Johannes had also felt the moment between them as it died, but the face of the girl in the window had refused to fade from his eyes and now it was impossible to recover what had been with Beatrice in the moments before.

She stood up from the couch and smoothed her skirts. She tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears, pulled at her sleeves, fussed at her clothes. She looked everywhere except directly at Johannes.

‘Beatrice,’ he said.

‘You have to go now,’ she said firmly. ‘You can’t be here.’

They were in the home of Claus von Rolt, whom Beatrice worked for when she wasn’t at Otto’s coffee house. Here she cleaned and mopped and dusted, sometimes kept his bed warm, too. She’d known Rolt was going to be away for the afternoon.

‘See you, Johannes.’

‘Wait . . .’

But Beatrice turned away, went to the front door and stepped outside. Then the door closed and she was gone.

And that’s all we’ll ever know about her. She has slipped off our map.

EELS

On the other side of Berlin, in an empty storehouse in Königstadt that smelled strongly of manure, straw and damp flagstones, Claus von Rolt was with the American, Wesley Lewis Jr, and his Surinamese Negro companion, introduced simply as Mr Hendrik.

Claus von Rolt stood with his arms crossed, staring at a briny oak barrel of dark sludge. He was disappointed with everything today: with the American, with the barrel, with Bonaparte at the gate. He reminded himself of his personal dictum—that expectations in life should always be cold, contained and disposable—but it didn’t help.

‘Genuine New World electrificated eels,’ Wesley Lewis Jr had said, levering off the barrel lid with a small iron bar. ‘You can look, but just don’t dare touch ’em.’

Rolt was still staring at the barrel. He watched an oily bubble slowly dome on the surface and expand for a moment, then pop, exhausted. Of the six eels slopping around in there, one was dead and floated belly up. The others slid their slimy bodies over it every now and then, but appeared so sluggish that death was surely imminent for them also. The American’s asking price was offensive for so damaged a cargo.

Still, Rolt wanted them. There were collectors willing to pay exorbitantly, and there were people to gift and impress, as always, in the effort to slip open sluice gates and direct the flows of profit. Rarity and exotica was his game, and even bruised in careless handling (even dead) it would always attract good money.

The Negro, Mr Hendrik, watched silently, leaning off his lame leg.

‘Mr von Rolt?’ Wesley Lewis Jr said. He could never remember if you were meant to say the von.

‘I’ll pay half,’ Claus von Rolt said.