•

Next to the Adenauerplatz U-Bahn station was a store for video rentals. I walked in.

I wondered if I needed to present myself to the woman at the counter. She looked through me. I navigated aisles like the invisible man. Because it was broad daylight, the kind of customer you found within was the sort for whom the store was stopover and residence. I kept my distance: the first room was largest, thick with romances and westerns; the second was stacked with thrillers. The third room was long, well lit, narrow; it contained porn. It had the silence you find in zones that are ambiguous. A man stood there, head bent, as at a family headstone in a cemetery. On my breezy way back, my eyes caught, among the rows of coloured tablets, a DVD of Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. I asked if I could become a member. They needed my passport and stamped police registration form.

‘Was the walk all right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘After registration,’ Jonas said.

‘Oh yes!’

Registering gave me the liberty to register with the DVD library. I revealed to him I’d borrowed a DVD.

•

‘I take it you’ve been to the Jewish Museum?’

There was an edge of remonstrance to the words.

‘Sorry?’

‘The Jewish Museum,’ he said, with the calm people have reminding a relative to take medicine.

‘No . . . I haven’t . . .’

‘We must go.’

•

At Hallesches Tor, descending the platform, I walked a path on the fringe of a sixties building.

I arrived at a square with swings and coloured doors. I waited a few moments for one to open; I was lost.

My mobile phone started ringing.

‘Are you here?’ Jonas was terse. ‘The museum is closing.’

I began to run till I reached the main road, from where I ran left. I was perspiring by the time I saw the entrance. Jonas was perspiring too, in his scarf, red, possibly with irritation. He’d bought tickets. We had to display them and offload our overcoats. Our man was young, long-haired, and had a paunch. He had before him a constellation of nationalities, who waited with kindly expressions. They began to move when we reached them.

•

From floor to floor we went, completing a route, going up the stairs to another. We traced long circles whose outlines weren’t clear. Neighbouring us, not far away, was the penultimate drove, going back the way we came, towards final stops. They knew more than we did: we could only guess what by glancing at their faces.

Behind little windows were a handkerchief; a colouring book; a dress. The guide was talking but I didn’t need to hear.

•

In one of the windows was kosher candy. Thin, malleable. A survivor, if categories like ‘living’ and ‘not living’ don’t apply to the notion of survival.

•