My home here is comfortable and big. There’s not much that doesn’t have its place. In fact, there’s really not much here at all. A simple kitchen and den, my bedroom up a level, then the studio on the top floor, which traps the more useful winter light. On the studio walls there are photos from the Dessau Bauhaus: one of us on a balcony, another from the Metal Ball. There’s also one of Charlotte’s weaves, damaged during the Berlin raid. It does its bit to brighten the place. Looking at one of her tapestries is like listening to a record. The yarn sings.

Aside from its simplicity, the house does not show my lineage; there are no Breuer chairs or Brandt lamps. With its rounded rocking chairs, pale walls and wooden furniture this house is more Shaker than Bauhaus. There’s a print in the living room that I love: a Lucio Fontana, a canvas slashed: Concetto Spaziale (Bianco). I think this is what Charlotte was aiming for when she introduced big holes into her weaves; a technique called openwork she trialled in Dessau. If she had lived, I imagine she might have taken her work in this direction; making space in the weaves. I look at the Fontana often: to think of the life she might have had, and the work she might have done.

Irmi calls again. Her voice is rich and mischievous, though we are having to talk carefully. A long time ago we stopped talking of our group because it caused too much tension between us, but now there’s nothing else to speak about. Walter’s dead, and Irmi has matters to attend to. She asks if I can come to his funeral. It will be held in Mitte, next week.

‘I can’t.’

I don’t want to see him buried. I’d feel compelled to offer him forgiveness, or else St Irmi, good to a fault, would chivvy me to it. Besides, if Jenö were there I don’t think I could bear it: our hopeless three watching the softly descending coffin, not knowing how to mourn our friend. ‘I can’t get a pass,’ I say.

‘Nonsense. You’re a Saxon: you’d be coming home.’

‘I’m bourgeois. I’d be a scalp.’

‘You don’t paint tractors or workers. They’re not interested.’

Nothing she can say will persuade me to go.

‘It’s not his fault that Charlotte died in the camp, Paul,’ Irmi says. She always was a straight talker. It’s no surprise that she should feel no compunction about saying this outright.

‘He could have got her out.’

‘It was more complicated than that.’

‘All it needed was a quiet word to Ernst.’

‘Ernst Steiner was very high up then.’

‘Exactly.’

‘That’s not what I mean. Steiner couldn’t be seen meddling in the fate of a single prisoner.’

‘Walter managed it for Franz.’