‘Off for a walk. Everything feels crammed in my head.’ She held her satchel close to her, as if she were worried someone would snatch it. I could tell she was distracted as she kissed me goodbye. I wondered, as I did every day, whether she was heading off to the Bauhaus, and, when she was there, what – if anything – she and Jenö would do together. I knew this was a killing way to think, and that my suspicions would soon send me to the madhouse. But I couldn’t help it. I imagined her and Jenö in workshops. I imagined them in the ateliers. I imagined their desire after three years of being apart; its intensity, its white heat.

Some days later, I stood opposite the Kaiserhof. Party men in uniform milled at the bar and seated women waited for their return. Ernst was at the window, just as Irmi had said he would be. He was talking to a woman, her hair done in waves, her hands braced as if she had no intention of touching her drink. He looked to all the world like an officer from the age of Bismarck, and I almost felt proud of him. How high he had climbed from the studio in the woods! How well he had done from our paintings!

I wondered if Walter, too, was thriving with all this wealth. He’d always liked money; always missed it when he didn’t have any. But there was the question of the woman. Ernst’s wife? Mrs Steiner? In which case, maybe Walter had been left behind. What would Walter do in Weimar, and what would he be, without Ernst’s patronage? I hadn’t heard from him in years. He could just as well be dead from booze and cocaine in Goethe’s forest.

I scooted round to the rear of the hotel and waited for a few minutes before Irmi came out with neither coat nor scarf. I realised just then that we hadn’t spoken, not properly, since our argument.

‘It’s the man by the window, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘The bald one?’

‘That’s him, yes.’

‘I’d no idea he was Walter’s boyfriend!’

I was surprised that she was in a good mood. Maybe she had forgiven me; again. ‘You’ve never seen Walter here?’

‘No,’ she said, looking at me funny, ‘I would have said. Mr Steiner was your boss in Weimar? I’ve served him endless times!’

‘That’s right.’

‘Who’s the woman?’

‘Not sure. His wife? Of sorts?’

‘He’s never here without her.’