I looked at the tea glass. She was right. ‘Well spotted. Yes. See how adaptable it is!’ I turned to Breuer’s slat-chair to distract them. ‘And finally, regard the angular construction, and the elastic belts to promote posture. Look at the spaces in between; they’re all squares and rectangles. The shapes are additive: they don’t blend. Ockham’s Razor: the simplest design is always the best.’

I set the students a task to make a stool with as few shapes as possible using rolled-up newspaper. While they worked, I settled myself into Breuer’s chair. I knew I shouldn’t have shown them the objects first; now they wouldn’t be as free to do their preparatory designs and to draw ugly things. In Josef’s classes he insisted draughtsmanship should be without goal, and he was right, pedagogically: ask students to produce something, rather than explore the material, and the results would be conservative.

I knew, too, I should leave, but the chair was comfortable, I felt relaxed, and I let myself wander off. From here I could see the field below our balconies. In the summers the grass would be burnt yellow, but in the winters it was covered in snow for the best part of Christmas to Easter. The thaw usually uncovered all manner of hidden things: cigarette ends, mostly, but also textbooks gone missing, used contraceptives, paints which coloured the melting snow in rainbows; once, a couple of puppets, fallen from the roof after a particularly energetic performance from the theatre department.

I don’t know how I managed to fall asleep, but I did. Michiko woke me later. The room had acquired twenty new stools; all of them depressingly identical. The students looked at me with worried expressions. ‘Is everything all right?’ the woman said, and I remembered that her name was Viktoria.

‘Fine, fine.’

‘There’s the design flaw,’ Michiko said, staying a little longer by my side; ‘in Japan we would call this chair too comfortable.’

32

Dessau

It was fairly unusual to find civilians at the Bauhaus. I don’t know where Walter had picked up the green-eyed Nazi, but it was certainly a surprise when, on the evening after my botched class, I saw him, hands behind his back, observing the scalding light of the painting now hung above Walter’s bed. I felt so groggy from the classroom doze that I almost wondered whether he was real.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the Nazi said. He stood at ease, as if his uniform meant nothing in here.

‘I don’t know. I prefer my art with a little more Kulturbolschewik.’

I looked at Walter, who was refusing to meet my eye.

He offered his hand. ‘Oskar.’

‘Paul Beckermann,’ I said, thinking my formality would outdo him. ‘How do you know Walter?’

‘I met him at the Metropol.’ A warming of his cheeks. ‘I’ve never been inside the Bauhaus. It’s less impressive than the outside.’