We walked over to the residential quarter. There was a flash of movement in Walter’s room; perhaps it was Franz.

‘Jenö got in another fight in a beer-hall in Munich,’ she said. In many ways, this was the first fully formed sentence Charlotte had said to me in months. It felt good to hear her voice again. ‘Silly fool hasn’t learnt his lesson.’

‘Is he in trouble?’

‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll have enough money to pay them off. They’re all fascists there anyway. They probably deserved it.’

‘My father’s a fascist,’ I said. ‘Munich’s his holiday destination of choice.’

‘Poor you.’

‘He keeps sending me articles from Paul Schultze-Naumburg. “Have a look at this from PSN,” he says: with his initials, as if they’re pals. And then he always frames it as a question. “Art as racial purity?” My mother says he wears a swastika on his lapel. She can’t abide it.’

‘What about your brother?’

‘He’s burying his head in the sand.’

‘Right response,’ she said, as we took the stairs.

My father’s letters were steeped in memories of the past. Amongst the politics, he reminisced about the summerhouse in Obersee; our shirtless lunches there; and how my mother would adjudicate when Peter and I raced with cherries in our mouths, our lips stained black. But for my father there was nothing in between the glass lake and his new fascism: there was no bridge between.

Upstairs there were no students draped across the balconies; no laughter serrating the air; the school was nearly empty. I brought out glasses of water and we sat outside. In the winter a fringe of icicles might hang from the rooftop, flying down at terrifying speeds when the thaw came. It was a wonder no one yet had been killed. Now Charlotte shielded her eyes against the summer light. ‘I don’t know if Jenö’s coming back.’

‘Why?’

‘Just the tone of his letters. He’s done. He calls the Bauhaus “the nest”. And not in a good way.’

‘I thought about that a while ago too. Leaving.’

She looked at me quickly. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, with a pang: I’d never replied to Irmi’s letter. ‘I think I forgot,’ I added, laughing it off.

‘Sometimes I think Jenö might be right. Walter slept with Jenö. I stole him away. Walter told my name to the authorities. I gave his name to the Director. He did this. I did that. It’s both trivial and endless.’

‘Feelings were running high.’

‘Feelings were always running high. There’s a point at which you have to call it normal, and stop making excuses.’

‘True.’ I had said the same thing to Franz.

‘Why did we both have to love him?’

‘Bad luck?’

‘Yes. Bad luck. Let’s chalk it down to that. Do you miss him? Walter, I mean?’