In the apartment, I led a life of outward boredom, but never completely disconnected from the edges: Grunewald. Part of me was susceptible to what was outside the pavement and beyond the motorway.

•

Geeta and her husband drove up to my place with gifts: two DVDs. One was Rope (I’d said I didn’t want to watch new films). The other was a wildlife documentary which she insisted would soothe and educate me.

•

We got into the car. We drove, where else, East.

‘We’ll show you a bit of the city,’ Geeta said from the back, ebullient.

‘Tell me’ – I was peering into the rear-view mirror – ‘what exactly is Heimat?’

‘It’s a kind of soap opera,’ said Geeta. ‘The Germans love it!’ I heard tolerant dismissal in her voice. Michael, a hefty newspaperman, dapper but no-nonsense, smiled at the mention of ‘the Germans’.

‘I’ve watched a few episodes,’ I said. ‘I dip in and out.’

‘Do you know German?’

‘Not a word.’

I added:

‘It doesn’t matter. I only watch bits of episodes, as you might look out of a window.’

‘Haven’t seen it in years,’ muttered Michael, slowing down at a traffic light.

‘It doesn’t seem like a soap opera,’ I said, turning to Geeta despite the seat belt’s restraint. ‘Not like a British or American one. You know, EastEnders. The Bold and the Beautiful.’

•

No, it was more a national autobiography, if there’s such a thing. Only the Germans would have used such a device – that is, have their nation recount its memories of growing older in a soap opera. Slip in what’s intimate in a way that’s unworthy of attention.

•

The Brandenburg Gate came up. Lit, resplendent, a sovereign without purpose.

‘But what did they do in the East?’ I asked.

‘Do?’

‘I mean every day.’

Michael told me about the queues; the dreadful food in restaurants. The speaking in whispers, behind closed doors.

‘But they must have been happy some time?’ Each fact brought up an image: of streets; women walking with determination. But something was missing. No human can be unhappy without interruption.

‘I think they used to tell each other stories,’ said Geeta from the back. ‘That’s what I’ve heard. That they’d get together in a room, and recount family stories to keep their spirits up. They’d also sing to each other in the rooms, and dance.’

Maybe I’d misused the word ‘happy’. I hadn’t meant high spirits or laughter. I had something basic in mind: the release from the awareness of who or where you are, which comes to us a few times a day. To even be in a state when the thought – ‘I’m in East Berlin in 1983’ – hasn’t formed; when consciousness is undecided. It was in imagining that blankness that I felt I could enter the GDR; in reliving the distraction from what’s at hand, I became one with it for a few moments.