Driving west on Leipzigerstrasse, I met the torchlight parade of Brownshirt legions as it marched south down Wilhelmstrasse, and I was obliged to get out of my car and salute the passing standard. Not to have done so would have been to risk a beating. I guess there were others like me in that crowd, our right arms extended like so many traffic policemen, doing it just to avoid trouble and feeling a bit ridiculous. Who knows? But come to think of it, political parties were always big on salutes in Germany: the Social Democrats had their clenched fist raised high above the head; the Bolshies in the KPD had their clenched fist raised at shoulder level; the Centrists had their two-fingered, pistol-shaped hand signal, with the thumb cocked; and the Nazis had fingernail inspection. I can remember when we used to think it was all rather ridiculous and melodramatic, and maybe that’s why none of us took it seriously. And here we all were now, saluting with the best of them. Crazy.

Badenschestrasse, running off Berliner Strasse, is just a block short of Trautenau Strasse, where I have my own apartment. Proximity is their only common factor. Badenschestrasse, Number 7 is one of the most modern apartment blocks in the city, and about as exclusive as a reunion dinner for the Ptolemies.

I parked my small and dirty car between a huge Deusenberg and a gleaming Bugatti and went into a lobby that looked like it had left a couple of cathedrals short of marble. A fat doorman and a storm-trooper saw me, and, deserting their desk and their radio which was playing Wagner prior to the Party broadcast, they formed a human barrier to my progress, anxious that I might want to insult some of the residents with my crumpled suit and self-inflicted manicure.

‘Like it says on the sign outside,’ growled Fatso, ‘this is a private building.’ I wasn’t impressed with their combined effort to get tough with me. I’m used to being made to feel unwelcome, and I don’t bounce easily.

‘I didn’t see any sign,’ I said truthfully.

‘We don’t want any trouble, Mister,’ said the storm-trooper. He had a delicate-looking jaw that would have snapped like a dead twig with only the briefest of introductions to my fist.

‘I’m not selling any,’ I told him. Fatso took over.

‘Well, whatever it is you’re selling, they don’t want any here.’

I smiled thinly at him. ‘Listen, Fatso, the only thing that’s stopping me from pushing you out of my way is your bad breath. It’ll be tricky for you, I know, but see if you can work the telephone, and ring up Fraulein Rudel. You’ll find she’s expecting me.’ Fatso pulled the huge brown-and-black moustache that clung to his curling lip like a bat on a crypt wall. His breath was a lot worse than I could have imagined.