Our conversation had settled the world; the city was flat and unperturbed once more. Outside the Fürstenplatz there was a union leader preaching, and other men warming their hands at a burning can. Charlotte’s rooms were in the damson-pink house in one corner of the square. At the doorway I looked to see if Irmi was at her window, watching me as she had watched Charlotte, but it was the middle of the day, and there was no one there.

The landlady shrugged when I asked if Charlotte was in, which I took as a good sign that she might be by now. There wasn’t a response, however, to my knocking. I put my ear to the door but there was no sound aside from a faint percussive noise. Charlotte and I went freely into each other’s rooms, but walking in alone always felt a touch transgressive.

The room had an unvisited feel. The tables were stacked with cloths and paints. Everything was piled on Biedermeier furniture. An easel was set up and an upholstered chair was positioned in front of it. All around there were touching examples of her failed weaves. Even three or four were enough to surprise me; I thought she had quitted the loom altogether. I found a tobacco tin of acupuncture needles, and candles, and I wondered if she, like me, were continuing to fast. I imagined her putting the needles in her skin. The room would be warm and the light tinselled from so many candles burning down to nearly nothing.

It was the shutter that was bumping against the frame: that had been the noise I’d heard. Funny that I’d seen the same image at Goethe’s house. I fastened it and sat facing the easel in the high-winged chair. I turned over Walter’s horn-rim spectacles, tempted to pull one of the arms straight. My prints were on the other lens. I wondered what I should say when I presented them to him. I wondered whether they would be a gift, or a sting.

After a while I found some paper to leave a note. Charlotte’s haphazard writing was on the back: a scrawl of sums: big numbers, into the hundreds of thousands. Master Itten had once teased her about her handwriting, asking how students were taught to write in Prague. You would never guess it was her, from her writing; or at least her loose style suggested a person she wasn’t. I wrote her a quick message, asking if she’d like to get Itten’s portrait done soon, then left it on the mat.

But just as I was about to go I heard footsteps ascending, and didn’t have time to snatch it before Charlotte walked in. She was startled. Her cheeks crept with crimson. ‘Oh, Paul!’ she said, and she held her throat.