Hildegard, he said thickly.

He took her hand.

He was very sweet, kind, young, she said, walking, squeezing a hot hand. It was because of his sweetness, kindness, youth, that she loved him, she thought, and because as a contrast, she could not forget, it kept coming into her mind, because he was the complete antithesis of Dr Rosenheim. The name vibrated in her voice. Dr Rosenheim was present, if not his face, as an idea that took possession. You could touch the warm, puffy air. It was something that Hildegard both resented and encouraged.

Suddenly she began to cry. A stormy, breathless kind of crying, as much an outburst from the darkened undergrowth as a protest from Hildegard. And it swept in little heady gusts, he was as much a part of this emotion, that he kissed, awkwardly, baldly at first, feeling his way to a collapsing mouth, almost toppling them over, they were spinning, spinning in a darkness of sweeping leaves and locked arms. Out of the darkness he spoke to her in borrowed words. They were not his, he knew, without shame. After the first impact there was no shame, surprise, except vaguely perhaps for the firmness of her now expectant body, and a sudden strand of hair that he found across her mouth.

She spoke in little frenetic phrases, the German words, or less coherently, an intimation of desire. She clung to him with her mouth. If you could touch a fever it would be this, the insistent body, the fierce mouth. He was relieved at last to touch above her shoulder the cool, the passive leaf mould, the first contact made by the returning senses.

Walking through the darkness afterwards, the hands returned small pressure. So much taken for granted, there is no reason for this, for the pressure in the darkness. The body is essentially possessive. It announces its prerogative, it refuses to acknowledge other possible worlds. Possessing, allowing himself to be possessed, Elyot followed his own feet, threading apparently with purpose the outer details. They passed children who were singing, their faces lit by paper lanterns. They were caught up distantly in the singing of the children. Their eyes followed without conviction the swaying of the paper lanterns on their beansticks, the small, intent children’s faces. They were crossing tramlines, he knew. There was a shower of sparks.

Back at the apartment, Frau Fiesel said there was beer and potato salad in the kitchen. She appeared cloudy in a grey shawl.

No, said Hildegard, she was tired, they had walked very far, she was exhausted, she said.

Frau Fiesel began to murmur about die Jugend.

He listened to the closing of Hildegard’s door, listless on its hinges, the sighing of a door. You felt either repudiated or taken for granted, it was difficult to decide which, if you were not too tired to decide, if you were not too tired to drag the feet towards extinction in a featherbed, the welcome stupor of eiderdown.