‘Oh no, no. Psychotherapy is not psychoanalysis. It places no reliance on the unconscious mind. That sort of thing is all right for Jews, but it has no relevance to Germans. As you yourself will now appreciate, no psychotherapeutic treatment is ever pursued in isolation from the body. Here we aim to relieve the symptoms of mental disorder by adjusting the attitudes that have led to their occurrence. Attitudes are conditioned by personality, and the relation of a personality to its environment. Your dreams are only of interest to me to the extent that you are having them at all. To treat you by attempting to interpret your dreams, and to discover their sexual significance is, quite frankly, nonsensical. Now that is decadent.’ He chuckled warmly. ‘But that’s a problem for Jews, and not you, Herr Strauss. Right now, the most important thing is that you enjoy a good night’s sleep.’ So saying he picked up his medical bag and took out a syringe and a small bottle which he placed on the bedside table.

‘What’s that?’ I said uncertainly.

‘Hyoscine,’ he said, rubbing my arm with a pad of surgical spirit.

The injection felt cold as it crept up my arm, like embalming fluid. Seconds after recognizing that I would have to find another night on which to snoop around Kindermann’s clinic, I felt the ropes mooring me to consciousness slacken, and I was adrift, moving slowly away from the shore, Meyer’s voice already too far away for me to hear what he was saying.

After four days in the clinic I was feeling better than I had felt in four months. As well as my vitamins, and my diet of kelp and raw vegetables, I’d tried hydrotherapy, naturotherapy and a solarium treatment. My state of health had been further diagnosed through examination of my irises, my palms and my fingernails, which revealed me as calcium-deficient; and a technique of autogenic relaxation had been taught to me. Dr Meyer was making progress with his Jungian ‘totality approach’, as he called it, and was proposing to attack my depression with electrotherapy. And although I hadn’t yet managed to search Kindermann’s office, I did have a new nurse, a real beauty called Marianne, who remembered Reinhard Lange staying at the clinic for several months, and had already demonstrated a willingness to discuss her employer and the affairs of the clinic.

She woke me at seven with a glass of grapefruit juice and an almost veterinary selection of pills.

Enjoying the curve of her buttocks and the stretch of her pendulous breasts, I watched her draw back the curtains to reveal a fine sunny day, and wished that she could have revealed her naked body as easily.

‘And how are you this beautiful day?’ I said.

‘Awful,’ she grimaced.