‘Chicken feed. That’s what they’ve thrown at him. And Sommer’s too dim to have demanded more. It’s not a good day. Not a good day at all for the Bauhaus.’

My friends would have all begged to differ.

‘But your lot are celebrating. So I suppose I should be congratulating you.’ He pushed two glasses together and held them in his fists. ‘There’s Walter,’ he said. ‘He did a good job with Leda. I’ll go say hello.’

When he went over to Walter I wondered if he would fire him. But Walter merely adjusted his taped-up spectacles and laughed with whatever Ernst was saying. I caught Charlotte talking to Kaspar, explaining who Steiner was. The last image I had was of Jenö and an attractive woman conferring closely in a dark corner, and Charlotte and Walter arguing about something they both knew little about. Kaspar had disappeared a long time before, probably to see some girl somewhere, and at some point, with my poor head roaring, I decided to call it a night.

16

Weimar

In the middle of the night I woke to a sensation of sawing from my left ear to my eye. I drank a glass of water, threw it up, then tried to stay as still as possible on the bed. By morning I was pinned to the bed. Even the smallest of movements made the headache worse, and it was all I could do to lie very still under the blankets, waiting for time to pass. So much for transparencies and new Jerusalems. After weeks of fasting, this was my deliverance: a migraine had come.

Vaguely the church bell scraped its hours, and I knew the weekend was disappearing, and I wanted desperately to be elsewhere. I heard the wind scratch the trees. Remembered lights flashed in my vision: the retinal cafeteria, the Virgin’s glare, the forest’s strobing trees, flickering fast. The air in my bedroom had the chlorinated stink of the Baths.

All weekend, my friends visited. Sometimes they were ghostly; at other times it was only their voices I heard. There was old Mr Sommer, creaking about the bedroom; Irmi alone on the pub table, not wanting to take my hand. Jenö, too, ghosting past the baker’s window, then summiting the table, declaring, ‘Everything’s forgotten!’ (Poor Walter: ‘Do you think this is it? Do you think he has feelings for me?’ and my phoney reply: ‘You’ll just have to wait.’) Charlotte pressed her cool hands to my face, and combed my hair; then she too turned to shimmer and I was once again alone. In a moment of clear thinking I wondered why no one had checked on me. It was the weekend, wasn’t it? Surely Charlotte would come soon. Surely Irmi. But then the waking dreams of the migraine would push on me once more, and I was lost, like this, for days.