‘They weren’t enemies, if that’s what you’re implying. Their differences were purely political.’

‘Well, that amounts to something quite fundamental these days, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not in this case, no. Now if you’ll excuse me, Herr Gunther, I really must be getting on.’

‘Yes, of course.’ He handed me the invitation. ‘Well, thanks for this,’ I said, following him out into the hall. ‘Do you live here too, Herr Haupthandler?’

‘No, I have an apartment in town.’

‘Really? Where?’ He hesitated for a moment.

‘Kurfürstenstrasse,’ he said eventually. ‘Why do you ask?’

I shrugged. ‘I ask too many questions, Herr Haupthandler,’ I said. ‘Forgive me. It’s habit, I’m afraid. A suspicious nature goes with the job. Please don’t be offended. Well, I must be going.’ He smiled thinly, and as he showed me to the door he seemed relaxed; but I hoped I had said enough to put a few ripples on his pond.

The Hanomag seems to take an age to reach any sort of speed, so it was with a certain amount of misplaced optimism that I took the Avus ‘Speedway’ back to the centre of town. It costs a mark to get on this highway, but the Avus is worth it: ten kilometres without a curve, all the way from Potsdam to Kurfürstendamm. It’s the one road in the city on which the driver who fancies himself as Carraciola, the great racing driver, can put his foot down and hit speeds of up to 150 kilometres an hour. At least, they could in the days before BV Aral, the low-octane substitute petrol that’s not much better than meths. Now it was all I could do to get ninety out of the Hanomag’s 1.3 litre engine.

I parked at the intersection of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimsthaler Strasse, known as ‘Grunfeld Corner’ because of the department store of the same name which occupies it. When Grunfeld, a Jew, still owned his store, they used to serve free lemonade at the Fountain in the basement. But since the State dispossessed him, as it has with all the Jews who owned big stores, like Wertheim, Hermann Teitz and Israel, the days of free lemonade have gone. If that weren’t bad enough, the lemonade you now have to pay for and once got free doesn’t taste half as good, and you don’t have to have the sharpest taste-buds in the world to realize that they’re cutting down on the sugar. Just like they’re cheating on everything else.