‘I live over there.’ She pointed to a pink building. ‘Up in the rafters. Next to the library. You can just see the Rococo Hall.’

‘And the palace.’

‘And the palace. It smells of shit from the stables.’

We walked past Goethe’s garden house, pale blue, with its roof pitched in an inverted V, and further on some students worked at an allotment. They waved. Somehow they already knew we were part of them. Walter and Jenö came into view at the iron bridge and we followed the river back to them. The Ilm moved slowly; on its top were circling eddies, as if many things had been dropped in there. Up on the bridge Jenö smiled at us; maybe he was already working things out.

‘Do you think you could fish in this river?’ he said.

‘Probably.’

The tops of the trees were cut off in the water’s reflection. It was still warm and we bathed our feet in the shallows where the whips grew. Walter didn’t join us; he couldn’t swim, he said, as he watched the eddies with mistrust. We talked mostly of home; where we had come from, and the small lives we had escaped. None of us had known the war. We knew our good fortune, and in the ripening day our lives felt golden.

We tramped back to school for more introductory classes that afternoon, all of us eager to spot Masters Klee and Kandinsky, the stars of the department. Many of us had come because of them, but it turned out neither had much to do with first years, or, as we were known, the Bauhaus babies.

Instead, it was Master Itten, a Swiss painter, who took us for our first lesson. He was dressed in a ruby robe and had a shaved head; he wore round spectacles that in certain lights obscured his eyes. When my parents had come to visit the school they had nodded genially along with the Director, dressed in his architect’s collar and tie, because they knew this type of man. I wished they could now see Master Itten, who had the look of a monk in whose eyes burned a devout fire. Through the workshop window we could see the beech forest a few miles off: a shimmer of pleasant green.

Master Itten said little by way of introduction. He explained that there wasn’t enough money for chairs, and that we were to sit on the floor. He arranged us in groups, and then set up some books and a lemon in each group, and told us to make our first impressions of the still life. Then he left.