I suppose Walter couldn’t be called classically attractive, but there was something about him. He had a baronial look: you could see him in one of those oil paintings of hounds and Prussian huntsmen, mouths crisped with wealth and displeasure. Indeed, he was some sort of aristocrat – though an impoverished one – and could trace his lineage to Frederick the Great. He had round spectacles, his nostrils kicked, and his lips were plump. His hair was wondrously thick; his skin olive, like an Italian’s. In his face there was a handed-down imperialism; he looked at the world in judgement of it, as if on a horse. You could see in his face both the poverty of his childhood and the grandeur of his bloodline. I enjoyed his company enormously, and if I wasn’t with Charlotte, then I would inevitably, that winter, be with Walter.

I always did find him alluring, and especially next to Jenö, who, I must admit, was as bland as a bean. Jenö was all breadth. There wasn’t a slender part of him, which made it even more surprising that he fashioned kites thin as moth wings, or made delicate sculptures from rubbish; pan lids, washers, a child’s shoe. He had a symmetrical face, which gave him a peaceful if bovine aspect. I found a dullness to his gaze that others thought mysterious. I said he was bland, but that’s envy talking. Jenö’s mind, I admit, was a labyrinth.

No, I’d never seen Jenö’s allure, though lots of the Bauhaus Frauen liked him very much, but then again lots of Bauhaus Frauen liked me very much; a fact which had me baffled. This had never happened to me as a young man. Now I was in the unusual position of having to break off coffee dates when it became evident that our meetings were romantic. Irmi teased me, saying I was the Bauhaus heart-breaker (Herrrrrrzensbrrrrecher), but then said this wasn’t such a bad reputation to have.

Charlotte and me; Walter and Jenö; Irmi and Kaspar. Only between Kaspar and Irmi could I detect nothing but friendship; though even a friendship in the Bauhaus was made of kisses and caresses. But utopias are frisky places. All of us loved all of us. Had you given me any one of them, man, woman, Czechoslovak, German, blonde or brunette, I would have been a happy sultan. I frequently had to rub myself against the bedroom furniture; a chair or the bedstead, anything to find a place for the erotic clouds that so often streaked against the sky of my soul.

Goodness, I was happy.

4

Weimar