Later I changed into my pyjamas and went out on the balcony. The tip of the cigarette was the only point of colour in the wintry grounds, and though all around me was greys and whites, my brain felt newly filamented with an electricity I had assumed was all but dead. Something about the Metropol couple, or maybe even the Nazi in his uniform, had awakened in me a desire for another human being. I thought of how Jenö, very gently, had placed his brow against Charlotte’s at dinner. Such a simple thing to do. Such a small gesture of love.

I hadn’t felt desire for a long time. Over the years I had gone through nearly every woman in the Weaving Workshop: Grete; Trudi; Margaret, the American. There had been something promising with Magdalena – even talk of an engagement – but she’d said I was too distractible. In any case she broke things off when I didn’t take the next step. She had probably been right.

A voice shouted my name from a balcony above mine. ‘Paul!’

When I twisted my neck to see who it was I was surprised to find that the movement unloosed tears from my eyes.

‘Come up!’ It was Franz, waving from Walter’s balcony. He threw down a knotted sheet, as if I were a prince about to climb Rapunzel’s hair. There was more schoolboy giggling. ‘Climb up! Climb up!’ I thought about it: taking the sheet, leaping off the balcony, quitting this Arcadia altogether, but laughed instead, and told him I would take the stairs.

When the door to Walter’s room opened, it was Franz who greeted me. He had black hair, a soft jawline and a stomach at full sail. He raked the hair from his eyes. ‘Pyjamas!’ he said. ‘Wonderful!’

‘I was going to bed.’

‘Come in! Come in!’

Walter was smoking on the balcony. He tapped the ash over the railing. ‘Paul,’ he said, ‘hallo. You didn’t fancy our other method of transport?’

The knotted bed sheet still hung from the railings. I heard raised voices from the direction of Charlotte’s room. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Oh, they get like this occasionally. Ever since Rügen.’

‘Really?’

He dropped the cigarette off the balcony. ‘Did you hear the noises earlier?’

‘What noises?’

‘The wolves of Anhalt county!’ said Franz, ambling outside, his cocktail spilling. I wondered how drunk they were.

‘There aren’t any wolves in Germany. Never mind Anhalt. Are there?’ I said, suddenly doubting myself.

Franz gave a howl to the half moon. Walter laughed, then someone else on another balcony joined in, as another howl began, and another.

‘Lunacy,’ I said.

And Walter gnashed his teeth. ‘You’re not wrong.’

We went inside. There was a ruler and a compass resting on Walter’s desk; beside it, paper, ink, a fountain pen. ‘Look at this,’ said Franz, assessing the drawing. ‘All this Expressionist shit.’