Condensing all this into a couple of paragraphs, even for a magazine with patient readers, had proved difficult. It was with relief that he switched his focus back to the Schloss Seeblick and to the people involved.

By now his continuing visits to the archive were revealing little he could use; they were made to satisfy a personal curiosity about the men who had founded the clinic. Daniel, the son of Jacques and Sonia, also intrigued him, being only a little younger than he was, but having fought in Belgium and Italy – and on the enemy side. How arbitrary these things now appeared. Which men you tried to kill. Borders imposed on prehuman landscapes by men in offices with dividers and a wavering pencil. Chances of birthplace and parentage determining your allegiance. Would he himself have taken dead aim at Daniel’s head and tried to kill him?

Yet the slow days accumulated fast as well. The light on the lake had an autumnal burnish these days, less of a whitened blade, something more to do with butter or melting gold … But as he had told Lena, he was not good with colours. What he liked most about the lake was the freshness of the water and the fact that it was not in constant flux, like the sea. The churn of salt water on sand or rock always filled him with a sense of despair, the waves signalling some kind of futility, the ceaseless search for shape or form, breaking and breaking since the beginning of time. The lake, you could plausibly believe, held the same water, refreshed by the clouds above: no unsubtle symbolism, just a sight that reassured the eyes.

There was a wooden seat on the jetty in which Anton now leaned back. His sessions with Martha were helping him. He felt like a ship in port whose moorings were being freed by an invisible crew: ropes the thickness of two arms loosened from squat capstans driven deep into the dock, chains with ponderous anchors being hauled in by clattering winches. And already he felt a sense of some buoyancy as the water was allowed to bear its due weight – though nothing dramatic, because what was being found was only a natural balance.

He opened his eyes to see a young woman coming down between the birches, carrying a parcel under her right arm. She wore a grey dress, the maids’ dinner uniform, and there was a red ribbon trying to keep her hair in order. At the sight of him, she waved, her left hand making high circular motions in the early evening light.

Perhaps this moment of anticipation could last perpetually, he thought. It reminded him of a time he had been in the mountains with Friedrich. They had become lost for hours before stumbling on a remote refuge, which, against all their expectations, was still open. They had sat outside on wooden benches, stretched out their aching legs, laughing at their escape. The owner laid the table with a red cloth and brought beer in china mugs. From inside the refuge came the smell of cooking and the clash of pans. A minute or so later, out of the corner of his eye, Anton saw the edge of a tray being carried out to them. He had wanted time to stop then, at once, because when expectation turned into something you could touch, a shadow fell.