Another surge moved the crowd and Charlotte’s hand was pulled from mine. I found her man’s hat quickly amongst the women’s. Her face froze as a thousand arms rose in unison and a roar called up Hitler, upright in the open cab. He gave the crowd a small smile before he vanished through the gate as quickly as he had come.

The crowd was running west now but Charlotte managed to get back to the rope. Hitler’s retinue followed in four more cars, black and sleek and willing.

We should have followed the women into the park. We should have run with them, under the gate, under Victory with her open skirts and reckless mouth, over to the Reichstag. There was this last moment – flaming out; already finishing – before I saw him, but the last car is already coming into view, and though Charlotte doesn’t see him – might not even recognise him from our chance meeting at the Swan – Ernst Steiner was standing in one of the open-topped cabs in his brown shirt and cap, still as fat as ever, and any opportunity I had had to change the course of this sorry history – well, it was gone.

The way Steiner watched the crowd: he had given us exactly the same look from his office. Imperious. Delighted.

It was Ernst all right.

He sat down as the car passed through the gate. I looked around the crowd to see if Walter might be here. A longing stirred in me, ever so slightly romantic, definitely ancient, that I should like to see Walter König, my old friend, counsellor, and sometime traitor. Because I knew that if Ernst was in Berlin, there was a good chance Walter would be too.

44

Berlin

When Kaspar had said, at Irmi’s party, that Walter was still fucking some fat Nazi, I would never have thought that man would be a Nazi with so much power; a man to be included in Hitler’s cavalcade. While I wanted immediately to find Walter in Berlin, I also didn’t want to be found by Ernst Steiner. Easy enough to find someone in Berlin in 1933; not so easy not to be caught.

Neither Walter nor he was in the phone book, and it was too cold to stake out Ernst’s government building all day. I couldn’t send a telegram or even a letter to the Weimar studio, since I didn’t want Mr Steiner to ever ask himself whether he had once known a Paul Beckermann.

A couple of weeks passed in February as I puzzled over the mystery. Though newspapers had been raided, Thälmann threatened, and his Communist members beaten, I’d say that, at least in the aftermath of Hitler’s parade, things were almost normal. There was even a faintly festive spirit that we were allowed outside again. The cabaret reopened; kids played on the streets; in the afternoons Charlotte was once more on the move.