We stood in the narrow kitchen as both of us thought of what else to say. I wished Irmi had told me she’d invited him. She hadn’t mentioned he’d be coming, though she’d talked of nothing but the party for weeks on our morning walks.

‘How’ve you been? The painting’s going well?’

‘Yes,’ I said, not quite committing, and when I asked the same of him, he simply said the same thing too. ‘Are you teaching the Metal Workshop?’ I asked.

‘No. They don’t have one. Can’t afford it. I’m teaching the preliminary course with Josef.’

Now I really had run out of things to say. ‘Have you seen Charlotte?’

‘Briefly. She said she was going home,’ he said, slightly fumbling his delivery. ‘She said she had a headache?’

I didn’t say another word. I pushed past women dancing with their eyes closed, maybe even asleep; men shuffling their feet along; the couple with the cocaine on their knees having more. I imagined Charlotte’s lip bleeding; her body beaten in a gutter. I grabbed my coat. As I ran down the steps I heard a drunken rendition of ‘Silent Night’ begin as Irmi shouted down the staircase: ‘What about Teddy? I wanted to introduce you! Paul! Paul! At least say goodbye!’

40

Berlin

Neither of us was in the mood to work the day after the party. Usually this meant a trip to the zoo, or the Tiergarten, or maybe a walk to the Pergamon for the busts. Instead, that morning Charlotte became without warning furiously domestic. She did all the laundry then hung the sheets from the unbarred windows, though the day was so frigid they would freeze. She fetched the coal, wound the clock in the living room (a present from my mother) and then, most implausibly, she began to darn our socks, the holes in them so large it would have been better to throw them out. With the window open to the courtyard, radios blared Berlin’s bad news.

I asked if I could help but she shooed me away.

I tried to push Jenö from my mind but he kept on returning unbidden. The Bauhaus was in Steglitz. A train ride away; not much. In bed this morning I had asked Charlotte why she had left the party so abruptly. She’d said, as Jenö had said, that she’d been gripped by a sudden headache. While she was in the kitchen I scanned the letter for any subtext I had missed, then found the Steglitz postmark on the envelope. I should have checked. I should have known he was in Berlin.

‘Come on,’ I said, in the afternoon, when thoughts of Jenö were circulating worse than ever. ‘Let’s go out.’

Charlotte put aside her darning. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’