She let go of Gundlach, who had pulled himself together, and looked at us, one by one. She saw our bewilderment at her sudden confession. She sat down and laughed. “You know, the colours in East Germany were duller than in the West. The plaster was gray-brown, like Brandenburg sand, the old stone buildings were never cleaned, the Reichsbahn trains were a worn-out shade of green, the flags and banners a faded red. But life there saved me. After the crazy years, it was like a stay in a sanatorium, where there was little to be had but peace and quiet. There are no colours to catch your eye, no music to get under your skin, no erotic promises on every billboard, no bargains to be hunted. And in the sanatorium nothing changes, not really, and life goes on the same way, day in, day out.”

Gundlach waved his hand dismissively, as if shooing something away. “You aren’t seriously trying to tell us—”

“I’m not trying to paint a false picture. The nanny state, the inefficiencies, the shortages – that’s all true. But I didn’t suffer. It was…it was like staying with the Amish. The Amish can leave – which wasn’t possible there – but their life is strict and austere, like mine was, and I didn’t want to leave. The way time stood still, the peace and quiet, the absence of sensations – it did me good. Celebrating finishing the dacha after all the effort and cunning required to scrape together the materials, and all the work your friends and family had put in; going to the opera in Berlin with your colleagues; canoeing and camping in the Spreewald; reading the classics, which were easy to get hold of, and the other books, which weren’t – that was enough for me.”

Schwind laughed mockingly. “A Biedermeier paradise?”

“Maybe that’s not a bad comparison. There was no political freedom in the Biedermeier period either.”

“But beautiful furniture, trips to France, and if you’d had enough, you could go to America.”

“I don’t need beautiful furniture. I don’t need to travel, not unless I need to. I loved the countryside, the lightness around Saale and Unstrut, the melancholy of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, even the bleakness of the strip mines. I loved the mild summer rain in Bitterfeld, a mist of damp and smoke and chemicals. And the spring rain that pours down the worn-out streets and washes winter dirt from the cracks and potholes. I loved the trams, they were run-down, but they were allowed to just be trams, and not billboards for Coca-Cola and long legs.”

“The grime over there was no better than the pomp and bombast of the Nazis.” Gundlach was indignant. “There are political truths.”