He keeps an eye on Carl throughout the evening, and when finally his brother opens his newspaper and leans back contentedly in his chair, he informs him that he’d like to go to Cologne tomorrow. He feels like a little kid who has to ask permission. Because he doesn’t want to lie, he also doesn’t have an explanation for why he’d like to go to Cologne, and so when Carl asks, “Oh yeah? What do you want to go there for?” he says he just has to get out of Neuss for a bit, which isn’t untrue. “Maybe I’ll take a few photos with the Linhof.”

“Go ahead, then. You’ve got money.”

He does have money. Carl gave him ten marks, “for helping out.”

The next morning he sets out early, swallows sailing across the royal-blue sky, under which every other impression of the city seems to dissipate. The camera is heavy; it weighs his shoulder down, but it also reassures him, makes him feel as though he really is taking a harmless day trip.

He buys a ticket at the train station, leaves an hour later. It’s a short journey, and as the cathedral begins to soar up ahead of him, so venerable and dark, cracked, rough looking, damaged in a few places, but unmistakably the cathedral, he feels such sadness that he stares out the window and simply lets the tears flow.

The train pulls into a giant station that he once saw forty years ago with his father, his mother, and Carl, a Sunday trip. He remembers the suit Carl had to wear, too big for him; his timid, unhappy mother on the Rhine promenade among people much better off than they. His father didn’t make much money. A sign painter who hoped he could switch careers and become an electrician. The government had promised a promotion to those who enlisted in the first days of the war.

The front hall has also survived the war, an overly ornate, gloomy edifice. Outside, his eyes wander over many barren lots, over a few one-story buildings that had been built quickly on top of old leftover foundations, over piles of rubble that were already overgrown with weeds. He has some time still and walks in the direction of the old city. He sees individual buildings here and there propping each other up like drunks. On a wooden fence the words OUT WITH THE NAZI PLAGUE. On a wall, between two bullet holes: HITLER KAPUT.

At a makeshift wooden kiosk he buys a coffee. A one-legged man who seems to be working with a blind organ grinder holds out his hat.

On Ellis Island he had always given Dörsam a wide berth. He didn’t want to be seen with him too often. As the Americans saw it, Dörsam was bad news. Should he call him Herr Meerbusch? He mustn’t make any mistakes.