‘Oh no, my dear,’ Erik said. ‘Don’t worry. The messages come from somewhere much, much deeper than any human mind.’

Chapter 16

The day of Georg Kulenkampff’s premiere of the Schumann Violin Concerto in Charlottenburg, Berlin, arrived: 26 November 1937. After an ample breakfast of toast, eggs and smoked herring in a cavernous hotel dining room nearby, Ulli decided to go for a walk.

As a student he had spent much time here, for this was the district in which Berlin’s nightlife had sprung up in the old days and mesmerised the city’s artistic community. The westernmost end of the Ku’dam had boasted one of the best spots, opposite the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, the Romanisches Café – he remembered seeing Bertolt Brecht in there once, and you might well have found yourself admiring the flair of the cross-dressers, or pretending not to notice activities suggestive of an illicit affair or several, or eavesdropping upon some outrageous philosophical idea being promulgated at the next table. Even if Ulli, as a pianist in training, considered himself not remotely part of such a crowd, he had the underrated gift of being able to blend into the background to observe everything without having to take part. Nevertheless, he was a tall, fair, attractive youth, and sometimes he had been quite successful with the women there.

Now Berlin seemed quiet – too quiet – and he was certain not only because of the chill east wind blowing in from Poland. Circular pillars for advertising – often glorifying the wholesome delights of the Reich and its achievements – offered the only jolt of colour in this clouded November: bright-blocked, chunky-lettered posters showing fast trains, jagged mountains, blonde women, green fields, raised fists.

He wandered past the sprawling palace, searching for ghosts of his old life. Other than the shape of the roofs, the angles at which streets met and a few newspaper sellers and flower stalls that were unchanged, little remained to suggest the lure the city had held. The Romanisches Café had been raided and a riot staged there as long as a decade ago – the Nazi Party’s thugs out to destroy the left-wingers’ favourite haunt. All the life seemed to have been sucked out of the place. Now an air of numb obedience lingered around the figures making their way towards the opera house, many seeming determined to vanish into safe and inconspicuous anonymity.

The Deutsches Opernhaus, previously called the Städtische Oper, was a solid yet elegant building seemingly from a bygone era – even though 1912, if he thought about it, was not really that long gone. All the people he remembered from its administration had left or been thrown out. Ulli approached the front entrance under the façade’s five giant windows, but soon noticed crowd barriers all around, traffic police directing cars away from the closed road and a red carpet that had been rolled from kerbside to central doorway, ready to welcome the Reich’s leaders to this historic event.