Later we moved into an attic apartment behind Marktstrasse. The apartment was cramped, with a low ceiling, but I could watch the pigeons on the roofs around us. Sometimes a kestrel would appear, and bats reeled over the chimneys at dusk like small, drunken shadows.

I collected beetles, flies and other insects. I tried to catch them alive, then put them in a little metal tin. If you held the tin to your ear, you could listen to them dying. Then they slowly dried out and became as hard as pebbles.

Papa went to the bank, I went to school, and every morning before breakfast Mama would hang our clothes over the backs of our chairs: a fresh suit for him, a shirt and trousers for me. She would do this with a funny, lopsided smile. She did almost everything with this crooked smile on her face. I couldn’t say exactly what it meant, but I had the idea that perhaps she was proud of us.

I got bigger, had friends, was interested in girls, and had no problems at school. Everything was as it should be. My understanding was that life was worth living. I didn’t know where it would take me, but I was sure I was on the right path.

Then something happened. It was late summer; I had just turned seventeen. Three of us were crossing the school playground, a great expanse of asphalt with no shade. The cast-­iron gate to the street loomed up in front of us. It was as tall as a house, black with gold tips that shone in the afternoon sun. High in the sky a flock of waxwings passed over, throwing a flickering shadow onto the yard. For a few moments the flock moved up and down like a veil in the wind before suddenly dropping and vanishing behind the school building. It was hot. The chewing gum of generations of schoolchildren had softened on the asphalt and stuck to your soles with every step.

Johannes Storm, a boy from the parallel class, was standing in the street. He wasn’t that tall, but his shoulders were broad and strong, his ribcage like a barrel. He had a big, childlike head and short blond hair. His eyes were very close-­set, and when he spoke to you he could barely look you in the face. No one had anything to do with him outside school. But everyone knew that he lived with his mother, a vulgar woman who scrubbed the pavement outside the shops on Marktstrasse and cleaned their plate-­glass windows.

He stood smoking and staring at the ground as if there was something incredibly interesting to be found there. We lined up in front of him, and I said he should give me a cigar­ette. He didn’t even shake his head. A string of tiny beads of sweat glistened at his temple. He held the cigarette in his left hand; the right was stuck in the pocket of his trousers. I said I didn’t want any trouble, just a cigarette. He didn’t reply. A lorry laden with rubble and bits of metal clattered past on the road. The driver’s hand hung from the side window, fingers tapping on the bodywork in time to some inaudible music. The lorry turned into a side street and the clattering died away. Inside the school building some girls were shouting; then a window slammed shut and all was quiet.