I took a few steps back into the workshop so that I could hear them better. Irmi’s expression was hard to work out, but then expressive people are often hard to read. ‘Charlotte gave him quite a lecture in the cafeteria after Paul went. All about temperament and self-possession. Sometimes I think Charlotte has so much self-possession she might be dead.’

I’d always thought the two women were good friends; but maybe there was some cruelty in Irmi of which I wasn’t aware. Both she and Kaspar were watching Charlotte now, who was looking at the beech forest framed in the window. When Jenö joined her they quickly became deep in conversation.

‘I wish I could be like that.’ Irmi wore a strange expression; not envy, not quite, but as if she, too, yearned to have some of Charlotte’s coolness. ‘Yesterday I saw her sneaking off in the middle of the night.’

‘She broke the curfew?’

‘She didn’t head to the Bauhaus, either.’

‘Peeping at her from behind the Fürstenplatz, Spy Irmi Schüpfer?’

‘I happened to be at the window, that’s all. She had a big bag with her and a hat with a brim,’ Irmi said. ‘Now where was she going?’

‘You and Paul! Why can’t you just accept what Walter told us?’

‘You, my dear,’ she chucked him on the cheek, ‘need to be less of an ingénue and more interested in the truth.’

‘Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.’

‘Oh, go back to bed, Mr Nietzsche.’ Irmi gave Kaspar an elbow in the ribs but also a kiss. How easily I could watch them from my hidey-hole; how real and lovely was their affection for each other!

Walter walked into the storeroom just then. ‘Stupid Walter,’ he said. ‘Not listening.’

Strips of paper hung from his forearm: he’d been reprimanded by Itten, since changing the material had not been part of the brief. ‘Don’t believe what they’re saying about Jenö. He didn’t mean to beat Sommer. It was a mistake.’

‘They said he was arrested for something similar at home.’

‘Even if that’s true, he was defending me this time.’

‘Against who?’

‘Why, whoever he dreamed up in the faint.’

We went back into the workshop; Master Itten had already gone.

‘Do you think Sommer will press charges?’

‘Oh,’ said Walter. ‘I wouldn’t be able to bear it if he did.’

I knew how he felt. If it had been Charlotte I would have been beside myself.

‘Say they won’t, Pauli.’

‘They won’t. Not for a skirmish in the Bath-house.’