Jenö’s tone was not overly personal; in fact, it was quite plain. Last month, he explained, the Bauhaus had been shut down. The Nazis had come in the middle of the day, smashing in windows, kicking in the looms, rounding up ‘Communist’ students and arranging for them several nights in jail. She might remember Franz Ehrlich, Walter’s friend? He’d been one of those in jail. A young officer had orchestrated the whole thing. (Could it have been, I wondered, Oskar?) The Director had handled it all rather wearily, and had started looking for premises elsewhere. In passing, Jenö mentioned that he’d been made a Master. I felt pleased for him and not in the slightest envious. He deserved it. He signed off with love, but also with his surname – Jenö Fiedler – so things could have been worse.

‘The Director’s brave,’ she said. ‘I wonder that he has the energy to begin again.’

It was the second time the Bauhaus had been closed down; the second time uniformed men had stormed the workshops. I felt glad that we were out of it. ‘Brave or foolish,’ I said, picking up my palette once more.

Soon the city’s noise returned again: the buses were released from the depot and the U-Bahn could be heard from the subway vents. Despite the strike a thousand men were laid off, but in better news the Nazis were down a few hundred thousand votes at the last elections. In any case I forgot about Jenö’s letter, and thought no more about him, until I was suddenly faced with him once more at Irmi’s Christmas party.

39

Berlin

Irmi’s flat was a short walk from ours, and Charlotte and I argued before setting off. She had cut her hair very short again, and continued to wear only men’s clothing. I was terrified that every time she left the apartment something terrible would happen. Our street had once teemed with children, but now it was mostly men in different shades of uniform. Invulnerable to the Prussian winds they lurked on the brownstone steps and the ironwork balconies. Mannish Charlotte would be as good a target as any Jew or Red or gypsy.

A man might be beaten in daylight on a street where there were lawyers’ offices and a police station, where snow dusted women’s expensive hair and lavish furs. Razor blades, chair legs, glass bottles: all might be used with no provocation. There were bullet holes chipped into the local cinema and hoardings splashed with blood. Men spent workless days idling for the distraction of violence: better, anyway, than selling laces or dishrags or singing for pennies at the Alexanderplatz. Sundays, really, were the worst: since church finished at eleven, and the cinema did not start till eight, and it was a good fight that filled the long gap in between, and the newspapers sold whatever deathbed photographs they could get.