‘They’re all right.’ He gave me a tense grin, a flash of teeth. He was quite a bit rounder these days: his flesh was graspable; a hand could paddle into it. He didn’t look like he was carrying more fat so much as more water. His skin was stretched like the top of a pie, and it made you want to press a thumb in to see how far it would go. The darkness under his eyes was the result, I imagined, of last night spent in the woods with a bottle of vodka and the ear of any painter he’d persuaded to stay up late. I wondered if the forest had had its first snow; the beech trees blacker, the branches ravishing. ‘How was Weimar?’

‘Same old thing.’ I watched his eyes skate the water. ‘Pretty girls; chickens.’

‘And Ernst?’

‘Ernst, well; Ernst is still very fat.’

Walter’s own extra weight made his mouth a heaviness; his forehead was higher as he had lost some hair. There was always a soreness in my heart to see him aged and bigger. I followed his line of sight to the school.

‘Do you ever feel like it’s going to eat you alive?’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think I might die if I stay any longer.’

His words made me imagine him as Ophelia, floating down the river, his loafers engorged. ‘Every time you go to Weimar you say things like this.’

‘Do I? I’m sorry; I must be very dull.’

‘Walter, come on: that’s not what I meant. Surely you’ve saved enough for years’ worth of school fees. I don’t understand why you go back.’

‘Ernst kissed me. Behind the studio.’

‘Oh.’ I couldn’t remember whether this had been expected. ‘That’s nice. Isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so. He asked if I was still in love with that man from the Bauhaus. Jenö.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Yes,’ he said, without pausing. ‘As soon as I said it, I felt like a fool. To be in love with the same man for six years! How can I be so stupid?’ He looked dumbfounded at the water. ‘What a waste of time, and effort.’

We never really talked this frankly; we usually skirted the issue. This had become the easier way of doing things. ‘It’s not stupid,’ I said. ‘To be in love with someone.’

‘It’s beginning to feel that way.’

‘You haven’t exactly had a choice.’