I couldn’t tell how Irene looked at me. Like I’d woken her from a dream? Like she couldn’t believe I’d interjected something? Gundlach and Schwind were clearly taken aback, and I understood why; I had said almost nothing since they arrived.

“Oh, yes. I recognize Karl’s feet, the big, strong feet he stands on, steady in the world. I recognize his bluster and his confidence, and remember believing I’d be protected between those two pillars. I recognize Peter’s will and strength, and now that he needs a cane, the cane sounds like his steps did back then, when he’d get his cobbler to nail iron caps to the soles of his shoes. I remember how ambitious they both were. Back then I often felt too young for them, like their daughter instead of their partner. Now I feel almost like their mother. I can see that they’ve made their way in the world and been successful, and I’m happy for them. And when I left them, it was the right thing to do. When the children grow up, the mother has to go.”

“The mother?”

Irene’s look begged me to say no more, to ask no skeptical questions that would challenge this new role, mother, which she’d traded for the old ones of trophy and muse. Did she just want to look beautiful and be admired, and enjoy the evening?

“You didn’t leave us because you wanted to send your children out into the world. You didn’t lure us here in order to reminisce about his feet, and my shoes. What did he ask?” Gundlach looked in my direction. “What’s left? Did you really want to know what was left from our years together? From your time with him?” Now he tipped his head towards Schwind. “It was just an interlude. Nothing more. It happened by chance. If you hadn’t been in the Arts and Crafts Museum the day my Japanese guests wanted a tour and the tour guide was missing – and if the other painter hadn’t gone to Rome and I hadn’t had to hire this one,” again, he meant Schwind, “and if he,” he jabbed his chin at me, “hadn’t made a mess of everything…The interlude started by chance, it ended by chance, it’s all a long time ago. Life went on.”

“Is that how you see your whole life? As a series of interludes?”

The question took Gundlach by surprise. He gave Schwind a searching look, then decided that his interest was genuine. “Of course not. My father turned a workshop into a factory and I built the factory into a thriving business. My life had a purpose. The encounters that don’t change life’s course or goal may be as beautiful as you wish, but they’re still interludes.”

“Your wives, your children, your grandchildren…”