“It’s beautiful,” she said. “For me?”

“No, I was rather thinking I might wear it myself.”

“I absolutely love it,” she said, putting on the amber necklace immediately and bounding across her bedroom to look at herself in the cheval mirror. “What do you think?” she asked, turning to face me.

I had to admit it suited her very well, a conclusion that was made easier for me by the fact that she was entirely naked at the time.

“Yes, it looks good on you.”

“You really think so?”

I smiled. “Yesterday’s newspaper would look good on you, Irmela.”

“It must have been very expensive,” she said.

Once again I felt a little awkward when I failed to admit that it had been a gift from Erich Koch and very soon afterward I started to regret I hadn’t told her the truth about the necklace, fearing Harold Hennig would do it for me and spoil things. There was no doubt about it. I had started to care for Irmela very deeply, much more than I could have imagined was even possible for a man of my age. I had no right to the love of a nice girl of twenty-three. I was almost fifty, after all; fifty years of fuckups and disappointments, which means that when you think you only have a few months of life ahead of you every minute seems to count, and every feeling becomes magnified, massively. I’d have done anything to protect her and the baby she was carrying, but it’s odd how inadequate anything like that can begin to feel. The best part of me was probably gone forever, but I could still hope to look after her.

—