In the corner of my eye I watched as Charlotte picked out scraps of newspaper from the inkwell of my desk. I thought that maybe she was looking for a crumb or two of the leftover coke, but instead she laid the newspaper scraps out flat. She looked at them, puzzled, thinking them over. Then she began fitting them together again, reassembling the torn-up pieces. Once done, she withdrew her hand, as if scalded, and held it to her mouth.

‘Charlotte?’

She looked over, her eyes glassed up.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, Paul,’ she said, but didn’t elaborate. ‘Oh goodness, no!’ She took the scraps of the newspaper and held them in her fist.

I didn’t know what on earth she meant by this, and moments later, I can only say that she fled. Upstairs, I heard Walter’s door clicking, and a rumbling on the ceiling above. I was too tired to work out what she was doing – that she must, in hindsight, have pulled out Mr Steiner’s padlocked crate, swivelled the numbers to 1919, and gone through each and every notebook until she had found what she knew was there. Instead, I let her get on with whatever new escalation had gripped her, and, as I was falling asleep, I thought for some reason of the paper lantern she had made years ago, how I had loved to watch it sway above my bed in Weimar, and I wondered where it had gone, or whether I had jettisoned it, as I had other things, in yet another fit of heartbroken pique for my still beloved Charlotte.

33

Dessau

There is a photograph of us from the Metal Ball which I have pinned above my desk. It must have been from early in the evening, because we look happier than we did for the rest of the night. We are on the stage, our joy lit in the magnesium flare of the camera flash, our wheels still on our heads, Charlotte’s torch still plumed with orange feathers. The reflection from our costumes means there is too much light in the picture, but you can still see our faces: Charlotte and Jenö, and me and Walter, two birds who’d met their death along the way. In early books on the Bauhaus it is subtitled Four Bauhäuslers, identity unknown, before I rose unexpectedly to fame. (Now, they always use my German name; never Brickman, as if they know something about me of which they think I am ashamed.)

Walter and I staged our entrance at the Metal Ball so that we arrived on the metal slides at exactly the same time and we were twin birds hurtling toward our deaths. As well as the two massive slides, the theatre department had made huge skyscrapers and moons which hung from the cafeteria ceiling. Marianne’s overhead lamps were draped in foil, and there were cobwebs made from silks and threads. Everything shone.