‘I don’t know. I look at the school and think I could do that. Scale it to the top.’

A slow number came on the gramophone and Jenö pulled Charlotte up to dance. Though they were both garbed like stable boys, they had that shine that people of talent give off. There was always this sense that they were two people on the ascendant, but since the mausoleum I wondered whether there wasn’t something shallow about the show.

There were other parties going on other balconies. We spent most of our nights here, getting drunk in my room (I don’t know how my bedroom had become the centre for our socialising, but it had). Sometimes we’d invite others: Josef and Anni, Otti, my students, but most often it was just us four – Jenö and Walter, me and Charlotte – dancing, drinking, dressing up in crazy costumes, painting our bodies in signs and totems. Often Charlotte would think up some weird game (even now she still wanted things to escalate) and one night we used a Ouija board, calling up the spirits of the dead, until someone spelled out all of Kaspar’s ex-girlfriends, and we’d given up.

‘Where’s Franz?’

‘Ah, Franz.’ Walter’s tongue swept his lip. ‘Honestly,’ he said, smiling at his own joke – since Ehrlich, Franz’s surname, translates to that very word – ‘the man’s flighty. Jumping from party to party without a care in the world. Plus his appetite is worse than mine. I can’t afford to keep him.’

‘He’s young. We were like that too.’

‘But one might expect more loyalty. I don’t know. He took offence. He’s gone off me.’

Walter tugged again at his nose. ‘It was nothing.’

‘What did you do, Walter?’

But Walter wouldn’t answer.

‘What did you and Charlotte talk about?’

‘When?’

‘When Jenö and I were in the mausoleum.’

‘Sniffing around dead bodies.’

‘Sniffing around dead bodies,’ I repeated.

‘Oh, nothing much.’ Walter picked up a torch and swung it across the settled snow. ‘What did you two talk about?’

‘Me and Jenö? It was rather a frank conversation, actually. He said he’d told her about the Bath-house in Rügen. I hadn’t realised that’s what their argument had been about.’

‘You hadn’t? Oh, Paul, Paul: all roads lead back to Rügen.’

‘Yes. I see that now.’ I changed tack again. ‘What shall I wear to the Metal Ball?’

‘Any thoughts?’

‘A skyscraper? An automaton? I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I can’t think of anything original.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll think of something.’

‘For me?’

‘For us. We’ll go together. We’ll be a pair. As always.’ He turned the torch beam on the swaying couple. ‘Ah, but aren’t they majestic!’

As the song closed I saw black light begin to pool around his nose. ‘Walter!’