She was a master craftsman, my Charlotte, an almost perfect Bauhäusler. She could make skyscrapers from paper, concertina the floors, dramatise their depths. She could work any scavenged material: wiring hairnets and pipes into extravagant sculptures. More often than not she tossed them away. Sometimes I’d retrieve them from the rubbish and hang them in my room. She’d always give them a wry look, when she saw them later, hanging above my bed like a witchy totem.

But it was in anything Charlotte produced from the loom that I thought I could detect frustration (it was a relief, to know she wasn’t perfect). Charlotte’s weaves appeared made not from wool but horsehair and twine. Wool lists from warm fingers; is split by warm hands. In her weaves there were knots and humps; shocked fibres and knolls. ‘Women’s work,’ she had said, tossing aside the weave, ‘nothing ever came of stitches in fabric.’ It was obviously unreasonable that she’d be so bad at something.

Jenö was a wonderful sculptor; Kaspar and Walter made fine things in the Metal Workshop, and Irmi, like Charlotte, was good at almost everything. It was frustrating that I couldn’t paint at the Bauhaus, since this was my talent, but it was deemed old-fashioned and uninteresting, and in any case something that had to be earned rather than done.

Charlotte told me it didn’t matter, after a workshop when she was so productive that even Master Itten had had to tell her to slow down (though he’d looked at her multiplying sculptures with quiet astonishment). The big paper edifices were cathedrals, the miniatures were lanterns with internal chambers and windows. I marvelled at her work; I put mine in the fire.

After school that day we went to the Swan. ‘You’ve got the skill that’ll sell,’ Charlotte said, as we sat at the bar. She had paper-cuts on her fingers. ‘No one actually needs stonemasons and quilters. Painting won’t go out of fashion.’

‘Don’t I need to make an impression now?’

‘We all want to be further on than we are.’

There were always a few locals in the Swan, but the students and the citizens manoeuvred around each other tolerably enough. The bar-hall was a dark cave: its tables were engraved with students’ initials, the light was dusty from the sinking upholstery, and it always smelled of malt and fruit. It was one of our favourite places.

‘But how am I going to show my worth if I’m never allowed to paint? You’re fine. Look at you today! I came up with one lantern and you made Manhattan.’

‘Maybe the Master doesn’t care about being impressed. Have you thought about that? Maybe that’s not his priority.’

‘He was impressed with Willem.’