This is my whole story perhaps. Recollection scratched against recollection.

The next day we had tours of the ateliers (Metal, Stone, Weaving, Wall-painting) that we would choose for our second-year specialism. No one else had opted for Wall-painting, despite the fact Master Kandinsky would teach it; more fool them, I thought. Like Jenö, Charlotte had chosen Metal, though she must have known the Director would never admit a woman into that workshop.

That afternoon Master Kandinsky gave the Wall-painters a long speech. He was a tall man who gesticulated wildly with his Russian-inflected German. He talked for a long time about the aesthetics of colour and their natural forms, about metamorphosis, and seeing and not seeing, but it must have been impenetrable (his teaching often was), because I can hardly remember a sentence of what he said.

Walter and I kept our curfew separately that evening. I had figured the worst time to break the curfew would be in the evening, but no one would be spoiling for a fight as late as midnight. And so, perhaps because of Master Kandinsky’s class, when we cycled to the woods together that night I imagined myself like Kandinsky’s magnificent Blue Rider on his horse, going at such a gallop as to render the autumn in which he rides nothing but speeding trees.

In the studio, Walter was timid at first. Like me, he wore a cloth cap to disguise his baldness, and he kept to the corner of the room until I beckoned him over to the pearly skin of an already ravished Leda. Her retinue were still only outlines, and the courier was coming tomorrow. It boded well for Walter’s chances.

When he saw the painting, Walter’s expression changed completely. ‘Why don’t we make things like this at the Bauhaus?’

‘Because it’s useless?’

‘But still,’ he said, ‘magnificent.’

I took him to Mr Steiner’s office and Walter took off his cap. I shut the office door so that the other men couldn’t see his bald head.

‘Yes?’ Steiner said, his face still buried in the ledger. I saw the anchor tattoo on his neck. The thing about Mr Steiner was that despite his ability to work the market, or put the money in the right dealer or politician’s hand, he still had quite poor taste.

‘My friend needs some work, Mr Steiner. You said you needed all hands on deck. For Leda and the Swan?’

He hadn’t quite said this, and he knew it. As he looked Walter over I wondered if this was a good idea or insanity. If the other workers found out that Walter was part of the Bath-house brawl, would he be beaten up? And what would I do? See blood and faint? There was something else to Mr Steiner’s gaze. Maybe he recognised Walter from the Swan. ‘He’s a painter?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the Bauhaus too?’

‘That’s right.’