It was always cooler in the forest than in town, but the trees were filling out and the whips growing. Finally I found my friends around a fire. Walter was picking leaves out of Jenö’s soles, and Charlotte was talking to Irmi, who had just moved into rooms opposite hers in the Fürstenplatz square.

The steep cycle had made me feel rather high. The trees were blurred, but the separated flames of the fire were crisp. I steadied my gaze on the fire but saw inside it a swarm of crows, billowing out, and then being sucked in. I could smell my own scent, and it was sharp and animal.

‘Where’s Kaspar?’ I asked.

‘He tailed back,’ said Walter, patting his stomach. ‘Poor Kas couldn’t make the climb. Where’d you go?’

‘I had an errand to run.’

Three tents had already been pitched around the fire. I wondered with whom I was going to bunk. Probably Walter; Jenö in a tent by himself; the two women, together.

‘Very mysterious,’ said Irmi.

‘Not really,’ said Charlotte, unable to help herself.

I took out Mr Steiner’s card and threw it in the fire. Charlotte smiled, but we both knew the gesture meant nothing.

‘Did you enjoy the river glades?’ asked Walter, and the rest of the group laughed.

So everyone had already been well informed. ‘All right, all right. You all already know I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Romantic.’

‘Charlotte says you might be overcome by the “imitation impulse”.’

‘It sounds contagious,’ said Jenö. ‘Like the flu.’

‘It’s just oil paints, and tons of money. You’ll be envious when I start driving my own automobile about town.’

‘I don’t think it’s a bad thing,’ said Irmi. ‘Why not? Especially doing something as easy as painting.’

‘He’ll be able to paint our portraits soon,’ said Charlotte. ‘I can just imagine it. Set up like a Caspar Friedrich in an ancient castle.’

‘First one to be nice to me gets the first gift.’

‘Which is?’ said Jenö.

‘I’ll be nice to you,’ said Irmi.

‘Then you, Irmi, shall have the best of what Steiner will pay for. Champagne. Italian truffles. New dresses and shoes.’

Irmi laughed. As we talked she scooted closer. Twisted around one side her hair was pulled into a complicated plait. Irmi had a wide smile with small teeth, slightly dirty on their edges. Her grey eyes showed all the weather, their changeability nothing like Charlotte’s flat stare. ‘Granite and crystal,’ Walter had once uncharitably described them together; though I’d never learnt which one he’d thought which.