The transition sounded and the Polonaise emerged into the daylight. The Führer was smiling.

Ulli forced himself to listen to the detail. Kulenkampff’s version was considerably altered, whereas Yehudi had eagerly declared that he wanted to play every note exactly as Schumann had written it, without even the hushed-up Hindemith adaptations. Kulenkampff, ignoring Schumann’s funereal metronome mark, played it as a true polonaise; yet though his delivery was graceful and elegant, its triumph felt empty. Everything would be all right, it seemed to say, when Ulli knew full well that it would not: only a few months after creating the blazing conclusion, Schumann threw himself off the Düsseldorf bridge into the black Rhine.

Final chord. Kulenkampff, domed forehead shining with sweat, his bow aloft, gaze locked for an instant with Böhm’s. The orchestra standing, tired, inscrutable. The Führer, on his feet. The whole audience rising to ape him. And applause. And… Ulli sensed their puzzlement. This was no triumph. That slow movement – exquisite, yet out of kilter; was this concerto after all an insane work for an insane land? What had they done, letting it out?

While he searched his own soul, wondering why this malign potential had never struck him before, or whether the idea was just a creation of his own mind, in which case perhaps he too was losing his senses, the concert moved on to a group of patriotic songs. Strength through joy. Everyone sang along. The volume was submerging him.

Ulli suddenly knew that his stomach was about to lose its battle. A chorus of tutting and shushing followed him; as he stepped across his neighbours, trying not to tread on anyone’s toes, a woman with her hands plunged deep within a fur stole heaped a curse on him. ‘Please excuse me – something I’ve eaten,’ Ulli said. Glimpsing her face upturned towards the Führer, he spotted a gleam of tears, not of sorrow.

Were people so completely fooled? How could they be so stupid, so believing? Would they gulp down, dog-like, whatever was put in the feeding bowl in front of them because it was so easy?

Outside, the world whirling around his head, icy air punched him in the guts. He staggered away from the entrance and doubled up – just managing to remember that at least now he would not have to see his employers being presented to the leaders of the Reich and congratulated on their achievement in rediscovering a great German concerto by a true German artist.

*

‘It can’t last,’ Willy Strecker said, two days later, safely back in Mainz. ‘All these things come to an end.’

‘But when?’ said Ulli. ‘And how?’

Willy shook his head. ‘Don’t start being heroic, Ulli. You’ve done your bit. And remember, you’re playing by the rules now… ’