It was a nice quiet street, all white, mock porticoes and Atlantes supporting elaborate façades on their well-muscled shoulders. Cheap it wasn’t. But that apartment and my partner had been my only two luxuries in two years.

The first had been rather more successful for me than the second. An impressive hallway with more marble than the Pergamon Altar led up to the second floor where I had a suite of rooms with ceilings that were as high as trams. German architects and builders were never known for their penny-pinching.

My feet aching like young love, I ran myself a hot bath.

I lay there for a long time, staring up at the stained-glass window which was suspended at right angles to the ceiling, and which served, quite redundantly, to offer some cosmetic division of the bathroom’s higher regions. I had never ceased to puzzle as to what possible reason had prompted its construction.

Outside the bathroom window a nightingale sat in the yard’s solitary but lofty tree. I felt that I had a lot more confidence in his simple song than the one that Hitler was singing.

I reflected that it was the kind of simplistic comparison my beloved pipe-smoking partner might have relished.

5

Tuesday, 6 September

In the darkness the doorbell rang. Drunk with sleep I reached across to the alarm clock and picked it off the bedside table. It said 4.30 in the morning with still nearly an hour to go before I was supposed to wake up. The doorbell rang again, only this time it seemed more insistent. I switched on a light and went out into the hall.

‘Who is it?’ I said, knowing well enough that generally it’s only the Gestapo who take a pleasure in disturbing people’s sleep.

‘Haile Selassie,’ said a voice. ‘Who the fuck do you think it is? Come on, Gunther, open up, we haven’t got all night.’

Yes, it was the Gestapo all right. There was no mistaking their finishing-school manners.

I opened the door and allowed a couple of beer barrels wearing hats and coats to barge past me.

‘Get dressed,’ said one. ‘You’ve got an appointment.’

‘Shit, I am going to have to have a word with that secretary of mine,’ I yawned. ‘I forgot all about it.’

‘Funny man,’ said the other.

‘What, is this Heydrich’s idea of a friendly invitation?’

‘Save your mouth to suck on your cigarette, will you? Now climb into your suit or we’ll take you down in your fucking pyjamas.’

I dressed carefully, choosing my cheapest German Forest suit and an old pair of shoes. I stuffed my pockets with cigarettes. I even took along a copy of the Berlin Illustrated News. When Heydrich invites you for breakfast it’s always best to be prepared for an uncomfortable and possibly indefinite visit.