Ever since that day I have buried this knowledge within me. I told myself I didn’t know what I had really seen. I told myself the letters were blurred; then I told myself I couldn’t be sure, and then, in some magicking of consciousness, I told myself they were the Reichstag blueprints, which, with the fire, made sense. But just because something is logical doesn’t mean it’s true. Some part of me has always known what I’ve known: I just haven’t been able to admit it. I should have known the raid was coming. I should have warned her. I should have got her out.

Jenö’s words rotted away at nearly everything in the week before he went. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t paint. I couldn’t walk the city. I tried to read Charlotte’s penny novels but the romances were too much for my own Herzschmerz. Instead I nursed hangovers from the sofa. In the afternoons I drank even more, and Charlotte gave me uneasy looks. We didn’t talk, we didn’t make love; in the nights – which the booze at first made easier and then more wretched – we hardly touched.

I longed for one of my migraines. Then I could pass this week in illness, and by a court of law I’d be judged in capable of moral reasoning. The opportunity to act would be cancelled. I’d be let off the hook.

No migraine came; the days were left to me. I wanted to talk it out with Irmi, but she wanted nothing to do with all this mess. I remembered the image of the flood breaking though the pavement that I’d seen from her apartment.

A migraine or apocalypse; those were my last hopes.

I was so turned inward I hardly noticed what Charlotte did. I guess she spent her days at the Bauhaus. I knew Jenö would be there: saying the same words to her that he’d said to me. Each evening I tried to spit out three simple words. Go with him. Go with Jenö. But when I saw her standing in the doorway, shaking the snow off her coat, putting away her man’s hat, I knew I could not live without her here. I said nothing.

On Friday a letter from Walter arrived. She held the envelope in the light of the window, but I couldn’t really see her face. Maybe she was close to giving up. That night I became convinced she’d soon be gone. London would be her new home; and in a foreign land where she knew no one, Jenö would be her only friend.

The next day Walter’s letter was gone. In the morning, Charlotte left for a few hours. I had no idea where she went, or what she went to do. I checked her bag for the airline ticket. Still nothing.