Sunlight flooded into the room. I’m sure it made everyone feel doubly drunk because we were carrying on as if it were three in the morning rather than the afternoon. Jenö stood on a table and shook at a stuck window. ‘Fuck, it’s hot in here,’ he said, pulling at his shirt.

One of the locals told him to get down.

But then a cloud moved over the sun and the room’s temperature dropped. Jenö’s face turned exuberant. ‘Ha ha!’ he shouted, then beat his chest. ‘I am Jenö! The all-powerful!’

Everyone laughed. Irmi tried to pull him down by a trouser leg, but Jenö (he must have been very drunk, this was so unlike him) swung her up to dance. There wasn’t much space on the table-top, and he took up the bulk of it.

‘All right, Jenö, enough!’ Irmi said. ‘We’re going to fall!’

‘Come down!’ shouted Charlotte, but she was laughing too. ‘No more funny business!’

Jenö ambled down but Irmi was still there, looking like a figurine on top of a cake. Irmi looked ready to make an announcement. I hoped she wouldn’t. Even if the student body knew Mr Sommer’s age, I doubted she’d have the room’s support. Everyone was in the mood to celebrate; this had been a victory. ‘Won’t you come down?’ I asked.

‘Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is right?’ she said, jumping to the floor. ‘It’s all just disgusting. He’s old enough to be your grandfather.’

For the next hour Jenö burped between his retelling of the Director’s homilies and drinking beer like it was water. That afternoon he behaved so strangely that even Walter kept him at bay. My head hurt, but it still felt too early to leave.

At the bar I bought my last drink, and it was here I found Ernst Steiner. I had assumed that he slept between shifts. But perhaps he came to the Swan, to sink a beer with old friends; perhaps that’s what he had been doing when he’d picked me up the first time. ‘Mr Steiner,’ I said. My headache also waved a greeting. It was becoming painful to talk.

‘What’s everyone celebrating?’

Before I had a chance to make something up, he said, ‘Was Walter in trouble?’

‘A small scrape with the law.’

‘Didn’t have anything to do with the Bath-house, did he?’ Mr Steiner kept his voice low enough that no one overheard him.

I didn’t know what to say, and I certainly didn’t want to jeopardise Walter’s work. Inflation or no inflation, he still had to find the money for Sommer’s payments. ‘No, that wasn’t them.’

‘Your school hasn’t treated him well.’

‘What do you mean?’