Outside, the sky was pale. ‘This is Kreuzberg!’ Faqrul announced. ‘That way no man’s land,’ he said, wheeling around for a second. We resumed walking, staying parallel to the overhead bridge of Görlitzer Bahnhof. I stopped to study a Mercedes-Benz; it was a model I’d seen and even got into as a child, a 250. It looked un affected by the seasons. Behind it was a small car: the excitement of confronting something you don’t know is very like the excitement of recognising something you were familiar with long ago. ‘What is this?’ I asked. It was new to me, and incredibly old. Faqrul tried reading its name, but I think he was bluffing when he said: ‘It’s an East German model.’ There was a hint of pleasure in his words. It could have been a Soviet make. Self-sufficient, redundant.

‘Come,’ said Faqrul, beckoning. He’d stopped before a board. It had flyers pinned to it. ‘See,’ he said. I flinched. It was a photograph of a nude woman. I flinched not because it was obscene. But what did he have in mind? Was this an avuncular initiation? The photo was black and white. The woman’s outlines – breasts, shoulders – were rounded, soft. It was from 1923. I could guess at enough of the text to understand it announced an exhibition of erotic pictures from the time. ‘See?’ said Faqrul; I paused at the eyebrows, pale nipples, and navel. 1923 meant nothing; the woman was in a ‘now’ and all else was irrelevant. ‘And this one,’ he said, pointing to another poster. ‘Off-theatre. Something out of the way.’ I didn’t know what the poster said. I imagined what ‘off-theatre’ implied. ‘This board,’ he said, gesturing with a hand, ‘is for off-theatre.’

There was a U-Bahn to the university – the stop was named after it – but it was more straightforward to walk. Once out of the U-Bahn you had to get your bearings. With the road, you kept going till you came to a fork – then you went right.

The university had come up in the fifties, but large bits were recent. The long corridor felt like a provincial airport: constant arrivals, departures, long delays. Students could take seven years to do their MAs – a reaction against fascism’s timekeeping. I dawdled in twice a week. I usually stopped by Jonas’s office. He accompanied me to mine. Sometimes, because I was Böll Professor, he introduced me to a luminary in the department. History and Culture had eminent faculty. It was on the first floor.

My office had a telephone and computer and table, and a view of other windows. I used it a few times to meet students, but mostly it was a green room to my weekly lecture. Or it was a waiting room in which I filled in forms which I then handed to my neighbour, the department’s head of admin.

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