‘Ulli, you are a glorious dancer!’ Jelly, getting her breath, led him to a deep-cushioned sofa. Sitting beside him, legs extended forward, she changed the subject with the alacrity of a tennis player swinging into a rally. ‘So, tell me. Do you like reading?’

‘I love books better than anything except music,’ he assured her.

She loosened her shoes – red satin – and shook them off her feet. ‘And who are your favourite writers?’

‘I greatly admire the works of Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse, in particular Hesse. Do you know Narziß und Goldmund?’

‘I don’t, because my German is not so good, but I would love to read it.’

‘It’s a beautiful book, a masterpiece… about seeking, about extremity of experience, about beauty in all its forms. It came out about three years ago and I loved every word of it. If there’s a translation I will get one for you. What about you? Who are your favourites?’

‘I love the ancient Greeks. Plato, Aristophanes… ’

‘Really?’ Ulli didn’t want to tell her he was not used to women being well versed in the classics, in case it offended her, but he was fascinated all the same.

‘And I love poetry.’ She was leaning back on the cushions, watching him. Her toes, divested of restrictions, were wiggling beneath her stockings. ‘I can recite you a good chunk of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam if you wish. Who do you most like among the German poets?’

‘Oh… ’ He was wondering if Jelly had ever taken lessons from a hypnotist, the way she was looking at him. ‘Well, I suppose my great favourite would be Heinrich Heine… ’

‘Recite me some. A love poem?’

Recite poetry? She wanted him to recite a love poem to her? ‘I’ll see what I can remember,’ he said, sensing his face grow warm yet again. This woman made him blush so often that she was turning him back into a stupid schoolboy. ‘It’ll be in German… ’

‘The original language is always the best,’ she encouraged. ‘Keep it soft, and it will be fine.’

Ulli cleared his throat, then began.

‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Knospen sprangen,
Da ist in meinem Herzen,
die Liebe aufgegangen… ’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Jelly.

‘It’s the first poem in Schumann’s Dichterliebe.’ He suspected she knew perfectly well what it meant. ‘“In the wondrous month of May, when all the buds are springing, there is in my heart, love that is bursting forth”.’

‘So beautiful.’ Jelly gave him the most tender, open-hearted smile he had ever seen from any woman. He returned it: sweating, terrified, doomed.

Around them, nothing in this house ever stopped moving and whirling and ringing. Tango gave way to rumba, sausages to bowls of trifle, and at some point recorded music to live. Garlands of laughter reached them from the music room along with a thread of sound from the piano.