‘Walter,’ I said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking. I mean, us not seeing you all this time, since the Survey . . .’ I was messing this up, because I didn’t really know how it was I should say it. ‘I know that article came as a surprise.’

He tensed. I knew I was on to something, then. He stopped packing, waiting to hear what I had to say. I thought of the painting in the woods: the thrown light, the disquiet, its curious mood of intimacy and confession. I kept my focus on anything but him in the room. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘If you’re Jewish. We won’t let anything happen to you. Or Charlotte.’

He laughed, then. ‘Why would you think I’m Jewish?’

‘I thought maybe you were keeping a low profile . . . On account of being Jewish.’

‘No,’ he said, almost sadly, as if he wished he were. ‘I’m not.’

‘Kaspar said you’d been avoiding the Director—’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m not Jewish. You don’t need to worry.’ He took the cups to the kitchen.

Poor, inscrutable friend. It had been in this room that we’d argued, and from here that he’d written those lonely letters. We picnic in the park. The light is lovely against the lake. When will you be home? Ernst is asking if he might tempt you back. I resolved not to let things ever get so bad again. We were friends, good friends, and, most importantly, we were torch-bearers together.

When Walter returned he seemed more energised. He pulled a hand through his hair. ‘Can you spare an hour? There’s so much stuff to get through.’

We packed the junk into three big suitcases and cleared most of it quickly. Just before we were about to tow it to the dump, I noticed the absent sketches. ‘Where are the Kandinskys?’

A look of guilt swept his features. ‘I traded them in.’

All the air went from me. ‘No! Walter! For what?’

‘Trillions. I couldn’t say no.’

‘What’s a trillion worth? I thought you were waiting for valuta.’

‘Uncle König didn’t come through.’

‘Who did?’

He shrugged, but I knew it had to have been Ernst Steiner. Walter would never have made this error of judgement if he’d been in his right mind. No way would he ever have sold one of those paintings for anything less than they were worth.

We walked from Walter’s apartment to the dump, and there was something funereal about our slow procession. In the city, money once again meant something, and the grey light hardened around the buildings, and the Reichswehr officers, unbeknownst to us, were readying to raid the Bauhaus a few hundred yards away. New money changed hands in the shops. Whatever we had kept in abeyance – responsibility, perhaps – was hard on our heels as we transported Walter’s scrap toward the accountable future.