannes looking away from her then; she knew, she’d seen what had come into his eyes and felt his departure keenly, his heart, his presence, everything dissolving. And never mind the cruel moment, that it was exactly a betrayal, unkind and unforgivable. This wasn’t the injury complete. It was her failure too, her self-loathing, that she couldn’t contain the boy, even after lifting her skirts. It wasn’t enough, was never enough, no matter how much she hoped it would be.

Her father had said to her once: ‘It’s what you bring upon yourself.’