She was so naive, to think they could have their peace. To think any of them could be saved. The world is ending, she thinks, and she can do nothing but watch its crumbling.

Three hundred and fifteen dancing

She came only to gawp. Trude reminds herself of this as she stands beside the stage, but since she spied the woman with the loose black hair, her resolution is fading.

She has seen manias before, of course. The priest, Mutti, her brothers – they had different names for what her father was, but all were clear that it was not something he had. It was not like a pox, or a split-open skull. It was what he was.

Maniac was one word, the worst word. Trude knew the story of Greiger, who in the grip of St Anthony’s fire felt brands burning his skin until he tried to flay it from him, and in the cities there were always a great number of maniacs who flew into sorrow or rages so consuming they seemed more animal than human.

Papa’s mania was not like that. It was not loud, nor for the most part terrifying. It was a quiet emptiness, like an abandoned nest, or else he was a bird tipped from its roost and left dying, twitching on the ground. He felt pain, like Greiger did, and sorrow and rage like those pitifuls in the city, but all of it was borne quiet. His limbs were heavy with it: his legs dragged and his arms were weak so Trude must turn and wash him. He and Mutti never lay together after Trude, and he had a cot beside the fire while Trude slept with Mutti.

By the end there was no cure but vinegar, and poppy, and prayers. Before, when there was hope for change, it was relics, heated in the fire and pressed to his temples and ankles. Trude made an amulet of faeces and hare fur and placed it under his pillow until it fell apart with flies. Mutti even took them to see the comet, lifted from the ground and placed on an altar at Eninsheim. It was the size of two men’s fists bunched together. The size of Papa’s hands, joined in prayer. The journey was long, and they could not go again, but when they returned home Trude bunched both her fists together and placed them in Papa’s hands, so he could remember the comet sent from God.

Trude loved no one so much as she loved Papa. She didn’t say this to Mutti, or her brothers, because they seemed to hate him. She didn’t even say it to Papa aloud, but she hopes he knew.

Since he died she has been lost. But there is a woman dancing, up there on the stage, who has Papa’s grey eyes, and Trude cannot keep herself from her. She walks to stand by her side, and tries to place her fists in her palm, but the woman is elsewhere. She is not her Papa, of course not. And there is not the same pain in her face: her grey eyes are elated. All these women: they bare their teeth in joy, not sorrow. How would it feel, Trude thinks, to loose her sadness and turn it to light?