Walter offered me a thin smile. ‘Sorry again, Paul. About doing your skies. It doesn’t feel very sporting. After all you did for—’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, and I was being honest; it wasn’t that that was bothering me. ‘Really.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Don’t think about it.’

Masters Kandinsky and Klee began by explaining how we would take our elective options and how we’d be working toward our diploma in a few years’ time. While Klee was speaking I noticed Charlotte had a black mark where she had held her torch last night.

The school secretary came in some way through, asking for Stefan: the Director wanted to see him. Kandinsky and Klee continued. Then she came back, asking for Masha. I heard Charlotte asking Jenö what was going on but couldn’t catch his reply. Neither Stefan nor Masha had yet returned when the secretary came back for the third time. Before she could speak Master Klee told her to take everyone she needed at once.

The secretary was dressed like one of the war widows in the square. Her mouth tightened.

‘Well?’ said Klee.

She looked around the room: the whole of the second year was squeezed in there. ‘I am to take all foreign nationals. And,’ she paused here, perhaps from discomfort, ‘people of Jewish descent or Communist membership.’

The students rose when she read out their names. I saw in the secretary’s face some pleasure as Charlotte stood; she would be glad to have netted one of Itten’s followers.

‘And us too?’ said Master Kandinsky very quietly. ‘Madam, you are looking at a Russian and a Swiss.’

‘No,’ said the secretary. ‘The Director did not say anything about staff.’

During the First World War the German military had conducted a count of the Jews in the army: it was called the Judenzählung. Now we had our own census; a Bauhauszählung. After the Director’s meetings with Stefan, and Masha, and Charlotte, it filtered down to the rest of us that the Republik, a right-wing newspaper none of us read, was threatening the school with the publication of a report: a Citizens’ Survey. It would detail the names and numbers of the school’s foreigners, Jews and Communists.

The Director had got wind of the article early. It was an awful way to start the academic year, and there was a mood of siege in the school once more. It had been silly to assume the city had forgotten the incident at the Baths, just because time had passed, Mr Sommer had gone off meekly, and all the trifling payments had been made. Last night the students had advanced with their rocking lanterns burning; once again, we were now in retreat.