Soot

The two children chased each other across the house. The floorboards creaked under the trampling of their little feet, and all the doors were open. The children had pushed them ajar one by one. Now it was Hans' turn to look for a hiding place. Hastily, he squeezed himself behind the stove in the kitchen. He was struggling for breath.

His grandmother was crouching expressionlessly at the kitchen table. As usual, she had not even noticed the boy. Hans, however, could see the old woman from the hiding place, and when Mavi stepped through the door, both of them: the girl with the endless black curls stared at the grandmother. Her chest rose and fell like a bellows. It reminded Hans of his own heavy breathing. He held his breath and pressed against the cool stove tiles at his back.

The grandmother never spoke. Mavi couldn't bear to look at the expressionless old face for long. It gave her the creeps. That's why she didn't look around the kitchen as carefully as she had in the other rooms. Hans remained undiscovered until Mavi finally backed out the door again, then forward, silent as a mouse down the hallway. She stopped only when she suddenly heard Hans giggling behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him rushing out the front door. Mavi sent a whooping shriek after him as a warning. Then she ran after him, laughing.

Outside, Herr Jensen squinted his eyes. The sun ´was still blinding him, so he lowered the poker once more into the embers of his small fire. With his other hand, he clamped the small piece of glass through which he had just gazed at the sky between his tongs. The glass was not yet sooty enough. The girl would ruin her eyes with it.

Behind Herr Jensen, excited chatter rose in the chicken coop. Shortly after, he heard the children calling from different directions. When his son finally darted out from behind a corner of the house and wanted to pass his father, the man courageously grabbed him under the armpit and heaved Hans onto the wooden bench behind the fire. At the same time he continued to hold the tongs with the glass in his free hand. Now it was licked pitch black by the flickering flames.

Hans did not protest. He remained sitting quietly on the bench while he pondered his father's power. Mavi watched him from the other corner of the house. She peeked cautiously from behind the brickwork, but her curls were less careful. Herr Jensen signaled to her that he had seen her. Wordlessly, she trotted to the fire. She knew the game was over.

“Don't touch it,” the big man admonished the girl. “The glass is still hot. Take it later, when you leave. But don't touch the surface so you don't wipe the soot off with your fingers. That's got to stay on, you understand? Otherwise you'll go blind.”

Mavi nodded. And she remembered that she was supposed to grab the broken glass by the edges. And that she mustn't run, on the way home. Otherwise she could cut herself badly if she fell. Mavi nodded after each sentence. She was beaming from ear to ear, and the more she rejoiced, the more Hans sulked on the bench. He refused to understand why they couldn't watch the solar eclipse together. He had been looking forward to it for weeks, and he knew that Mavi was looking forward to it just as much. They talked about it all the time. All the kids in the area understood that they might never see an event like this again. The sun completely eclipsed, night in broad daylight! They had learned about it in school; Mavi knew it all by heart. But she wanted to see the eclipse at her mother's house, not her best friend's.

Hans swallowed his jealousy. He didn't dare say anything, let alone think about Mavi's mother. His parents no longer spoke of her. Hans realized they were doing this on purpose.

Herr Jensen sent the children into the house. He put out the fire and followed after them. In the kitchen he found his mother sitting at the table just as he had left her. Soup was still simmering away in the large pot. After tasting it, he put a bowl of it on the table for his mother. With his feet, he pushed the chair she was sitting on closer to the table. Then he bent over the old woman from behind and placed her hands to the left and right of the bowl.

The family would eat together, but the woman everyone just called Grandma always got her meal served before anyone else. She usually remembered to eat at some point if she was left alone and given time to understand. Later, when everyone was seated at the table and eating, she would join in.

On the sideboard sat the newspaper, which Herr Jensen had read four times by now. When his wife came into the kitchen, she asked him for news. Herr Jensen wiped the sweat from his brow and sat down opposite his mother. In his head, he went over the stories in the newspaper, but only one had stuck in his mind. He told his wife about the ship that had been in distress in the North Sea. Yes, she had already heard about the Titanic. But in distress at sea?

Herr Jensen took the newspaper in his hand and put his index finger on the narrow column at the edge of the front page. He explained that the Titanic was the most modern ship in the world, and now it was lying damaged off Greenland. His wife asked about the people on board, but Herr Jensen had nothing to say about that. They could drink champagne, he thought mockingly.

He had made a mental note of this news because he could make but little sense of such stories of the wide world and the alleged technical marvels of the time. In a way, the Titanic's mishap amused him. For this he earned a stern look from his wife. She dropped the fish head she had saved for his mother into the old woman's soup bowl.

Mavi and Hans ran into the kitchen. Frau Jensen put plates on the table for everyone. Herr Jensen wiped the sweat from his brow one more time. The grandmother did not take notice of any of this. In her mind she was arranging the words her son had said in the last few minutes. That was a slow process because she was no longer used to making sense of what she heard. But she had time. Her eyes wandered down to the plate. The fish head lay motionless in the thin soup. It gazed up at the grandmother, she down at it. She ordered words and returned the dead head's gaze. Then suddenly she reached for Mavi.

The girl dropped the cutlery. She had just sat down. Across from her, Hans slurped his first spoonful of soup. The old woman grabbed Mavi by the wrists and pulled her forcefully toward her.

“They are coming across the sea!” the grandmother croaked. “They bring death from the sea.”

Mavi did not move. The old woman's fingernails pressed into her flesh and it hurt, but she was rigid with fright and did not resist.

“Mother!” cried Herr Jensen, aghast.

“The rot will come upon us, upon all of us,” the grandmother continued to scold. Her eyes grew large and alive. “And you, little beast, don't gawk! There is no place for you here. We are vessels of the Lord!”

Mavi began to sob.

“The end wants its sinners!”

The parents jumped up from their chairs at the same time.

Frau Jensen was first to her mother-in-law, to loosen her cramping hands from the girl's arms.

“Pig!” the old woman screeched, spitting in Mavi's face.

Herr Jensen yanked the girl away from his mother. Mavi clung to him until he had carried her out of the kitchen and placed her on his left knee in the hallway. He pressed Mavis' tear-stained face into his smoky shirt until eventually the sobbing stopped.

Silence fell in the kitchen.

Hans handed Mavi the sooty shard of glass. She then said something and they both laughed. Herr Jensen saw them whispering. He liked the picture. He didn't have to hide behind the curtain of the kitchen window. The children could not see him. They put their heads together, then said goodbye to each other. Hans turned on his heel and went back into the house, but Herr Jensen remained standing at the window. He followed Mavi with his eyes along the pebble path that led to the street. The girl hurried along, and sure enough, Herr Jensen noticed that the ears of wheat no longer looked golden in the sun. It would not be long before the eclipse began. Herr Jensen felt as if a veil was being drawn over the world. To be on the safe side, he rubbed his eyes and pushed the curtain a little further out of his field of vision. But the veil remained and in the distance Mavi slowly disappeared among the grain. It was almost as high as the girl. From the kitchen, Herr Jensen could already barely make her out in the field. Only her black curls gave her away in the distance. The summer wind blew those long strands around the narrow shoulders.

The man at the window felt a lump in his throat.

She looked lost out there. Herr Jensen wanted to get her back inside. He knew it, from one second to the next. He hated the thought of having to feed yet another mouth. And he had already told his wife more than once. But what was he supposed to do? Here he was now, standing at the kitchen window, while the color drained out of the world and this kid ran toward something she wouldn't understand. To make matters worse, his own mother had called her names and spat on her. He turned to the figure cowering at the table.

Herr Jensen was alone with her now. The old woman gazed blankly into the room, as she always did. But today she had spoken for the first time in four years. The scene at lunch had really happened. Herr Jensen's mind was racing. With a dull tugging in his stomach, it occurred to him that he had forgotten what his mother's voice sounded like.

When Herr Jensen turned back to the window, the curls were no longer visible.

Mavi hurried across the dusty road. If she ran, it was less than ten minutes to her mother's house, but it was too hot. She took breaks where she just playfully hopped instead of running. She could hardly wait. Every now and then she checked to make sure she wasn't smearing the soot. Mom would be amazed at what she had gotten herself.

Silence fell around her. At first Mavi didn't notice the difference, but after a few minutes she noticed that the crickets were silent. Only the wind in the corn could be heard. Then the wind stopped blowing, too, and absolute silence settled over the field, the road, and the child. Mavi stopped for a moment to listen to the silence. Her heart was beating up to her throat. Excitedly, she squinted her eyes and dared a look through the shard, up to the sun. At first she was blinded by the brightness, but it didn't hurt her eyes. So she peered into the sun longer, until she spotted a narrow streak that slid darkly across the light from the left side.

Mavi started to run. She could already spot the outline of the warped little house at the end of the path. She covered the rest of the distance without pausing, without hopping. She pushed open the garden gate with so much power that the dust on the dried wood rose into the air like pollen from a flower.

“Mama, Mama!” yelled Mavi as she stumbled up the stairs that were barely wider than she was. Breathless, she came to a stop on the threshold of the room with the bed. It was pitch black in there.

“Here we go, Mama...”

The words were little more than a whisper. Mavi hadn't expected the darkness, and from one moment to the next her energy was gone. She felt she had to be quiet.

“Mama?”

The bed and the shape on it were hardly visible. A blanket hung in front of the attic window, preventing daylight from entering.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” said a faint voice from the corner where the bed was. “The headache was very bad. I had to darken the window.”

“Is it better now, your head?” asked Mavi. She stepped closer to the bed.

“Yes...”

Mavi's mother extended a hand to her daughter. The girl took it and snuggled next to the woman. She didn't slip under the bedclothes with her because she was hot. The bed was under the slant of the roof and the stuffy summer heat was trapped in the room because the blanket hung in front of the window. It seemed almost warmer to Mavi in here than outside.

“Your arm is all cold,” Mavi whispered. She hadn't let go of her mother's arm and was now pressing her cheek against it.

“That's why I wrapped myself up good,” her mother explained in a brittle voice. “I'm sure I'll be warm in a minute. But I'm afraid I can't go out with you...”

The little body squirmed with tension. Mavi wanted to protest, but her mother forestalled the discussion by asking how it had been at the Jensen’s. That reminded Mavi of the shard. She pulled it out of the pocket of her dress.

“Herr Jensen made me a sunscreen!”

“Oh, let me see.”

Mavi held out the shard to her mother. The woman fumbled for it and praised the work. She didn't dare tell her daughter that she couldn't see it properly.

“Let's go outside,” Mavi asked impatiently.

“I can't, Mavi. But you can be my lookout, okay?”

The girl instantly jumped out of bed. She loved the lookout game. It seemed like forever since she and her mother had last played it.

“Up you go then, lookout!”

The rung ladder to the skylight was right next to the bed. It wasn't high, so Mavi hit her head on the ceiling after only a few steps. She unhooked a small hook and then braced her forehead against the hatch. When she also managed to pull her shoulders and hands up, the hatch flew open with a squeak, sending a wide, pale glow of light into the parlor.

Mavi carefully sat down next to the hatch on the wooden panels of the roof. The sun was at its zenith, only now it resembled the moon more. Through the sooty glass, Mavi saw a glowing crescent.

“Captain, I see the moon!”

“Aye aye...”

From below, her mother's soft voice barely made it up to the roof. She asked Mavi to describe to her exactly what she could see.

“There's a lot of black on the sun. And it's all round!” Mavi squinted her eyes. She wanted to report everything accurately—just like a good lookout.

“The sky is turning dark red, as if it were already evening.”

“Is it all covered, the sun?”

“Not yet, but certainly halfway!” came the call from the roof.

“Please tell me when the moon has eaten the sun completely. Will you do that, Mavi?”

“Yes, Mama!”

And Mavi did. Minute by minute she reported down to the parlor. She described a spot on the narrow crescent. She described the color of the trees behind the house and that no bird could be heard. Then soon the moon was so far in front of the sun that the remaining sliver of light was only half a thumb thick in front of the shard. Then only as thick as Mavi's little finger. Then it was time.

“Now, Mama, now!” the girl called from the roof. She heard her mother try to answer something, but after one syllable the voice from below broke off. Maybe it was just a cough.

“Mama?”

“...Yes, I hear you,” came the reply. “Look up, please.”

“I am.”

“Is it nice?”

Mavi nodded, absorbed in thought. She forgot for a second that her mother couldn't see it. The black disk in the sky had a crown of light. That narrow ring looked like it was dancing.

“Mavi?”

“Yes, Mama?”

“I imagine that I can do magic,” said the voice from the parlor after a pause. “And because I can do that, I conjure a piece of my heart up to you on the roof. It floats and is invisible.”

“Where is it?” giggled Mavi, amused.

“It's fluttered right under your nose. Can't you see it?”

“Yes I can, because I can do magic too.”

“That's good, very good.” The woman's voice had gotten even quieter. Mavi had to move closer to the hatch to even hear anything.

“Then you can use your magic power to blow the little heart up to the sun. The moon is like a keyhole, you know.”

“I’m blowing...” Mavi puffed out her cheeks.

“You have to take a really deep breath.”

“Done!” announced Mavi triumphantly. “The little heart has fluttered through the moon.”

“Thank you, sweetheart! You did well, and just in time. Because now this little part of me can stay up in the sun. All we have to do is wait for the moon to disappear on the other side.”

“I think it's starting already,” Mavi added hastily. It seemed to her that the crown was already sitting a bit crooked on the black disk.

“Then it won't be long before the little heart can't fall off.”

“Because it will be locked away, of course!”

“Because then it will be locked away...” came the echo from the parlor. “The moon is the best lock in the world. I'm so glad!”

“Why, Mama?”

“Because now a part of me travels with the sun every day. And from up there, I can always see you, no matter where you are. Or where I am.”

Mavi smiled.

“It's beautiful, you said, right?” her mother asked.

“Like a fairy tale.”

“Then don't stop looking at it. Stay up there. Do you promise? Promise me, Mavi...”

“Promise, Mama,” replied Mavi, who had no intention of getting off the roof.

“Because it will always be beautiful, in your memory. And I can always be with you from now on, my darling. I'm so happy!”

Mavi looked at the sky and didn't answer.

“Mavi, did you hear?”

“Yes, Mama! I think I can see the little heart.”

“...I'm with you...”

“The moon has already moved a little further! I don't think your heart can fall out anymore,“ Mavi laughed.

But she wanted to make sure. Mavi continued to look up at the sky. After a few minutes, her thumb fit between the moon and the edge of the sun. Her neck was already hurting a little, but she didn't move. Every now and then she reported her observations downstairs, getting no response to the brief interjections.

Finally, only a thin, dark band hung from the edge of the sun and Mavi could barely see through the soot without pain. Still, she bravely held out until the moon was gone.

“Mama, we did it!” she shouted loudly.

“Mama?”

As Mavi climbed off the roof, darkness had to yield to light for the second time that day. It rose above the house, the fields and all the trees. It remained only within the girl standing in the parlor.

1. Land Of Milk And Honey

Bosch heard the first raindrops. They knocked softly on the window of the small room. It was not long before the knocking became a steady drumming. Bosch stepped up to the window to look at the sky, but he could see nothing except a wall that he could have touched with his hand if the window had been open. When he had fastened the last button on his shirt, he turned back into the room.

The woman in the bed was asleep now. Bosch saw her skin shimmering in the darkness of the tiny room. While reaching for the coat on the floor in front of the bed, he paused. Her back fascinated him. It rose and fell before his eyes, looking like a torso without a head because the naked woman's black curls were being swallowed by the night. They lay like a nest of snakes across her neck and cheek.

Bosch liked her hair. Bobs bored him. In this city, every other woman on the street had that cut. The woman on the bed probably couldn't afford to follow fashion. But Bosch was sure she wouldn't let anyone touch her hair, even for money.

“It's cold outside,” said the voice under the hair. And a little more softly, “You can stay here.”

Surprised, the kneeling man backed away. She sounded wide awake, not at all sleepy. When he looked closer, two eyes flashed out from between the curls, seeming as dark as the snake's nest. Her gaze rested on his soiled coat.

“...I don't mind,” the woman added in a whisper. Bosch noticed her insecurity and regained his composure. He stood up to put on his coat. Over the only chair in the room he also found his tie. He tucked it into one of his pockets and was halfway out the door before he answered.

“Go to sleep,” Bosch said as he pushed the door handle.

The stairwell reeked of urine, ashes and smoke. Bosch exited the last backyard through the gate to the other yards. Out in the street, he flipped up the collar of his coat. He crossed the narrow alley, walked to its end, then looked for a street sign. He found one that read Elsässer Straße. There was still bustle here, despite the time of night and the rain. Bosch looked around before deciding on a direction.

On his way down the street, two carts overtook him. Their wagon wheels left watery trails in the slush. The rain made the remnants of the last snow shrink even further. Bosch walked through a landscape of small puddles in the slush. Where the cobblestones were bare, they shone in the light of the gas lanterns.

The closer he got to Friedrichstraße, the brighter it got between the houses. Bosch turned into the wide street that ran like a pulsating vein from the Scheunenviertel southward through the center of the city. Mingling with the carts here were a handful of limousines. People on the sidewalk craned their necks to watch them. In front of Bosch, one of the cars stopped so that three figures could squeeze out of it: first a fat man in a top hat, then a skinny blonde, and finally a woman in mink. In passing, Bosch noticed that the latter was just as scrawny as the blonde and, what's more, the spitting image of her. A crowd of people gathered around the fat man and his companions, rushing from the establishment across the street and from dark doorways on both sides. The former kowtowed, the latter begged. Completely unimpressed, the twins hooked themselves under the arms of the top hat wearer. The kowtowing people cleared the way for the triumvirate, as they entered the establishment, while Bosch squeezed his way through the crowd. A paperboy tried, with little success, to outdo the hubbub vocally. In shrill tones, he alternately declared that Lenin was to be embalmed, that the International Sports Week had been ceremoniously opened, and that a flying object over Buenos Aires had caused mass panic.

Bosch passed the old market hall, above whose entrance were now emblazoned the titles of theatrical performances. Directly behind it, the Weidendammer Bridge spanned the Spree River. Even in the rain, it was still frozen over. A drunk clung clumsily to the railing. The slippery ground was too much of a challenge to him. Astonished, he watched Bosch, who passed him with a sure step, while he himself almost broke his legs.

Behind the bridge, Bosch headed straight for the Friedrichstraße train station.  Under the station bridge, men with broken noses whispered to him; half a dozen alley cats proclaimed different variations of the same offer. As soon as Bosch reached the boulevard Unter den Linden, any whispered suggestions remained behind. The intersection with the boulevard could have been an invisible border, for the shady characters had disappeared entirely.

From here on, Bosch didn't need to check his route. He turned right and crossed the street. Just before he reached Pariser Platz with the Brandenburg Gate, he swerved into Wilhelmstraße, and entered the Adlon Hotel.

The baroque lobby was flooded with glistening light. Bosch walked unerringly through the huge entrance area without glancing at a single soul. The reverse was not true, on the contrary. The concierge flinched behind the massive reception desk when he saw Bosch hurrying across the carpet. He gestured hastily in the direction of some bellboys, one of whom looked up submissively at Bosch. He got the latter’s dirty coat thrown to him, along with a toneless request to fix it. In return, the man, who now wore only his unadorned suit without a tie, did not even slow his pace, but continued to walk directly into one of the elevators that had been opened for him.

At the top floor, Bosch exited the elevator. He was greeted by a pale tuxedoed man who excitedly accompanied him down the hall like a faithful dog. The pale man carried a tiny silver tray in one hand, on which lay a stack of letters. With terse words, he singled out the most important invitations, until the two men stopped in front of the double door of a suite. Bosch took the letters from the tray and opened the door. The pale man bowed eagerly, but could not bring himself to say what else he had wanted to tell his guest. Before he could muster the courage to try again, the door was slammed in his face.

Every room in the suite was as large as the backyards Bosch had left half an hour ago. Even the marble bathroom he was about to visit. Halfway there, though, he paused, in the middle of a good dozen easels and canvases. They separated the drawing room from the bedroom like a fence.

He was not alone.

The Comtessa regarded Bosch in this forest of his half-finished works; he eyed the naked woman on the bed expressionlessly. This lack of surprise, or at least shock, annoyed the Comtessa. However, she instantly regained her composure and took the lead. Emphatically and slowly, she rubbed her thighs, finally straightening up enough to rest her elbows on the pillows. She addressed Bosch in German, unaware that he could have answered her in perfect Italian.

“Paint me, Herr Bosch!” And using the words she had rehearsed before he arrived, she added, “Please, whenever you want.”

Silence.

For a moment the Comtessa was not sure what the tall man at the foot of the bed would do. He eyed her, from where he stood, without so much as a twitch on his face. Finally, he took off his jacket and turned his back to her.

With every move he now made, the Comtessa's nervousness gave way to the feeling she had hoped for. The arguably greatest artist of his time would paint her! She could hardly fathom her luck.

Bosch arranged paints in front of the three easels closest to the bed. There were still paintings on them that the Comtessa had looked at with fascination while she waited for Bosch. Each of them triggered a flood of memories in her, although why was beyond her. The canvas to her left showed a jumble of dozens of colors—and yet the Comtessa was sure she saw a blaze and felt heat. She glanced over to the easel in the center, where she recognized two kissing figures entwined, tears streaming down their cheeks. On the far right, a deep blue filled the third canvas. Nothing else was on it and yet the Comtessa looked down into a sea.

She was quite sure of it.

Bosch replaced the sea image with a blank canvas. With casual quick hand movements he primed the surface. The Comtessa studied his motionless face. It looked so even, almost unnaturally smooth. As if he had no beard growth at all. Every muscle was visible beneath the skin.

Bosch set to work on the portrait. The primer hadn't even begun to dry, but he still drew rough brushstrokes across the canvas. The fresh paint immediately formed thin rivulets. Bosch barely looked, neither at the canvas nor did he bother to study the Comtessa. He almost looked like he was just imitating a real painter. Every movement looked as light as a feather. Nevertheless, before the eyes of the rich woman on the bed, a likeness of herself emerged. It seemed as if Bosch only half painted her with precisely placed hand strokes, while some color simply trickled into place as if by magic. The Comtessa held her breath. Bosch was a master! Just like everyone said. Every word she had heard about him was true.

With this certainty, she leaned back a little further on her elbows. She could hear the dabbing and fine wiping of the brush on the canvas. She heard nothing from Bosch. The Comtessa closed her eyes and threw her head backwards.

She would savor every second with this genius.

2. Through Alleys

The stairs to the gallery overflowed with people. Bosch was driven upstairs by the gentlemen who were talking animatedly to him. On one, medals were clattering, but only Bosch heard it. Another had been introduced to him as an industrialist, a third was acquainted with the clattering man, and judging by the numerous heads that turned to look at him, also a well-known actor. All three whipped up roaring laughter in turn. The ladies who accompanied them acted like a choir. Each punch line ricocheted off them, back into the hall, as hysterical laughter.

Up on the gallery, the haze of cigars hung like mist around hundreds of faces. Every few feet, waiters with chiseled features shot out of the haze to offer Bosch cigars or champagne. He ignored them all. While his companions fell into the arms of other men, only to introduce them to Bosch a moment later, he indifferently surveyed the crowd in the hall. He made no effort to engage the fake or the real nobility in conversation. They shouted things in his ear, laughed, and in turn were beckoned by other little groups. Bosch didn't have to pay attention. He smiled and greeted. Anyone watching him had to conclude that within a few minutes half the upper floor had made an entrance to him. The stream of people fed to him by the trio of his companions did not stop. Behind snifters of cognac, couples whispered excitedly to each other that it was undoubtedly the famous painter of whom so much had been heard in their circles.

“Who is that?” asked Bosch abruptly of the actor next to him. A soap manufacturer who was about to introduce himself to the painter thereupon broke off in mid-sentence and piquedly turned to another conversation partner. Bosch had instantly and unmistakably stopped listening to him as soon as he noticed the woman in the black suit in the crowd. She was paying attention to an egg-shaped man with a monocle, or at least she pretended to. She was obviously as bored with the conversation as Bosch was with the people around him.

Amelia von Weyerau would be her name, the actor prompted. And that he was surprised to see her here. Von Weyerau had made herself scarce lately. She would rarely be at the big balls anymore. It was a compliment for every host if she showed up. Wherever she did appear, she attracted the tailcoats like light attracts moths.

“Filthy rich, generous, modern,” the actor summed up succinctly. He emphasized each of the three words with outstretched fingers.

Bosch excused himself from the group and headed straight for Amelia von Weyerau. He squeezed through the tightly packed crowd. The closer he got to Amelia, the more he noticed how colorless the bustle around him suddenly seemed. Hunched backs hung in the dark suits and costumes, as if the very fabric on the skin of the ball guests weighed them down. Amelia von Weyerau, on the other hand, stood in the room like a taut bow: hands on hips, back proudly arched. That's why she wore her slender chin a little higher than everyone else, without making an effort. Her hair fell in two long waves just below the chin. At the nape of her neck it was shorter. Bosch had also seen this version of the bob many times before. However, on the woman in the suit, it looked unexpectedly elegant to him.

“Well, well, well, there really is a man behind all this talk!” said Amelia von Weyerau to Bosch. They were suddenly alone between the small groups, for the egg-shaped man with the monocle had received a hearty laugh from the Countess, served with her amicable hand on his arm. Then he had left without another word and smiling.

“Is that why you came? Because of me?” asked Bosch. “I heard that this sort of thing actually bores you.”

“This sort of thing?”

Bosch spread his arms and shrugged.

“Another reception in a city that seems to consist of nothing but rocks and receptions,” he added. “I hope you didn't come just for a new name.”

“What would be so bad about that? After all, it's your name. Feel flattered.”

“No...” Bosch shook his head.

“Na na na,” Amelia corrected him, “that wasn't a question.”

Bosch felt the sudden warmth of her index finger, which she had placed forbiddingly on his lips.

“Be flattered, Bosch,” the countess repeated.

For a moment the two stood wordlessly. Bosch obeyed and waited for Amelia to take her finger off his lips. With him, several ladies waited, watching the scene as surreptitiously as they could from the puffing and toasting groups around them. Glances were exchanged, increasingly more and increasingly faster, the longer the finger rested on the painter's mouth. Long seconds passed, during which Bosch and the Countess became a still life for their audience.

Bosch felt the gazes that rested on him—and they irritated him. Or rather, it irritated him that he noticed them. He could not remember the last time he had felt observed. What irritated him infinitely more, however, was the smell of the finger. There was nothing about it that he knew, but the scent changed Bosch's perception of the woman: he didn't understand her — not the way he always understood the girl from the backyard, the Comtessa, or anyone else, whether from little things on their skin or a hidden glance.

He was overcome with the urge to taste the finger, but Amelia released it from his lips at the exact moment he thrust the tip of his tongue out from between his teeth. Although the countess could not have seen it, he felt childish.

“This is how commanders must muster their armies,” Amelia remarked with a grin.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You made such a serious face just now.” And now the Countess held back a laugh, then pulled herself together and mimicked Bosch with pressed lips and furrowed brow.

“As if they were carrying heavily the weight of the world, ...like a general. I hope I'm embarrassing you?”

“Why do you hope that?”

“Well, either that or you've just been thinking of something else entirely. And that would be rude, of course. We're at a reception here, after all. I expect undivided attention.”

“You have it,” Bosch replied.

He took a step back to bow abruptly to the countess with the sweeping gestures of a dramatic actor. In the puffing and toasting groups, one or two ladies choked on their champagne; one or two gentlemen coughed up an unplanned cloud of smoke. Meanwhile, Amelia von Weyerau was beaming all over her face. She returned Bosch's compliment with an accomplished curtsy and then adjusted the bow tie around her neck, even though it didn't need it.

“And I'm afraid I'm not a commander,” Bosch continued.

“Of course you are,” the Countess objected, more firmly than before. She took Bosch's hands in hers. “Or do you mean to tell me that you are an artist?”

“Obviously you know exactly who I am, after all.”

“That's not an answer.”

“I can paint you. Judge then,” Bosch suggested.

Now Amelia made no effort to suppress a laugh.

“You're not painting me, sir,” she replied, still holding his hands. “You're coming with me.”

“Where to?”

“Away from here. Perhaps you have indeed seen nothing but stones of Berlin so far—which would be unfortunate. It would be altogether irresponsible, however, if it remained so.”

The little groups reshuffled, the conversations repeated themselves. The fact that Weyerau and Bosch, ...exactly, the Bosch, had left the Adlon together was all too readily noticed in passing. Outside, the two people got into a bulky car that carried a yards-long engine block in front of it. The Countess gave instructions to her chauffeur, whereupon he nodded formally and set the monstrous limousine in motion.

The ride passed quickly and without a word. Every now and then, Bosch glanced over at the countess. In the semi-darkness of the car, her face was only visible when the glow of a streetlight briefly fell through the side windows. In these moments, Bosch recognized in her face that she enjoyed keeping him in the dark. So he played along. And kept silent.

They left the avenues of the Tiergarten. A few blocks later, the driver braked under the lights of Breitscheidplatz. He stopped in front of a corner house whose doors flew open and shut nonstop. Like bees, men of all ages swarmed inside. While Bosch was still watching the hustle and bustle from the car's window, the chauffeur was already pulling open the door and Amelia pushed him out onto the curb. She whispered a few words to her driver that Bosch could not hear. The man's expression, however, spoke volumes. He was not amused, though he complied instantly: he clicked the heels of his polished shoes together.

Amelia clasped Bosch's hand and led him through the entrance of the corner house, on whose brightly shining panes of frosted glass was written in fine letters Romanisches Café.

Bosch had heard of it. At the receptions of the high society, people liked to mock the café and its guests. Bosch did not understand why. The mockers swore across the board that they would never go to the ‘Romanisches’. And yet they talked about it again and again. For his noble companion, this strange and flaunted disapproval obviously did not apply. Amelia entered the huge hall like a queen: she dragged Bosch behind her, constantly blowing hand kisses on all sides. The path through the laughing crowd vying to be heard was difficult, but short. The countess pulled Bosch confidently up a spiral staircase that he hadn't noticed in the tumult. Here, too, there were other people squeezing their way up and down the steps. Bosch was unaware that the chaotic traffic on the stairs was by no means random, but halfway up the staircase, the rafters gave him a panoramic view of the so-called non-swimmers' pool.

Down there, where they had come in, penniless artists and far-traveled students had been clinging to a cold coffee or a stale beer for hours. If Bosch had been familiar with the city's political or literary scene, he would have noticed one or two highly acclaimed faces at the tables. Around those the admirers as well as the envious piled up in particular. The real greats of the place, however, were to be found above the non-swimmer's pool. Here, on the second floor, sat the established and the sophisticated gems of Berlin. And here they also paid generously, unlike downstairs.

No one had taken offense at the fact that Bosch was up here. It would have sufficed that he was clearly Amelia's companion. Beyond that, however, he was also recognized here, even though he had never set foot in this part of town. Had neither been the case, it would have been subtly but unmistakably made clear to the stranger that he was on the wrong floor. Not a week went by without guests of the non-swimmers' pool trying their hand at the stairs under the sway of a shot of liquor. The influential figures up there promised a big break, or at least an allowance that kept one from starving to death. But the stairs had their unwritten laws. Anyone who didn't belong upstairs and tried anyway could no longer show his face in the Romanisches.

At the top, Bosch let his eyes wander over the small sea of fumes, heads, and cigarettes below. Suddenly, he thought he heard his name. In the commotion of the café, however, he could barely make out his own word. But he heard it a second time, and this time he noticed the man with flaming red hair looking up at him from the non-swimmers. The man was young, even for this joint full of students, but he exuded a determination that amazed Bosch even in the noise and at this distance. Without question, the fiery red wanted something from him. Bosch eyed him, but was brusquely interrupted by Amelia. She grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the railing. He had to introduce himself to various of her artist friends. The ones who reacted the most enthusiastically he immediately knew to be painters. Someone in the circle, without further ado, popped a bottle of champagne. Bosch was the only one to turn down one of the offered glasses.

In the corners of the floor, people puffed and argued. In the center of the room, a dozen or so men crowded around a table. When the drinking party surrounding Amelia loudly toasted each other, they earned punishing looks. Silence was requested, but this in no way prevented the champagne from flowing. An hour later, Bosch was also standing at this table, silently contemplating what was creating the considerably more serious mood there. Two gray-haired men were playing chess. They sat like statues, and when they ran their hands thoughtfully over the chessboard, it reminded the painter of unhurried turtles. One of them was a Grandmaster. Someone behind Bosch had said so in a whisper. In fact, Bosch learned a lot from the constant murmurs and hushed comments of the onlookers: by now he knew that the gray-haired man with the enormous mustache would win. He was the Grandmaster. A gaunt figure whose pantaloons looked like riding breeches that were far too wide. Even when seated, they protruded far beyond the chair on either side. The oversized mustache looked to Bosch like a necessary optical counterweight to it. The fact that the Grandmaster's facial expressions were almost completely hidden behind it was certainly no disadvantage to him and his play.

The match ended with roaring cheers. The Grandmaster ran his hand through his moustache as if he were stroking a cat on his face. He showed no more emotion than that, apart from the involuntary wobbling of his upper body, which was due to the numerous appreciative pats on the back from the audience. Bosch did not applaud, but studied the last move of the game that remained on the shaking board. He barely noticed Amelia, who pulled herself up to him by his upper arm to give him a whisper.

“And now you, Herr Künstler!” she gasped to Bosch.

“I don’t play,” he retorted, but the Countess didn't care. She had hardly waited for the answer, and shot straight at the Grandmaster. He would have to play with Bosch, by all means. And as a favor to her.

So, as a favor to her, he did.

The Grandmaster generally liked to be begged. To please the countess, he enriched each of his moves with extensive explanations, some of which were intended to make the onlookers laugh and some to make them think. The audience responded to the interludes as intended. While Bosch quietly studied the table, his opponent planted the tried-and-true punchlines with as much precision as the wooden pieces he calmly moved around the chessboard. He enjoyed these moments of playfulness. In numerous cafés between Moscow, Zagreb and Bratislava, he had perfected his performances in recent years. During travel breaks in his tournament schedule, he was able to give himself and his ego the relaxation they needed with this harmless routine.

“Check...,” muttered a spectator standing behind Bosch.

Seeing that more spectators were staring at him promptly after the incredulous remark, Bosch repeated the word, louder than before. This was enough to make the heads of all the spectators turn in the same direction. Everyone fixed their gaze on the Grandmaster. He seemed to shrink behind his mustache into a single connected fold of thought. In his head he sorted out all the moves made, cleared them of his anecdotes and explanations, but even after breaking the game down into its components, he couldn't find the mistake. In disbelief, he looked up from the chessboard, into the face of the painter. He looked for a clue in Bosch's eyes, for an admission of a joke. But the Grandmaster could see nothing at all in them. And while he was still puzzling over how his adversary could react so inconceivably apathetic to this inconceivable situation, his arm sprang forward. He made a move without knowing exactly what he was doing. His intuition would have to save him. He could rely on it.

Bosch glanced only briefly at the chessboard. Then he moved.

“Check!” the prompter called behind him, this time in a firm voice. “...And mate!”

After the turmoil around the small table had died down a bit, Amelia was able to reach out to Bosch. She took him by the hand and made her way to the stairs, dragging the painter behind her. The countess's secret admirers, of whom there were a quite a few on the upper floor, obediently made way for her.

The two reached the first floor while coasters rained in salute from above. The non-swimmers' pool had taken note that something unusual had happened upstairs. All eyes were on the couple, who fled the café without a word or paying attention to anyone. Only on the sidewalk did the Countess stop.

“You have talent,” Amelia confessed, while Bosch put her coat on her. And then, in a seriousness Bosch was not usually confronted with in situations where he was giving the cavalier:

“Hold still now.”

Bosch paused. His fingers were still in the countess's collar fur. Between his hands, she craned her neck and fixated his surprised face. He had expected a dreamy or at least puzzled look, but found nothing of the sort. Amelia's eyes seemed cold. He felt pierced for no reason and didn't like the feeling. He prepared to say something.

“Shut up!” she thwarted his attempt. But even though Bosch complied and remained silent, her expression had already changed, from one second to the next. It no longer felt uncomfortable, Bosch noted. As they both stood silently in the cold outside the Romanisches Café, Amelia's entire face began to beam. She smiled at the tall man with an almost childlike affection that was as distinct as day and night from the expressionlessness she had shown earlier.

“I always wanted to see someone play like that!” she finally said.

“You like chess?” asked Bosch.

“No,” Amelia blurted out. She was laughing at the top of her lungs and hugged Bosch. “And I bet you don't either.

The opportunity to explain himself slipped away. Whereas a moment ago the Countess was holding him around his neck, now she was tugging at him, dragging him behind her like a donkey that needed to be put on the right path. The clock tower of the Memorial Church showed that it was now almost midnight. The Countess steered Bosch away from the big square. They would meet friends, she promised. As young as the night was, he probably had nothing better to do. Bosch affirmed this, knowing full well that his companion would not have accepted any other answer.

Amused, he soon realized that he could no longer follow the numerous detours through the side streets. They had been on the road for several minutes before he understood that they would not be switching to a vehicle. The countess hurried ahead, on foot and in high spirits.

Bosch wondered if he was imagining it, or if the streets were actually getting narrower and blacker from corner to corner. He looked for streetlights, but in effect, there were hardly any in the neighborhood. Neither were there any night-walkers. Apart from a few suspicious figures flitting through the shadows, the sidewalks were deserted. Amelia led Bosch on unperturbed. She did not slow her brisk pace, even though they had both been half-running through the alleys of this quarter for almost half an hour. He was by no means out of breath, however, and neither was his companion.

The countess stopped in front of an ashen apartment building. The facade was no different from the others in the narrow canyon of houses. Bosch could not have imagined how Amelia would be able to tell that they were in the right place. House numbers were nowhere to be seen.

“Look down, Herr Maler,” said the Countess. And with a finger she pointed to a steep, unlit cellar staircase that dropped into the ground like a shaft. At the bottom of the stone steps, rainwater pooled ankle-high in front of an iron door. Amelia didn't waste much time explaining. She motioned Bosch to follow her down.

3. Gangs

Beyond the courtyard gate, the world seemed to be on fire. Stepping into the curtain of glistening light that hung in front of the street, Mavi had to shield her eyes with her hands. She had sensed by the milky glow in the back yards that it had to be a beautiful day. She couldn't see it, because real daylight hardly ever made it down to the ground between the towering back houses. The courtyards were far too small for that, so Mavi still carried the lightlessness of her parlor in her eyes before she reached the sidewalk. Now she stopped, closed her eyelids, and looked up at the sun. She enjoyed the warm rays on her skin. This morning was the first that felt like spring. It was still in the depths of winter, but so brightly and powerfully did the sun shine that Mavi immediately remembered spring.

She heard countless heels clacking and was jerked out of her daydream by the sound. She had to go to work. So she opened her eyes, blinking away the pain. Slowly she could make out the outlines of people hurrying. She was about to start moving, but a tall man stepped in her way.

“I had hoped to have been at least a bit memorable to you,” Bosch said.

“I guess I overestimated myself.”

Mavi blinked even more hastily. And then she recognized the face she hadn't expected to see again.

“No, no,” she explained, caught off guard. “It's just the sun. I'm half blind.”

“Better?” Bosch formed a triangle with his hands and held it high above the much smaller woman's head to provide shade.

“I'm fine,” she acknowledged the gesture curtly. Mavi pushed Bosch's arms aside. Only now could she see him fully. He was wore a suit that actually looked too expensive for him. But it undoubtedly suited him, even if at first glance the man in front of her now didn't have much in common with the casual acquaintance of a few nights ago.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“It's a nice morning,” he quipped, “and I thought I'd see if you were home.”

“Don't you have work to do?”

“Not right now,” Bosch deflected.

“I do. And I really have to go now,” Mavi squeezed out with indecision.

“Then let me walk you. Let's go together.”

They were silent for a while. Mavi walked with unsteady steps because the silence made her uncomfortable. Beside her, her companion seemed giantlike. Unlike her, however, he seemed comfortable with this quiet twosome walk. She looked into his satisfied face and involuntarily straightened up. His pride affected her posture. She blamed it on the springtime power of the sun that she found her lover's unexpected visit less strange with each step. She took the time to study his profile now, and had fun doing it. His hairless chin evoked memories of gentle pressure on her neck. A scent rose to her nose that she immediately recognized as his, although she would not have been able to describe what Bosch smelled like. She took a deep breath and linked arms with her companion without thinking about it.

“It's not far. Down the street and to the left,” she broke the silence.

“What do you do?” asked Bosch.

“I'm sewing,” Mavi explained. And with the fingertips of her hooked-under arm, she sought the back of Bosch's hand. She ran it raspingly over his skin.

“Hard as a pot holder!” she laughed. “Didn't you notice? Don't lie!”

“I guess I should have,” he replied simply. “But I didn't, and that's why you're a liar. The fine ladies at the Adlon couldn't feel softer.”

Mavi blushed. She wanted to retort and ask what he could possibly know about the fine ladies at the Adlon, but a booming shout beat her to it. It echoed back and forth between the walls like the barking of a foul-tempered dog.

“Noblebrush, oye!”

Bosch stopped. Only slowly did it dawn on Mavi that he felt addressed by the barking. This realization also took a little time to sink in because Mavi knew exactly who it was that had called out to her companion. Every child knew him, and knew to give the beefy guy a wide berth. Otto Jülich was leaning against the corner of the house at the intersection in front of the two strollers. It couldn't possibly be that this guy was referring to Bosch by his call. But 'Oxen-Otto', as everyone called him, was indeed looking determinedly over at them.

Bosch freed his arm from Mavi's grip. Once they had caught up to Oxen-Otto, Bosch pushed Mavi onward, but stopped himself.

“Just a second, please...” he whispered to her with a smile.

Mavi walked a few steps further. Then she turned around and saw the two men talking. Bosch was no longer smiling, but there was no fear in his face either. The two seemed to know each other. This puzzled Mavi. Oxen-Otto had his reputation, and she had diligently avoided finding out if he lived up to it until now. The rude older man had gotten the nickname because he had once been beaten up by the police ...while trying to push a safe out the window. Otto was not a safebreaker himself, he lacked the dexterity for that. He didn't excel as a pimp either, otherwise Mavi would have taken notice of him, since he was always hanging about in the streets of her neighborhood. No, Oxen-Otto used his muscles. That night, to which he owed his peculiar title, Otto was only a lookout for two safebreakers who were tampering with a safe. Unfortunately for them, Otto kept an eye out on the street, but four policemen had been in the building for hours, because the owner of the store had smelled a rat. So while the safebreakers were just about to get to work on the safe, the guardians of the law stormed the business premises with some ruckus. Otto heard the noise and the curses from the second floor, and thought he had made a mistake. Not wanting to let that stand, he stormed up the stairwell instead of making a run for it. In the darkness, he descended on the policemen completely unexpected and on a rampage. This allowed the safebreakers to seize the moment and flee into the stairwell. Meanwhile, upstairs, Otto grabbed the safe standing by the window. He decided without further ado to lift it and tilt it out of the closed window.

One of the policemen immediately chased after the fugitives, but the other three preferred to vent their anger over the ambush at Otto. They drew their batons and let them rain down on the furious man. He, however, continued to brace himself against the safe until the window burst open, splintering. The shards of glass tinkled onto the pavement of the street, where the safebreakers were running. And as stoically as an ox under its yoke, Otto continued to push against the safe, seemingly unimpressed by the blows of the three policemen. In actual fact, however, they broke several of his ribs, a forearm, and two back vertebrae cracked open like nuts as a result of this interlude. One particularly desperate blow also caused him to lose his hearing completely on one side—but he didn't notice all that until later. The beating didn't bother him until the safe toppled over the windowsill with a squeak. In a final show of strength, Otto lifted the iron cabinet off balance, then he fought back.

After he had thrown the first policeman directly after the safe, the second one instantly took to his heels. Otto pushed the third one away from him, while the latter—completely tired from the many blows—merely threatened powerlessly with his baton. Otto knocked him down with a disdainful grunt. He allowed himself the next few minutes to trample on the man, snorting like an animal.

While still at the police station, the petty criminals in attendance christened him Oxen-Otto because of this incident. And the name stuck. Allegedly, the whole affair was recorded in detail in the police report, at least until the case was kept secret because some officers felt there was too great a risk of the police making fools of themselves with stories like this one. Either way, Otto disappeared in jail for a few years. When he returned to the barn district, everyone just referred to him as Oxen-Otto.

“What do you want?”, demanded Bosch.

“Easy there, my boy!” the man growled back in amusement. Above his already partially toothless grin, greaseless wrinkles formed on what undoubtedly had to be the most battered nose in town. It wasn't just crooked, but had been reshaped over time into a perfect 'S' by the collaborative architectonics of three biographically interesting bone fractures. A schoolchild could not have put the letter more neatly on paper using this template. How Otto's breaths navigated the tight curves of the ‘S’nose on the way to the throat at all would have been worth a look to some of the capital's anatomists. After all, the short-shaven redhead could breathe exceptionally well: you could recognize Otto from a distance by his phenomenal chest. He tended to inflate it like a square balloon when he was picking on someone, or even when he was laughing out loud and stealing the morning edition from a paperboy. What other men over the age of fifty carried around as a beer belly, Otto carried one level higher in terms of bulk. With this rib cage, he resembled an upturned buoy, which ought to be swaying with every step he took. As did the creaky singsong into which Otto basically wrapped his words.

“There's this guy,” Otto continued. “Some real noble brush like you are.”

Bosch didn't react, he just looked at his counterpart, waiting. Otto already knew the painter's habit of not speaking until he was asked a question. So he briefly lifted the greasy slider cap on his head, ran his fingers once through the grayish stubble on his skull and cheeks, and got down to business.

“Must be English or A Yank, chats like that anyway. Quite a fancy one!” sneered Otto. “Do you know him?”

“There are as many painters here as there are pickpockets.”

“But not this one,” Otto replied. “Wears the Weltschmerz on his face, so that the fine ladies immediately get heart flutters. Sounds right up your alley!”

“What do you want from me, I asked.”

“I want something from him, believe me. So, do you know anyone like that?”

“No,” Bosch replied, bored, and turned away.

“Begged himself a nice chunk of money and won't remember it at all.”

Oxen-Otto calmly held the much taller man back by the arm, whereupon the latter turned around once more.

“It would be honorable if you'd let me hear from you. You artists do run into each other sooner or later, don't you?”

“...anything else?” interrupted Bosch.

“This,” murmured Otto with a smile. From between the fingers of the hand with which he had kept the painter from leaving during the last exchange of words, a slip of paper gleamed white. With his eyes, he silently pointed it out to Bosch.

“Good address for fine people,” Otto acknowledged the hand gesture with which Bosch slipped the note unseen into the pocket of his jacket.

Mavi did not link arms again after Bosch rejoined her. They barely exchanged a word the rest of the way. When it seemed certain to her that Bosch would not comment on the interlude of his own accord, she asked him about it anyway.

“What's your business with him?”

“With that man back there?”

“Oxen-Otto.”

“I didn't know that was his name,” Bosch returned, so amused that Mavi believed him. “He didn't sell me oxen...”

“He doesn't sell anything, but takes what he needs.”

“Well, you can't always take, don't you think?”, Bosch caught the cold replication. “Every now and then most people are nice, even if it's in exchange for bread and a handshake.”

Across the street, a courtyard gate sucked in dozens of women like a brick maw. Because this familiar image commanded her like a silent work signal to turn into the sewing shop here as well, Mavi didn't notice that Bosch had said something but had by no means answered her question.

“We're there?” asked Bosch in turn.

“Yes. I have to go now.”

Mavi was so much shorter than the tall painter that the movement reminded her of a crane as he bent toward her neck. She thought he was going to kiss her. Instead, he only whispered softly in her ear, which she found no less inappropriate outside the courtyard gate of her work.

“Thank you for the walk...”

“What are you doing?” she interrupted.

“What do you mean?”

“Picking me up for a walk in the sun in the morning, but escaping into pissing rain at night rather than stay in my bed!”

For a blink, Bosch's charming smile was caught as if in a vice. He froze in surprise, just as he had at the foot of the bed where Bosch had suspected a sleeping woman behind the curly locks and had been wrong. Today he composed himself faster.

“You surprise me,” he explained to himself.

“With what?”

Mavi didn't understand the remark.

“With what you say. What you do.”

“I didn’t do a thing.”

“You don't notice.”

Mavi eyed the painter. The maw to the courtyard, across the street, was done sucking in women. Only a few still ran through the arch. One of the last emerged from behind the whispering couple and swept Mavi along with her. Bosch was left smiling on the curb, while the one who was running managed to giggle and ask Mavi where she got it before she even got to the archway.

4. Crests Of Silver

In addition to an address, the white piece of paper also contained a specific time and a word that Bosch had not been able to decipher at first glance. Whoever had written down the few details had either been in a hurry or had concealed deficient writing skills by scribbling wildly. Now the sprawling lines of lead, along with the rest of the paper, were riding in a cab back to the Hotel Adlon. Bosch had left the piece of paper on the back seat of the car when the chauffeur dropped him off near Alexanderplatz as requested. There were not many other people in the city who had received the information written on the paper in the last few days. None of them would have left the white note to its fate as carelessly as Bosch. The artist now walked from Alexanderplatz in the direction of the railroad station Schlesischer Bahnhof, without giving a thought to who may or may not make sense of the crumpled paper.

He ignored the beggars who reached for him with their hands and words. He didn't care about the looks of the pickpockets who were sizing him up, none of whom finally got around to relieving the calmly striding man of his wallet. Bosch continued unmolested toward the address he had been given. It was just after ten, the wind was whistling unpleasantly along the roadsides.

“Ozean,” Bosch replied to the question posed to him by the tiny woman at the coat check: if he didn't have some change for her, and a good word. He had the change. And the word he had deciphered from the scribbled lines on the note seemed good enough. As casually as the question about it had come—in the same sweep with which Bosch's coat was pulled from the counter—so casually now ensued a wish that hehave a nice evening. Then the dress lady perched back on her stool behind the counter and stared into the distance. Bosch realized at first glance that there was little casualness in this process. Rather, the hunched woman was doing her part to keep physical trouble to a minimum, for in a cubbyhole across the hall, a bald man kept a watchful eye on the dressing room. He could look the old woman on the stool straight in the eye. No doubt the bald man was not alone in the small room. Anyone who didn't have the good word ready at the checkroom would just as undoubtedly get acquainted with all the occupants of the cubbyhole.

Beyond a sliding door that looked like it was made of hard wood and weighed a ton, a corridor led through what looked more like the hallway of a government office than a ballroom. Here Bosch was the only guest in sight. He glanced back at the checkroom, where, however, no one seemed to care about his whereabouts anymore, neither the cowering old woman nor the occupants of the caboose. So he followed the corridor. There were doors on both sides, all unlabeled. There were no doorbells, nor were there any nameplates. A first bend at the supposed end of the corridor led Bosch to the right, a second one in the opposite direction. Here, a beefy guy who seemed to be about to burst out of his double-breasted suit awaited him. He had positioned himself like a sentry in front of one of the featureless doors. As soon as Bosch reached him, the bullish man knocked four times on the door, which then opened from the inside. With a friendly gesture, Bosch was ushered right in.

Carpets on the floor, mirrors on the walls and small brass sconces left no doubt that Bosch was in an apartment.

“Please, just straight ahead...,” explained the man who had opened the door. His twin-breasted suit revealed that he was a customer of the same tailor as his counterpart in the corridor.

The directions, as concise as they were unambiguous, led Bosch past a dark kitchen to the end of the apartment hallway. Here, daylight fell from an adjoining room. The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was not turned on, or it was broken. The brilliant light was produced by two scorching construction site lamps in the corners of the room. Opposite the door hung a wide curtain, which two more double-rowers pulled open without comment as Bosch appeared in the doorway. Behind it showed an unadorned wall whose only hole was not a window but a man-high breach in the wall. That it only provisionally held the function of an entrance was evident from the half bricks still protruding into the passageway all around the opening, like grinder's teeth in a set of dentures. Bosch stepped over a plank through the not quite level passage and found himself behind the wall in a huge hall.

Here Bosch was anything but alone. Like an automobile turning out of an alley into the flow of traffic on a busy street, Bosch had entered a pillared circular walkway that wrapped around the hall downstairs. Smoke clouds, violin sounds, and the rumbling whisper of hundreds of voices signaled that he had found the Felicita and that the white note had not lied.

The walkway was so wide that the walls were half in the shadows. So Bosch could not see how, on the other sides of the square halls, newcomers like himself emerged suddenly from the walls here and there. Ladies in elegant gowns and absurd hats, men in uniform black tails that made them look like soldiers of some army with pocket watches and pocket squares. Among them were safebreakers and burglars as well as policemen and civil servants. The latter, in particular, were not unhappy about the discreet, if awkward, manner of admission to this festivity. Whoever saw one here, and vice versa, could look them in the face the next morning with a clear conscience, no matter in which office they earned their money. Those who were here did not talk about it. It only became troublesome when all the others found out that one had an invitation. And so the surrounding, unorthodox entrances via apartments or warehouses were gladly used by all guests who earned their keep a little more publicly than the other ball-goers.

Directly opposite the hole through which Bosch had come was a wide stairway leading up a stately staircase to the foyer of the hall on the street. Here the more daring guests went in and out, or rather those who were not threatened with danger from police patrols or informers. However, the ring societies left nothing to chance. They used an ingenious system that did not allow too many people to converge at the same time in front of the venues of their balls.

A waiter offered champagne, Bosch refused it. He drifted along with the rest of the people in the ever-filling gallery. From the corners of it, stairs led down to the dance floor, and everybody strove to get to the ground floor. From there, the music quietly rang up, played on an elongated stage at the edge of the hall. There was already a full orchestra sitting on folding chairs, but most of the instrumentalists were doing finger exercises or making completely uninvolved faces. The conductor was joking with someone standing below the stage. They toasted to one another. Only a handful of string players were responsible for underscoring the scene. They routinely played their way through classical material, without so much as a glance at each other.

On the stairway down, the crowd was squeezed together. Behind Bosch, two men were arguing about the price of a stock. One said that he could only recommend selling time and again, the other appeased him by saying that he could smell the profits that were about to come. Ahead of Bosch, a silver-haired man and a milk-faced fellow stuck their heads so close together that they threatened to collide their skulls with every step they took. This was due to the hearing loss of the silver-haired one. In order not to appear too frail, he repeated for good measure what the milk-faced fellow told him:

“...I guarantee it. You can really count on me here...”

“You guarantee it,” murmured the hard-of-hearing man.

“On my mother!”

“Hmm, mother...”

On the dark brown parquet of the hall the crowd quickly dispersed to all sides. Now dozens of snippets of conversation pelted Bosch at once, and he navigated aimlessly through them. Soon he stood in the center of the hall, sufficiently centered on this scurrying platter of people that he attracted their attention. Bosch towered over most of the men and their hats by nearly a head. He was easy to spot.

One recognized him. Before he knew it, Bosch was engaged in conversation with two ladies bursting with feathers. The white bird ornaments spilled out on all sides from the two boas the women wore around their necks and shoulders, moreover from the wavy hairstyle of one and the pitch-black tiara of the other. They outdid each other in swaying their bare shoulders back and forth in front of Bosch as hypnotically as possible swaying their bare shoulders back and forth in front of Bosch as hypnotically as possible, while intoning each sentence with full use of their bodies.

“They had the most awful weather in Geneva last week!” the woman with the tiara complained. “When was the last time you were in Switzerland, Herr Bosch?”

“Did you have an exhibition there?” added the one with the feathers in her hair, without even waiting for the painter's answer.

Bosch answered neither one nor the other. In doing so, however, he by no means triggered the kind of awkward silence that usually follows such a display of disinterest. The two ladies either passed over his rudeness or had not even noticed it. In any case, neither of them was willing to voluntarily allow the other to speak in the presence of the well-known artist. So they continued unperturbed, with their stringing together of exclusive destinations, their appraisals of other painters who, in their humble opinion, of course couldn't hold a candle to Bosch, and the occasional digression into the latest gossip about passing guests.

“Oh, and Herr Attachee of the nervous disposition is here, too,” Feather Hair interjected, offhandedly, in one of her own travel observations.

“Without the ambassador?” asked Tiara with unconcealed derision in her voice. “Doggie without a master! Hopefully he'll find his way home on his own...”

The other one spluttered the champagne she had just sipped back into her glass, laughing. Bosch recognized the subject of amusement without the ladies having to show it to him: A few feet away from the group, a pale male was holding onto a glass of red wine. It had to be a normal glass, and yet in the childlike-looking hand of the gaunt figure it looked like a heavy stein. The attachee did not rise much higher than Bosch's chest. His eyes jumped restlessly from one spot to the next. He failed to observe anything for more than a few seconds. Feet tapped sheepishly in place, seeming at any rate to have little to do with the rest of the attachee. Although the man might have barely passed thirty, a full-blown bald head cut straight between two bushy fringes of hair above the Attachee's ears. Rudiments of a mustache distracted from the exalted hair sprout, but were in turn dwarfed by a colossally receding chin. It retreated so meekly behind sagging folds of skin below the mouth that one could wonder if the poor man was missing a piece of lower jaw. If Bosch had ever seen a person so obviously uncomfortable in either his skin or the place to which he'd been sent, this was the one.

“The Argentine ambassador, Herr Bosch, do you know him?” the feathered woman asked when she had recovered from her fit of laughter.

Bosch replied in the negative.

“He's hardly been here more than a few weeks,” Tiara criticized.

“So what, the Herr Maler right here is a cosmopolitan!”

“It means,” replied the Tiara, unmoved and addressing Bosch. “...that you will hardly have encountered Ambassador Childekardo.”

“Which is regrettable!” added the Feather hastily.

“Because the ambassador is a thoroughly spectacular man.”

“...a barrel of a man...”

“... One is tempted to turn him over on his side just out of curiosity, to see how well he rolls.”

Now they both spluttered champagne back into their glasses.

“Like a wine god, and just as entertaining.”

“ Never at a loss for an anecdote!”

“And now he dwells in the embassy like a hermit.”

“...Never comes to any ball, not even to meetings.”

“They say,” whispered the Feather plottingly, “that Childekardo came straight from Buenos Aires after Christmas, and has been but a shadow of himself ever since.”

“Hasn't revealed a word to anyone...”

“About Buenos Aires, you know?”

Bosch didn't know. He wanted to inform the ladies of this so as to have an excuse to say goodbye. But he didn't get that chance.

“The attachee of the nervous disposition represents him everywhere.”

“Dork!” chortled Tiara coyly into her champagne glass. “But secretive, I'll give him that. You can't get anything out of him as far as Argentina is concerned.”

“Nobody knows anything...”

“Revolt, I hear.”

“No! Oh?”

The astonished exclamation was succeeded by the hoarse bass of an older man who squeezed himself between the women.

“So, ladies!” the man screeched, exposing a set of teeth in which several gold ones flashed and from which a sweet stench emanated. He held out elongated cocktail glasses to the women, who hurriedly disposed of their dwindling champagne onto the tray of a busy waiter.

“And you, man?”

“Excuse me?”

“Don't you have anything to drink?” asked the hoarse man, now hooking both ladies under.

“I don't need anything,” Bosch said.

The hoarse one looked at him as if he hadn't heard right. Then a rasping laugh boomed out from him, in which his companions joined shrilly.

“Me neither, ...except for ass in hand and booze in blood!”

The grating laughter took control of the old man's body. Bosch sucked in the sweet stench that grew more pervasive in the air with each burst of laughter.

“Excuse me, please!” someone said from behind Bosch. As the painter turned, the faintly putrid exhalations he had been smelling disappeared as quickly as they had come. He recognized the man immediately. Standing before him was the red-haired guy who had called to him from the non-swimmer's pool at the Romanisches Café. He was almost as tall as Bosch, so that they were at eye level. Strands of hair were sticking to the redhead's forehead, and in general his face was glistening with sweat, as if he had fought his way through the crowd once again.

“I admire you, Herr Bosch,” the redhead stammered. And, as if in apology, “Henrik Espen, forgive me...”

Bosch took the hand that was held out to him.

“You are flattering me, the painter said softly.” Quieter than he would have expected of himself.

In Henrik Espen, the features that moments ago had been exhausted began to glow with sudden energy.

“If you could just spare me a few minutes, Herr Bosch,” it came out of the red-headed man.

“May I show you my paintings? It would be the ultimate gift for me! When I heard you were in Berlin, I had to find you.”

“You paint?”

“Because you inspire me, Herr Bosch. You are innovation!”

The young man talked himself into a frenzy, while the man with the gold teeth and the feathered ladies stayed in the background, looking vexed.

“When I saw your first painting, I understood everything. From one second to the next. It was like a lightning strike. It electrified me. I rushed out of the exhibition, I had to get out and the same day I had to paint. I...”

A snapping flashed through Bosch's mind. It took him a moment to realize that someone was forcibly pulling him out of the conversation. Espen continued to talk at him, but the young artist had no chance of regaining the attention of his great idol. Amelia von Weyerau dragged Bosch behind her, across the dance floor.

And then she left him alone.

The piercing fanfare of a trumpet drowned out all the murmuring in the hall, and Amelia threw herself into a silent, dramatic pose. At the same time, the lights in the hall went out, accompanied by surprised 'ahs' and 'ohs' from the guests. With the next fanfare, a few of the sconces in the columns around the dance floor glowed again, so that the hall cleared into a warm semi-darkness. Only the stage shone in bright light, and nothing any longer reminded of the bored and routinized troupe that just a few minutes ago hadn't known what to do with their instruments. In the light, the golden trombones, horns and trumpets flashed as much as the eyes of the musicians. With unleashed strokes of his baton, the conductor led them to produce a wild tapestry of sound, the likes of which Bosch had never heard anywhere else in this city. Without further ado, the orchestra jumped into a rhythm that would have made the waiters at the Adlon drop their silver trays. The ladies and gentlemen around Bosch howled, as if they wanted to send a collective war cry up to the dome.

On stage, two trumpeters leapt up from their chairs and took turns dueling in shrieking pitches. At the edge of the stage, the double bassist mauled his cabinet-sized instrument like a miner would a rock: he pounded the black wooden neck with his fingers as if to knock out chunks. On the opposite side of the stage, the pianist sent volleys of notes into the hall at breathtaking speed. By doing so, he goaded the two sprung-up brass players to postpone their duel. Instead, they now screeched down at the crowd in synchronicity, trying to outdo the pianist's solo. The conductor laughed raucously as he elicited even more unrestraint from all of the musicians.

Already the smell of sweat was creeping up Bosch's nose, produced by those dancing around him. The men tugged gruffly at their tight bow ties as they took turns twirling their partners by the hand and throwing their own legs away from them in the largest possible radius. The ladies did the same, with more than a few of them sending their high heels flying across the room like projectiles and soon sweeping barefoot across the dance floor. One of the shoes hit Bosch on the knee, but he didn't even notice.

With nothing more than a quick gesture of her hand, Amelia shooed away all the couples between her and Bosch. They stayed behind an invisible corridor and busied themselves, champagne-swilling, arms and legs flying. Bosch walked toward Amelia, who seemed to be waiting for him in a motionless pose. Amid the erupting chaos, she resembled a pitch-black statue. Her shoulders were bare, but below them a lightless fabric enveloped the countess as if with a second skin. She stretched out one of her naked shoulders to the painter. Chest and belly drifted out sideways to a flared hip. Beneath the black knee skirt, the knees were balancing out this imbalance. When the countess suddenly cocked her tilted head laughingly and proudly, twisting her arms snakelike in the air, she reminded Bosch in every way of a question mark made flesh. He stood in front of her, but she remained in her pose. Only now did he notice that Amelia kept her eyes closed. He stared at her, her flawless features, the shimmering hair almost blacker than the lightless dress. Bosch could see her breathing, under the fabric.

The same heat crept up that he had felt when he had seen the naked Italian woman in his suite, and when he had first looked into Mavi's eyes. And countless times before. He reached his hands out to the waist in front of him, forgetting everything around him and Amelia. And then he pulled them back, startled, because Amelia opened her eyes.

He saw himself in the pupils of the countess. Not as a reflection, but as if his own eyes were sitting in the woman's head. Bosch felt a shiver run up and down his limbs, and if he had had the presence of mind to think about it, it would have occurred to him that he never knew what such a thing felt like until that moment. But he didn't have the presence of mind, instead he let Amelia grab him. She twirled him effortlessly by the wrist. Then she threw herself into the painter's arms. Bosch caught her, for the countess let all strength go from her legs. He had to hold her steady, then set her back on her feet.

Bosch remembered that he would need to breathe.

Around them the invisible corridor disappeared. The entourage moved closer to Bosch and Amelia again. The countess laughed briefly at Bosch once, sniffed along his neck as high as she could, and then snuggled up to the painter along with the rhythm of the orchestra. They fixated on each other, and Amelia's gaze seemed hard. Bosch stretched, grabbed Amelia by the hands, and could no longer detect anything strange in her eyes. More than that, while the noise of the brass blared in his ears again and the sweating suits in the hall were making themselves felt like the smell of game in his nose, Bosch didn't miss the heat. The heat he knew nothing to do about. He ran his fingers over Amelia's back, her hips, her neck, but his memories remained empty of the usual snapshots of passionate kisses, tastes, or snatches of light that the heat usually dumped on him unbidden. And when he noticed this, he thought he saw Amelia's features soften. She pulled him down to her by the neck and pressed her cheek against his. Where they touched, it burned cold, first on his skin, then inward all the way to his stomach. Bosch knew in that very second how he would capture that cold burn on a canvas with his brushes.

But he never did. And forgot about it.

5. Lapland, Ladies And Gentlemen!

“After two days in a tiny train compartment, in your own stink, you enjoy every breath of open air. And it's Lapland, isn't it?“ asked d'Utrecht casually into the round, while alternately unscrewing and screwing the small silver can between his fingers.

“So I'm just enjoying. The sun is setting, the hills are shimmering purple. Lapland, unquestionably glorious! And I soak up that sweet smell with a grin, while the Swede next to me is already puking in the grass.

Game is fascinating! Unmistakable taste, unmistakable smell. Even if the animals hadn't been dead, you could have smelled the herd miles away against the wind. As I get closer to the hill, this tangy, leathery animal aroma mixes with burnt hair. All around, the flat hills are lush green, but not the one from which this smell wafts. Oh, no, it's reddish brown. Dead reindeer as far as the eye can see.

409 scorched cows and deer, that's how many they counted. The whole herd. I walked between clumps up to the crest. Stiff haunches everywhere, some stretched high in the air like flagpoles. A veritable graveyard.

The rain had long since subsided, but the grass was still damp and so was the air. My clothes were sticking to me—in Lapland, ladies and gentlemen, in Lapland! So, I strut between the carcasses as if through a rose garden, on and on up. At the top, I then see the full extent of the matter: when the lightning struck, it managed to eat its way through the earth a hundred meters in all directions. The animals died on the spot, from one second to the next. They had been close together in the thunderstorm. Instinct, ladies and gentlemen! A mistake in this case. I say some animals lay fused like wax candles. Antlers stood scattered like charred bushes in a prairie.

A few of the local farmers had been assigned to burn the carcasses. Not educated people by any means, as you will imagine. I caught one or two of them skeptically scanning the sky, possibly in fear of their thunder god!”

D'Utrecht sent a volley of throaty laughter flying. The lid of the silver can popped off as he did so.

“But, of course, it is not at all uncommon for lightning strikes to cause beastly damage, ladies and gentlemen. One rarely hears, admittedly, of such proportions. For that to happen, a lot of things have to come together, as in this extreme case: a severe thunderstorm, herds herded closely together, the ground wet as a sponge from days of rain. Rare, but not as rare as one might think! Would have paid to see the spectacle in person. A gigantic electric chair, among grass and tree stumps…

Anyway, I set to work. You have to saw off the antlers. Craft, skill! After the Swede had calmed down, he looked over my shoulder a few times, then he copied me. The farmers looked even more distraught while we collected the antlers.

You can't process them on site, unlike the horn on the hooves. I planed that off. And this, ladies and gentlemen, takes hours. Because of the quantity of animals, we actually had to spend the night in the nearest village and continue the next day. In return, I had the horn substance straight away in powder form. Finest Lapland quality! In addition, I was able to send the goods directly across the Baltic Sea to Petrograd, where they were literally snatched out of the hands of my contacts. Because, ladies and gentlemen—pay attention—it is known as far as China and Korea that reindeer horn is one of the most effective potency drugs in the world.

So I hobble, and saw, ... hobbling and sawing my wrists to soreness. I sit in the clammy twilight of the Arctic Circle, with the dehorned remains burning around me like bonfires, and smoke mixing with fruity rot in the air. Glorious!”

At this point, d'Utrecht paused, seemingly forgetting what he was about to say. However, he only looked expectantly into the faces of those listening for a moment before letting the contents of the small silver can trickle into his shot glass with a quick flick of his wrist.

“And my purse swole faster than the esteemed clientele in the Empire!”

Still but half of laughing out the last syllables, d'Utrecht downed the schnapps, powder and all, to the jeers of his lady tablemate. The others joined in, laughing so loudly that the walls and ceiling of the small room tossed the reverberations of the celebrating company back and forth.

Outside, in front of the iron door at the end of the cellar stairs, nothing could be heard. It had been installed precisely for this purpose. No rainwater was collecting in the shaft leading down to it tonight. This time, the countess and Bosch had crossed the threshold on dry feet.

6. Dark Green Cut

They raised their glasses. D'Utrecht, pleased with his own performance, screwed the silver can shut with one hand and stowed it in one of the numerous pockets of his vest. The other hand was busy in the back of his table neighbor. She, in turn, had her nose in d'Utrecht's ear. Her glass of cognac was empty. However, in the half-shade of the bar opposite her, the barman was already filling the next one. He didn't talk much, but understood every order. Without words, if need be.

Next to the pair of noses and ears, Karl Sander sat over a stale Pilsner. He pushed the matching Korn schnapps back and forth between his thumbs, bored. With his near-white mustache and thinning hair, he looked a little too old for the rest of the establishment. The countess had briefly introduced Sander, but not the lanky fellow next to him, who was sipping a deep red glass of wine. He hadn't said a word so far.

“And what are you having to drink, by the way?” asked d'Utrecht cheerfully.

“Nothing, thank you,” Bosch replied.

There wasn't much wrong in the way that d'Utrecht could have been described as genuinely spherical. In any case, the indented curves of a pear were not a sufficient comparison for d'Utrecht. Anyone who witnessed the man in action, constantly nibbling at his vest and spouting words, simply had to fear that d'Utrecht might be bowled off his chair at any moment. But not now. Bosch's casual remark had made the jeweler freeze.

“Like ‘nothing’?” mimicked d'Utrecht his opposite man. “This is a speakeasy, man!”

“I don't drink,” Bosch replied indifferently.

“You don't?”

“No.”

“So...” D'Utrecht struggled for words. “As in, ...not at all?”

“No.”

“No alcohol, you mean?” The jeweler clutched his head. Then his double-chinned face flashed with an inspiration, and he pointed an outstretched finger at Bosch as if to acknowledge his own powers of deduction.

“Because of  ‘alcoholism,’ isn't it? Well, it’s that one Swede who invented that. Ladies and gentlemen, the Swedes! Perfectly able to spoil your liquor, but a few dead...”

His lady of the heart's nose was no longer in d'Utrecht's ear, but wordlessly reprimanded him along with the rest of his face for the feared distasteful statement.

“So, in short, one too many, eh?”

“You mean alcohol?” asked Bosch back.

“Geez, man!” rumbled d'Utrecht impatiently. “You're not trying to tell me you haven't had a beer before, are you?”

“...No, actually,” Bosch replied. He murmured this with the distracted surprise of a child reassessing for the first time a previously uninteresting thought. Amelia, sitting at his side, watched him with amusement.

“Why not?” inquired d'Utrecht more quietly, after he had regained his composure. He squinted his eyes skeptically in the process, the right one more than the left. It was barely wider than a slit. D'Utrecht kept jamming the monocle in it, which dangled from his vest. Even when he didn't have to hold the glass with his cheek and brow, d'Utrecht squinted his eye slightly. He had long gotten used to the bright red line below the eye. What he looked like without the squeeze, no one knew.

“I've never thought about it before,” Bosch replied after a short eternity of trying in vain to find what he was looking for in his memories. His gaze turned so serious at these words that none of the table guests doubted the statement.

The barman had crept out of the semi-darkness to the table. He exchanged the empty cognac glass of d'Utrecht's neighbor for a new one. She instantly brought it to her lips. As the barman was about to retreat again, Amelia von Weyerau stopped him. She whispered something in his ear; only then did he disappear with a brief nod.

The silent man with the dark wine watched the scene. His eyes met briefly with the countess's, whereupon he produced a slender notepad.

“The man is a veritable goose quill!” snorted d'Utrecht abruptly. At this, he jokingly poked the silent man in the ribs, so that the notepad almost slipped from the latter's fingers. Karl Sander smiled in amusement without taking his steady stare away from the stale Pilsner. He sat with his arms folded comfortably before it.

“Good Rex here, you must know,” he enlightened Bosch about the remark, “expends most of his energy on the written word. Little worth mentioning can be extricated from the mouth.”

“A vocal band ascetic,” d'Utrecht added.

“And also, for the most part, as far as alcohol is concerned,” Sander resolved.

“... as well as everything else,” d'Utrecht babbled.

“Unless,” Sander took up the punch line, “the muse kisses him. In which case both wine and words flow abundantly. Don't they, my good Rex?”

Goosequill smiled wryly. The half row of teeth he revealed as he did so looked even more amber than in daylight.

“Your name is Rex Goosequill?” asked Bosch.

“Regal, isn't it?” the addressee pressed out through the exposed row of teeth. The syllables sounded as if they had suffered acoustically from the constriction, so hollow and fragile did they vibrate in the air. And on closer inspection, Goosequill's whole head seemed to exert so much pressure on the dentures that one had to be afraid for them. The man, who had collected whole volumes of notes on d'Utrecht and Sander in his lifetime, obviously thought nothing of their joke. All his facial muscles ran disapprovingly toward his mouth. They all stood out separately and distinctly, as if there were neither fat nor skin over them. Goosequill's cheeks were sunken. Actually, this was true of every part of his body in which other people had soft pads. But life pulsed at his temples; veins as thick as fingers stood out there. Bosch could observe the rhythm at which Rex's heart pumped blood into his skull, for both sides of it were shaven. Only above his forehead, in line with his nose, was a rugged ridge of hair. It was perhaps a hand's width and looked like a hedge. Bosch wondered why the hair maintained this shape with such discipline.

The barman reached around the seated Amelia to place a leather cup on the table. A delicate clink revealed that there had to be dice in it.

“Thank you!” said the countess gleefully. “Wine and games, gentlemen. Wasn't that the custom in the old days?”

Everyone looked at her.

“The Greeks might have philosophized about drinking,” Amelia continued. “But the Romans? They would have just drunk, wouldn't they, Rex?”

“No doubt.” Goosequill reached for his wine glass. He emptied it in one go. “No doubt!”

“Then enough with the questions, let's play!”

Amelia pushed the dice cup toward Bosch.

“Splendid!” rejoiced d'Utrecht, as soon as he understood what the countess was driving at. He clutched the monocle on his vest with an exuberance that nearly chipped the fine silver chain on it, then pinched the glass to his face.

Bosch looked questioningly around, then at Amelia. She said nothing and only pointed to the leather cup. Bosch turned it over. Two ruby red cubes lay beneath it. As he eyed them, Amelia kissed him on the cheek.

“Play, Bosch...”

“Why?”

“Because you're good at it. What reason is there not to play?”

“What reason is there to drink?”

“Is there one against it?”

He knew nothing to answer the countess. He searched, but found only emptiness in his thoughts. On his cheek stuck the memory of her kiss, which felt strangely cold.

“Doubles wins!” suggested d'Utrecht.

“Gentlemen's deck,” Sander commented. And after a second, addressing Bosch, he followed up:

“Beer and Korn, you'll like it...”

“Why not cognac?” asked the table neighbor.

“Champagne!” laughed Amelia.

“Good!”

D'Utrecht slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “Two sixes for a pilsner, five doubles for a shot, four the complete gentleman's set, three cognacs, ...and for a couple of twos, there's champagne, sir.”

“No doubles, no alcohol?” inquired Amelia.

“No doubles, no alcohol,” confirmed d'Utrecht.

“And if he rolls 1s?”

The table lapsed into a pause for thought.

“Martini!” d'Utrecht broke the creative silence. No one objected. “Bosch, we're just ramping up the best for your deflowering. Such a hunk of a man and then such a thing...”

While d'Utrecht quietly muttered his incomprehension of the painter's abstinence, Rex Goosequill scribbled in his notepad with small precise strokes. D'Utrecht's neighbor took a long and indulgent draught from her cognac glass. Then she leaned excitedly with both elbows on the massive table.

“Come on,” Amelia commanded, amused. She smiled at the painter, but now directed her voice to the rest of the round.

“Bosch is an excellent player, by the way. He caused a rather lovely commotion in the Romanisches.”

“In the Romanisches?” asked Sander suspiciously. The shot glass danced between his thumbs again. He didn't think much of poets and philosophers in general.

“Oh, Karl...”

Bosch took the dice cup and smelled it. It confirmed his initial suspicions. The smell of leather rose to his nostrils, and various other scents clung to it that Bosch was not familiar with. Sander puffed critically, d'Utrecht chuckled.

With a single twist of his wrist, Bosch inverted the cup. The dice again gave only a tired clack.

“Bets are on!” D'Utrecht rubbed his hands together. When Bosch raised the cup, he ceased doing so.

“Well...”

Goosequill leaned over the table, examining. The two red cubes were on top of each other. The top one showed a single snow-white dot. D'Utrecht wanted to comment on the unexpected circumstance, but Bosch beat him to it. Without a word, he lifted the upper cube from the lower one and placed them side by side.

“That has to be the most extravagant double one can roll,” Amelia said. She smiled all over her face.

“Two ones,” Sander confirmed curtly. “On top of each other!”

“Does that cou...?” asked the table neighbor. She swallowed the last syllable because d'Utrecht was stepping ungently on one of her shoes. Dumbfounded, she stared at d'Utrecht. The pain quickly subsided, leaving the woman with an embarrassed hope that she might have imagined the rude move. Why on earth did he kick her?

“I told you,” Amelia explained smugly, “the man can play like no other!”

“This demands special measures,” concluded d'Utrecht. His arm shot up so resolutely that the barman was startled in the semi-darkness.

“Absinthe, man!”

In no time at all, the barman had supplied the table with the necessary utensils. Bosch watched as d'Utrecht tampered with the bottle of peculiar green color. In the candlelight, it looked as if the contents were shimmering on their own. Bosch sorted the individual color facets in his mind. He was barely listening to d'Utrecht's impassioned introduction.

“Vermouth, herbs, ladies and gentlemen! Only the best. But, Bosch, it depends at least as much on the manner of making as on the ingredients for taste.”

The jeweler placed a heavy glass between himself and Bosch. Then he reached for the middle of the silver cutlery that the barman had neatly spread out to his right. With the expert eye of a surgeon, he chose an unusually shaped spoon and placed it across the glass containing the absinthe. Or at least Bosch thought the ornate metal piece was a spoon, even though it was unbent and without any bowl. He had never seen anything like it. Not so d'Utrecht, who had placed the implement almost lovingly on the rims. The jeweler barely noticeably patted his fingertips along the pure silver. None of the table companions could see what he was doing with his second hand. It was no longer resting on his neighbor's back, but in a vest pocket, where it was nestling one of the many tiny diamonds that d'Utrecht carried with him at all times. It relaxed him.

“Here, on this little helper, we place a piece of sugar cube. Right in the middle. Then we pour over, carefully...”. With a flourish that suggested d'Utrecht had great practice in this method of presentation, he poured a two-finger width of the green liquid over the sugar piece and into the glass. This left the little white cuboid somewhat battered.

“And here's the water. Clear and cold it has to be. We'll fill it up properly with this.”

As d'Utrecht spoke, he released the water from the provided carafe in a razor-thin stream. He took great pains to gently dissolve the sugar completely, little by little.

“Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, Bosch! Less sophisticated connoisseurs think they have to set the sugar on fire no matter what. Over at the Romanisches, you can see the youngsters doing it.”

Sander punctuated the statement with a contemptuous snort.

“Nonsense, I say!” continued d'Utrecht. “When the alcohol burns, the sugar caramelizes. You don't want to mess up your precious absinthe with caramelized overtone. They don't want that, Bosch! The water does its job.”

The glass filled. A last bit of the sugar cube remained on the spoon. D'Utrecht set the decanter down and stirred the mixture with the spoon. He took his time with it. In the glass, the dark green of the absinthe clouded over. When the shimmer disappeared, d'Utrecht released the monocle from the pinch of his right eye. It fell noiselessly back into its place on the vest.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen...”

Bosch watched the result of the ceremony closely. But doing nothing else, d'Utrecht began to slide impatiently back and forth in his chair. He shoved the glass over to the painter with encouragement.

“Cheers!” he teased.

Amelia gently nestled her hands on Bosch's upper arm, as if she were dusting a statue.

“Don't drink it all at once,” Sander pressed out as advice without looking at Bosch. He seemed bored.

Bosch took the glass and smelled it. The acrid aroma of anise rose to his nose, but triggered no reaction in him. He paused for a moment to give his body a chance to react to the aroma. When no sensation occurred, he downed a large gulp of the absinthe.

The alcohol burned briefly in his throat, or rather, tickled. Due to the added water, the burning did not prove to be as blazing as in the pure form. High in the mouth and bellywards through the throat, a warm coating slid over the painter's mucous membranes. When it subsided, Bosch realized that he had forgotten to pay attention to the taste over the sensation. He could not tell how it had tasted at all. But that's exactly what d'Utrecht would ask him, first respectfully acknowledging that Bosch hadn't flinched.

Goosequill jotted down in his writing pad the word ‘deflowered,’ although all he really wanted to do was pronounce it. And did. His quiet comment, however, was lost in the confusion that resulted from Amelia's clapping, d'Utrecht's laughter, and Sander's loud demand for another shot.

“That's not the way to do it, Bosch,” d'Utrecht declared, amused. “You've got to keep that stuff in your mouth all right. There you play around a little with your tongue, push it through the absinthe, press it into your cheeks, ...and then swallow it finally. You have to actually taste stuff like that, otherwise it's pearls before swine.”

Bosch took another sip, a smaller one this time. And he followed the instructions d'Utrecht had given him. Even on the second try, his countenance did not betray that he had taken anything other than water. He just nodded appreciatively, guessing that was how it was done. Sander then toasted him and Goosequill had a bottle of that wine brought to the table, which he had previously emptied in one go. D'Utrecht immediately set about mixing more glasses of absinthe, for himself and Bosch. While he attended to the sugar, the spoon, and the decanter, respectively, he gave the painter impromptu lectures on the history of the drink and its rank in the pecking order of outstanding, drinkable, and awful blends. Before and after each shared sip, he had Bosch toast with him. He visibly enjoyed the role of mentor, so much so that he didn't even notice when his female companion left the table at some point, without even saying goodbye or letting her nose get near his ear again.

When the explanations became choppier and the syllables more elongated because d'Utrecht's language began to suffer from the consumption, Bosch checked the faces of the remaining table guests. Sander had slumped a bit further, but seemed as stoically focused as before. Goosequill had set aside his pad and was nervously drumming his fingertips on the table wood. His cheeks were just as sunken as they had been a few hours ago, but now crisscrossed with red lines like a spider's web. Only Amelia appeared unchanged to Bosch. She had not joined in the drinking and had seemed entertained enough watching him drink.

Given d'Utrecht's melodic lectures and extravagant gestures, Bosch wondered if he should act similarly. And he wondered why such a question was even worth a thought to him.

A few hours later, the bartender was trying to wipe crusted sugar stains from the large table. He stoically drew circles with his damp rag while farewell scenes were unfolding outside the iron door.

“Whasdis?” slurred d'Utrecht as the cab pulled up. He had a feeling that something was wrong, and that feeling snapped him back from the brief time-out his head had taken. The jeweler found himself in the back seat of the car next to Bosch.

“A cab. From the hotel,” Bosch explained.

“Hotel? You're staying at a hotel? Shame!” scolded d'Utrecht. “... Ain't no livin'.”

And then it dawned on him what was wrong.

“Why aren't we driving?”

“We're driving,” Bosch replied quietly as he looked out the window. Gray facades passed by in the glow of the streetlights.

“But you can't hear the engine at all!”

“Electric.”

“Huh?”

“Electrical Viktoria, sir! With pneumatic tires and brake energy recovery...“ the chauffeur interjected enthusiastically. He was proud of the Adlon's fleet of cars and just recently became part of the night shift that got to drive some of the exclusive cars.

“Shit,” d'Utrecht grumbled. “If Harstein knew...”

The passenger's matter-of-fact comment took the wind out of the chauffeur's sails. He didn't bother to point out any further technical details. Bosch gazed thoughtlessly out at the facades, the chauffeur at the road. Neither of them could therefore see the flush rising on d'Utrecht's cheeks. It would have been difficult to make out in the darkness anyway, but it had nothing to do with the after-effects of the boozy evening. The jeweler thought of the man whose name he had spoken. And fell silent.

After a few minutes, Bosch turned to the chauffeur. The sudden end to the silence in the car made d'Utrecht startle. He had dozed off.

“Stop here,” Bosch demanded.

“Sir?” the chauffeur asked uneasily. The night shift took guests back to the Adlon. And it was still a good distance away. No one had told him what to do if a passenger wanted to change the plan. When there was no response to his irritated remark, the chauffeur turned briefly around to the rear. Bosch looked out the window. He didn't feel any need to repeat his announcement, which, after a few seemingly endless moments, unnerved the driving man enough that he actually stopped.

“Impressive shape, man...” mumbled d'Utrecht in the direction of his seat neighbor. “Hotels! Ain't no living, I told you.”

A knowing laugh trumpeted from the jeweler's throat, culminating in a surprised cry of triumph when he happened to spot the narrow champagne cooler behind the front row of seats. He laboriously fingered for his monocle, finally got his hands on it after a few uncoordinated grasps, then turned his attention to the bottle's label.

“I'm taken care of, Bosch...”

“Sir, I'm afraid I'm only allowed to drive guests,” the chauffeur tried to make himself heard.

“You drive this guest wherever he wants to go,” Bosch explained, already getting out of the compartment. He paused, reached into his coat and pressed bills into the chauffeur's hand. Then he made his way to the last intersection they had passed. The chauffeur looked after him in disbelief.

“So,” d'Utrecht said mischievously. He opened the champagne bottle. “Pay attention, then, lad!”

What followed were the most unusual directions the chauffeur had ever heard. They included a drive halfway across town, a forewarning about forest roads to come, and a threat that the driver would have until the Grunewald border to get a car with a fuel engine. A closer look at the banknotes Bosch had put in his hand convinced the chauffeur not to talk back, but instead to think hard about how he could organize a change of vehicle, legally or illegally. By the time Bosch had turned two corners and found his way across the courtyards to Mavi's apartment, the chauffeur had already figured out a solution.

The knocking noises in the stairwell were already waking up one or two of the building's residents. But before the first ones could vent their anger and get out of bed, Mavi had crept up to the small peephole in her door. She could see absolutely nothing in the darkness.

“Who's there?” she finally asked quietly and by reflex—and was immediately annoyed at having given herself away without need.

“Me.”

Mavi opened the door a crack. And then she let Bosch slip into the room as if he were a wanted criminal. Behind him, she silently pushed the door shut without turning around. Mavi remained motionless, only her head seemed to drop for a split second. Bosch didn't have to see her face to realize there was something going on inside Mavi. He decided not to interrupt her at that. Instead, he looked around the room. The Adlon had people decorating each of its rooms with different flowers and draperies every day. People Bosch had never seen before. Changes he had never asked for. Mavi's room did not disappoint his expectations: it looked like he knew it. Nothing had changed. Everything was in its place. The candlestick, which could give the room some twilight at night if need be, was burning as it had been the last time. Only the candle was a little shorter. Bosch liked the sight. He stripped off his long coat and laid it across the back of the only chair.

“Are you wearing a tux?” asked Mavi in disbelief. She had turned around, wanting to say something, but forgetting it at the sight of the tall silhouette before her. She squinted her eyes.

Bosch preferred not to answer. Mavi didn't seem to expect an explanation either, because she stepped toward him, felt the fine fabric on his arms and chest, and shook her head.

“What is it with you? Are you going to come in a golden carriage next time, or what?”

“Shhh...”

“Excuse me?”

Bosch raised a hand to place it tenderly on Mavi's mouth, but the gentleness of the movement gave her more than enough time to realize with perfect clarity that this one-sided conversation annoyed her beyond reason. She slapped his hand away.

“I'm not a doll!”

“Of course not,” Bosch grinned, not knowing why.

“God, you stink like you drank a pharmacy empty!”

Bosch fell silent. He saw anger in the eyes beneath the snake curls and could hardly get enough of it. His hand wanted to make another attempt to reach into the curls, but Bosch was sure he would find himself in the hallway seconds later if he let his fingers have their way.

“You can't just go out in the middle of the night...” Mavi broke off the sentence when she became aware that she was standing in front of Bosch in her nightgown. She grabbed her forehead in embarrassment.

“You always know what you want. And what you don't want. It doesn't matter what the clock says,” Bosch whispered.

Mavi looked up. If another man had said those words to her, that night, in her room, she wouldn't have even given him a smile in return, out of politeness. But the way Bosch talked of her left her speechless. There was a strangely clumsy honesty in his voice.

For a while they stood silently before each other. The only sound in the dank room came from the softly hissing candle.

“ It's easy, isn't it?”

“What?” asked Bosch.

“Everybody knows what they want. It's easy.”

Bosch seemed to think about it.

“It is not...”

The confinement of the room finally squeezed them close. Mavi slipped one garment after another off the painter. Around his neck, over one arm, down his hips. He had his head buried between her neck and shoulder. With her eyes closed, she tugged at his shirt. Unable to see herself, Mavi felt her and Bosch getting slower and slower. Every movement lost weight, but at the same time seemed decelerated by invisible cords. Mavi opened her eyes. She thought it took her seconds. Bosch's chin hung above her; in the background, the chair tilted sideways without falling. Mavi realized that the toes of her left foot were to be blamed for this, since a warm sensation crept up her shin, as indistinct as the pressure of fingertips through thick fabric. Everything around her went still and numb. Her back sank onto the bed, and yet she thought she was still standing. It reminded her of jumping into the lake when she was a child. Of the brief moment when the body did not know where the familiar directions were. And of treading water, which took all her strength, especially when her brother also treaded down and they hurt each other's thighs.

She closed her eyes and stayed under water. The slowness felt good, like a warm coat when it's just a little too cool. Mavi sucked in Bosch's scent, memorized the path his lips took as they felt her skin, and pressed her head into his searching hand. As the hand clawed into her hair, the feeling of the warm coat disappeared.

Bosch felt instantly transfixed, right at the first blink of his eyes. There was not the anger in it that he had expected to encounter a few minutes ago about his entrance, but cold surprise. And yet he couldn't help himself. His fingers buried themselves in the black curls like playful young dogs in heavy snow. He had to grab, ...just as the Comtessa would have wanted him to the other day. Bosch had known; he just hadn't felt like it. Since he always knew without asking, Mavi fascinated him all the more. With her it was different. The probing eyes above him gave Bosch maybe just about a second blink to loosen his grip.

But he wouldn't be able to. And that's why Mavi's arms suddenly slammed against the headboard of the bed. She jerked her right hand under the pillow by instinct. When it reappeared, it struck Bosch's forehead squarely—without hesitation. He groaned and let go of Mavi's hair. The next moment he found himself on his back, Mavi straddling him. All expression had disappeared from her face. Bosch couldn't have told what emotion lay in it, even if he hadn't been distracted by the blood in the corner of his eye. It was his own. This was confirmed by the fine tingle with which the warm trickle made its way from his forehead, past his eye, down his cheek. Above him, Mavi's right hand hung menacingly. She clutched a shard.

Both were silent. With each passing second, the rhythm of Mavi's chest going up and down slowed. Bosch looked up at her, taking his cue from the stoic expression of the woman on top of him. He was copying her. Perhaps she expected him to resist, but Bosch did not. For a fraction of a moment's thought, Mavi pondered what to do. Then she brought the hand with the shard down very slowly so that Bosch finally saw it right in front of his eyes. The glass was black and had left sooty marks on Mavi's fingers as she hastily reached for it.

She waited. And he waited. Finally, Mavi used her free hand to help her reach into the strand of hair above the small wound on Bosch's forehead. With three or four rough motions of her hand, she scythed the strand away and looked at the bald spot. Then she gently slid the shard of glass back into the open little box behind the pillow on which Bosch's head rested. She dropped the sabered hair beside the bed, as if flicking excess salt from her fingers. In turn, his fingers wandered up her thighs. Mavi let them, silently watching the painter's face. She paid attention to every twitch, every pore. She looked for wrinkles, but found none. In his eyes she found a wall she could not penetrate. It took her a while to become aware of it. And then it unnerved her beyond measure, more than the fine red line formed by the blood on the painter's forehead, which by now was diverging into side arms like the mouth of a river. They spread over chin, cheek and ear.

Once again Mavi tried to dissolve the vexing impression: she bent down on Bosch and looked deep into his eyes. The wall did not disappear, but Bosch helped Mavi to overcome it. He impassively pulled the pillow out from under his head and put it over his face, as if the move were part of a routine he was already used to.

Mavi looked down at her pillow. At the pillow under which Bosch's face was hidden. In the stillness of the night, the candle turned its hissing sound into a bubbling crackle, announcing that it would soon cease its service. Mavi wondered if this scene was really happening, now and in her bed. The man beneath her hid his face. And she was grateful to him for it. Why?

More questions flared up in her mind. But they died down instantly as soon as Mavi noticed that her muscles had long since taken over to answer them.

7. Invitations

It was snowing for the third day in a row. At first, sleet and drizzle had descended like a bashful veil upon the city. During the nights, however, these turned into thick flakes, and in the last few hours they had seemed to take a permanent liking to this condition. Throughout the afternoon, the Adlon's bellboys had been busy clearing the sidewalks around the hotel.

Bosch stepped out of the foyer into dark night. The lights of the Adlon and the boulevard did their best to make the million flakes glitter, but they were only moderately successful. Bosch flipped up the collar of his coat and strolled aimlessly away from the front door. At the curb, he stopped. Instantly, an outline stepped out of the gray shadows across the street. Bosch recognized it at once.

“Herr Bosch, Herr Bosch, a quick word!”

Bosch ignored the call and stood motionless in his place as the figure rushed toward him.

“Please, just a second...”

“Who are you?” asked Bosch.

“Espen, Henrik Espen,” came a stutter from under a much too large hat. The young painter's face held the pleading hope of being recognized. But Bosch remained silent, disappointing it, even though he had not forgotten his opposite's name or appearance.

“We, ...we met briefly at the Felicita,” Espen hesitated. He stuttered the end of the sentence awkwardly into the night air. Then he looked around, covertly, to his left and right. Bosch involuntarily had to follow his gaze.

“Well?” he asked.

“You are my role model, Herr Bosch!”

“What do you want?”

“Your works, your style, the colors, simply everything. There is no one whose judgment is more important to me, Herr Bosch! If you could just once, just briefly, look at my paintings?”

Bosch's expression tightened like a small skin-colored coat, buttoned up as far as possible by invisible hands. Espen noticed his idol's silent resistance immediately.

“Please, forgive my impertinence!” pleaded Espen. A fiery red strand fell down his forehead from under the absurd hat he wore. Bosch realized that beads of sweat were coming out of the man's skin.

“I...it...isn't about your recommendation.”

“It' s not?” asked Bosch.

“I mean, you are the greatest painter of our time. Your judgment, your criticism! That's what I'm looking for,” Espen hastily explained himself. And more quietly:

“I don't ask you because of your name.”

Bosch eyed the man.

“Do you have any idea how many painters there are in this city?” he finally asked.

“I am not from this city, sir.”

“Neither am I,” Bosch admitted.

For a second, they were both silent. Espen took the opportunity to go all in.

“I just painted some new material,” he shouted excitedly as he jumped away from Bosch. Bosch followed the frantic movements as best he could with his eyes. Espen hunched over and searched for something in the snow with his hands and feet. All the while he kept talking, afraid Bosch would leave as soon as he stopped throwing words at him.

“It's not far from here, really! But it's only experiments, of course. I can start over, dispose of them and make room. If I only knew what you thought of them, Herr Bosch! Then I would have the direction. Heck, not even a stick!”

Aspen straightened up. He looked at his tracks in the snow and began to laugh desperately.

Bosch stood as if struck by lightning. The young man's laughter pierced through his marrow. He stared at the pale face and was tempted to grab Aspen's mouth with both hands, tug at it, and climb in feet first.

A cold shiver chased the thought away. Bosch composed himself. Two circular lights flashed in the background. Espen noticed them, too, and stopped laughing. He glanced at Bosch, then at the approaching car, before comprehending that he had little time left.

“Here, Herr Bosch, please!” pleaded Espen. He stumbled past Bosch, tore one of his holey gloves from his fingers, and with bare skin drew lines in the snow where his search for a stick had not yet destroyed the white surface on the ground.

“Just a look...”

The car slowed. Bosch paid no attention to it. Lines appeared in the snow before his eyes, like startled snakes escaping from their nests and fleeing into the surrounding area. They darted away from each other as if Espen shot them out of a revolver by the gesture of his index finger. The squatting figure lost the oversized hat under its frantic movements. Underneath, the red hair was now fully revealed and seemed to be the only thing in the darkness to soak up the light of the Adlon. It danced, wetly steaming and glowing, to the sweeping movements of Espen's arm.

Bosch's breath was caught in his throat. The dervish at his feet drew arcs in the snow that made Bosch taste Mavi's skin on his lips. Espen drew pointed corners that seemed as sharp as knives. Bosch took a step back.

Next to the two men, the car came to a stop. It slid in front of the Adlon's foyer like a metallic whale. The driver prepared to open the rear door on the passenger side. It took him forever to do so, as he had to walk around the hood of the enormous limousine.

“Please, my Herr...” gasped Espen, barely audible. Then he took a deep breath and blew once over the last of his fine strokes in the snow. Bosch then saw some of the lines disappear, others become clearer. At the feet of the still crouching Espen, a delicate shade of red blended into the drawing. His index finger rested bleeding with the rest of his hand on one knee, chafed by the salt of the afternoon's dutiful sprinkling. Bosch thought he saw the last red drops spreading by themselves in the angles and arches. In general, he had the impression that Espen had only done half of the strokes in his whirling. The rest seemed to have flowed into place almost as if by itself.

Just as it did with his own paintings.

The driver opened the door of the limousine. Amelia von Weyerau stepped out onto the street with an unassuming movement and linked arms with Bosch, who was standing on the side of the street, staring at the snow.

“Well now, look who wants to freeze to death out here!” asked the countess, smiling wearily. She paid no attention to the snow or the strange man kneeling in front of her date.

“Let me paint something real!” pleaded Espen. He held out both hands to Bosch.

The car started to move. The driver habitually checked out of the corner of his eye in what condition he was leaving the place of departure. In the rearview mirror, the man crouching in the snow became smaller and smaller. The driver, yet again habitually, spared any thought as to who and why. Behind him, in the separate compartment of the limousine, the passengers were silent. Amelia slipped thick gloves off her hands with relish. Bosch sat perplexed. He had answered nothing and had let Amelia pull him into the car without resistance. Now he stared thoughtlessly ahead, at the road. The countess left him alone with the emptiness in his head. For a while, anyway. When she finally prepared to wake Bosch from his daydream, he abruptly reached for the champagne cooler between them.

The countess smirked with satisfaction.

“Very thoughtful,” she said, but only after Bosch had already brought the filled goblet halfway to his lips—whereupon his movement paused. Without looking his companion in the face, he finally did continue and swallowed the contents of the glass in one go. Then he refilled and detached a second glass from its holder.

“We're going the wrong way,” he commented with disinterest as he filled Amelia's goblet and handed it to her.

“Ah, good Jaques deserves a break from us. He also needs to find an opportunity to blow all the money he's making off us.”

“Jaques?”

“Quiet guy? Quick with the orders, even quicker to disappear behind his bar?” asked Amelia back, playfully piqued. “My dear Bosch, do you have no sense of people at all?”

The painter was left with no answer.

“A different address for once...”, Amelia changed the subject. As she spoke, she refilled the goblets in her turn.

“A break in style now and then, it keeps perspectives fresh.”

The carriage stopped in front of a large gate. On either side, a patched fence of scrap metal and wooden slats disappeared into the darkness. Behind it, Bosch could make out only shadowy shapes, partly because there was not a single streetlight here. The gate provided only an inadequate view through rusted bars: Somewhere in the darkness, a tiny light glowed, smaller than a star in the sky—toward which, on this night, every searching gaze was aimed in vain. To see a star, it would have had to hang level with a third story because of the thick snow.

“The gate is open, even if it doesn't look like it,” Amelia explained. She smiled coolly at Bosch. The driver in his detached compartment made no move to leave the car and open the door for Amelia. Neither did the countess.

“Aren't you coming?” asked Bosch.

“Not today.”

Both champagne glasses found their way back into the holders. Their soft clink amplified unpleasantly shrill in the silence.

“What am I supposed to do in there?”

“Meeting friends.”

Bosch averted his eyes from the gate and toward Amelia. His expression rated the persuasiveness of the countess's answer somewhere between ridiculous and annoying.

“My friends,” Amelia specified. And her expression left no room for interpretation. “If you find them, that is. If you do, we'll see further.”

Bosch wanted to retort something bored, but didn't get a chance because Amelia leaned over and grabbed him by the chin. Then she spoke to him slowly and tensely, like a mother about to give her child a clear instruction for the first and last time.

“I'm going to see a Bosch who doesn't have boredom written all over his face. And that soon. I am patient, you know? Above all, this city has places that are not at our feet.”

Bosch doubted that Amelia was really including herself in that judgment, beyond a rhetorical feint. He had by now witnessed hundreds of men as well as women who would kiss the countess's shoes at her bidding. And of those, no one was threatened with one of these kisses that dropped Bosch's body temperature.

“I won't tolerate any objections, Bosch!” whispered Amelia.

She kissed Bosch on the forehead. The door behind him flew open. The countess's driver held it open.

Bosch found the big gate unlocked. At least there was no lock or chains to be seen. More out of reflex than logical reasoning, he pulled on one of the bars. To his surprise, the whole gate began to move. Almost silently, it slid a hand's width to the right. Bosch gave it another push and then squeezed through the resulting gap.

Behind the gate, a paved path led between flat sheds and the remains of walls. Bosch spotted tracks in the middle of the path that he hadn't spotted in the street outside. He followed them with his eyes and started walking. The glowing light he had seen from the car was flickering. At times it was visible, at other times not. The closer he got, the more clearly he made out an oil lamp standing in a tiny floor window. When Bosch reached it, he found a dead end. A door was nowhere to be seen, only a forged ladder that reached up to his shoulder. At second glance, he saw a loading ramp next to him that led into a hall above the dead end.

Bosch looked around. He saw nothing and no one. The snow was falling even harder than outside the hotel. With three or four steps, he swung up the ladder and headed for an open door behind the loading dock. Voices could be heard, or at least suspected, behind it. Bosch picked up a steady murmur that could have been from other sources. In front of a cold brick wall, he had to choose one of two openings. He kept to the more distinct hissing and felt his way forward through the hole on the right. Almost instantly, the indefinable sounds broke into familiar fragments. Bosch heard shouts, laughter and clinking glasses. In addition, the corridor in which he found himself brightened. After a few feet, it ended in an impressive labyrinth of wood and brass, the purpose of which Bosch understood only at second glance.

He was standing in the entrance of a bar that gave the impression of collapsing at any moment. This was mainly due to the unadorned ceiling that pressed down on the establishment no more than six or seven feet above the floor. In far too many places, gold-colored lamps jutted down to shoulder height. In their crude cut, they were reminiscent of small cattle troughs that had been turned upside down and fitted with ridiculously dim light bulbs. Each of them cast a glow of light, wafted by cigarrette mist, on one or two tables. There were no chairs. Instead, benches enclosed these separate cells on two sides. Instead of backrests, building slats had been nailed along the benches. At least somebody had applied a makeshift coat of varnish, because Bosch recognized a dark brown color. The sheen reminded him of honey. As sticky as the coating looked, it could in fact have been honey, or grease. Bosch sucked in the air.  No, there was anything but a kitchen here.

Wooden compartments with their tables and trough lamps divided the large room into dozens of small islands. To the left, Bosch spotted a fat man in a ragged suit asleep on a stool, apparently keeping an eye on the door when awake. To his right began a counter that ran deep into the room. Every few feet, a cheek swam in beer or other liquid. Bosch counted four of them. The neat row of cheeks was interrupted only by a hunched man who rested both hands on the counter, but not his face for a change. He was strangely contorted. Bosch stepped closer into the room and towards the man. He had to duck his head. As he passed the hunched man, he spotted the kneeling woman under the supporting arms. She was busy.

Bosch kept walking, past the two of them.

Peeling out of the blue smoke was the third person that Bosch could be sure was conscious.

“Hello, hello,” chirped the man, who barely reached Bosch's shoulder but carried a confidence in his scarred face that testified to experience in professionally calculating height and weight differences. He carried a switchblade on principle, as he did now. As a rule, he pulled it out for dramatic effect. Only rarely did he have to use the blade for its proper purpose. Since Bosch did not answer him, he felt he had sufficient cause and freedom of choice between the effect and function of the knife. Moreover, the week had been expensive. One had to make a living. Opportunities! To his own surprise, however, he chose none of the options and left his knife in the sleeve of his coat. The rich-looking tall man gave him only one cursory glance from above and pushed past him, deeper into the maze of tables.

After Bosch's eyes became accustomed to the mixture of stale air, puffs of smoke, and yellowish cones of light, he saw the clientele beyond the counter. At each of the tables sat at least one man who looked like the troublemaker in the aisle, if not out of countenance, then out of intent. Most gawked wanly and languidly from under aviator caps or disheveled hair crests. Here and there an equally sallow woman clung to one of them, always in the corner between two benches. Sometimes it was reversed, in one case the corner seekers had slid under the table. Judging by the smell of liquor hovering over everything, chances were they hadn't done it voluntarily, but couldn't get up.

Bosch looked for a seat. There were plenty available, either because their owners no longer knew they were sitting on one, or because small groups with wry grins would have liked Bosch to join them. He knew where he was supposed to take a seat, however, as soon as he spotted the wooden compartment where only one man was sitting. The bucket light above the table was broken. All that could be made out was a large red glow in the darkness and the shadows of two pairs of shoulders, which turned out to be actually one. Bosch could hardly believe his eyes, but when he reached the table, he could see for himself: the man behind the ember point of his cigar, which had the thickness of a medium-sized water pipe, appeared to Bosch to be a physical impossibility: his back extended from one side of the table to the other. Two men of normal stature could have occupied the same space, and still toasted each other at a courteous distance.

Bosch sat down at the head of the table so that he and the colossus each had one of the two nailed walls of the compartment behind them. The latter took no notice of Bosch at first and took another puff of his cigar. In the semi-darkness under the broken light fixture, the burning tobacco glowed like an alert. The suction behind the pursed lips sounded like a bellows. Bosch couldn't help but think of a blacksmith's shop, given the glow and the sound.

“You must be the painter, then,” the colossus quietly stated. His voice filled the room as completely as if he had verbally flooded it with water. It was not as deep as one might have guessed from the man's dimensions, more like a dull carpet—with sharp edges.

“Bosch,” Bosch said.

“Harstein,” was the reply. Then the hand which held the cigar raised itself up to the light bulb and shook it once, briefly and violently. Instantly the pitiful ball of light in the bucket flickered irresolutely. After three or four seconds, it had adjusted to its shock treatment and was now glowing as ordered.

“Let's have a look at you,” Harstein muttered. He turned his angular skull over to Bosch as slowly as if he were moving a block of marble. Bosch looked into small, colorless eyes. Roderich von Harstein's face was so weather-beaten that a captain or two could have been envious of it. Everything befitted a sailor but the beard. What the eyes seemed to lack in color, the short stubble made up for. Bosch saw reds, blacks, grays, and bright blondes, all unnaturally thick as wires.

“Lovely,” the flooding voice judged after Harstein had finished inspecting his counterpart.

Bosch grinned. Without warning, something pushed him to the right, into the corner of the compartment. Rex Goosequill squeezed in beside him and lifted two heavy beer mugs onto the tabletop.

“About bloody time, Rex!” rumbled Harstein. He pulled one of the two steins over to him. And addressing Bosch, “Beer too banal for artists?”

“Not for me.”

“Well then, another one,” Harstein ordered. Without a word, and even though he had just sat down, Goosequill stood up and disappeared into the haze of smoke in the aisle. At the same time, there was a rumbling under the table opposite, where Bosch had seen the shadows of the two immobilized individuals on the floor. One of the two now crawled out from under the table, rose with a gasp, and sat down in the wooden compartment as well.

“She simply fell asleep...,” puffed d'Utrecht as he checked the fit of his vest and patted dust from his jacket, “...good Liselotte!”

“You're just bored, Theodorus,” Harstein commented.

“Can't take anything, these young brats,” the jeweler ignored him. “But here, hmm, a beauty!”

Triumphantly, d'Utrecht revealed a tiny pearl between his fingers.

“You'd find a gem even in shit,” Harstein grumbled.

“Why, yes!” gloated d'Utrecht, and then he spotted Bosch. “Ah, my dear friend! Very nice, very nice...”

Goosequill heaved a third jug of beer onto the table.

“Where's Sander?” asked Bosch.

“Wouldn't set foot in here, not for all the money in the world,” snorted d'Utrecht.

“There are cops here, too,” objected Goosequill.

“But the other kind.”

“Other kind?” asked Bosch.

“The kind that will look the other way.”

None of the steins broke. They simply rumbled thuddingly across the crude floorboards. A red-faced pimp was startled, half leaping up from his seat, ready to liver punch someone for the scare he had caused. After following the course of the tumbling glasses, he discovered that Harstein had swept his table clean with a single movement of his arm. It dripped from the latter's sleeve.

The red-faced man sat down again. Discreetly.

Goosequill brought another round of beer. He staggered through the aisles with the mugs and poured out half. Harstein emptied the rest in a single draught. He seemed to drink faster with each beer he was served. Bosch watched Harstein thoughtfully. The beer disappeared into the man like oil into a machine. The more of it, the smoother it ran.

“Yes!” rejoiced Harstein, tossing the empty glass carelessly after those on the floorboards. There was a flash in his little eyes.

“I like you, Bosch.”

It dawned on Bosch that he must have not only been thinking his observation, but actually uttering it. The slowness with which this discovery manifested itself in his mind amused him.

“But this broth here is too thin,” Harstein cursed. “We need more viscosity, Bosch!”

The painter did not understand.

“Viscosity! Thick stuff! You have to be able to withstand more in cold temperatures,” Harstein declared in delight.

Beside him, Goosequill lifted his still far from emptied stein under the beer warmer, whose immersion heater protruded from the wall planks. With a viperous hiss, the metal heated the ice-cold beer.

“Right, progress!” added Goosequill with a look at Harstein's face. To Bosch, the exclamation that begged for confirmation reminded him of a child. And as only a child could, Goosequill's exhalation now yielded to an exactly opposite facial expression in a fraction of a second. Bosch saw fear, for Harstein had unfolded to his full width in one short gasp and was staring angrily at the dwarfed poet.

“This crap is not progress!” he roared at Goosequill. The air pressure behind the reproach seemed to have pushed the lanky man a few inches across the bench. Bosch was sure of it. And he almost expected Harstein to get his huge fists going any second and use them to unceremoniously nail Goosequill into the wall paneling. But the fists remained hands, and Harstein raised only one of them to stick a finger up in admonishment.

“Beer is nothing but the soporific of fat monks, you nitwit!” he began to pontificate. “Can be drunk, can be downed. And if you wimp think you need to make it lukewarm for your sensitive stomach, be my guest! But that piece of metal is a piss aid, not technology. No progress, no nothing!”

D'Utrecht laughed derisively and flicked the pearl he still held between his fingers with his thumb toward the Goosequill. It bounced silently off him and rolled down the aisle. The jeweler grinned briefly in satisfaction at his marksmanship. But only briefly. Then he nervously dropped to all fours and began searching the floor. Harstein, meanwhile, continued.

“You will not insult my progress, do you hear?”

Goosequill cowered like a stiffened cat in paralyzed defense, unable to produce a word.

“When you see something smoking like a geyser, and screeching so your ears fall off, you're looking at progress! Let it race or crash, it doesn't matter, as long as it leaves a scar. Everything else is a toy...”

“A futurist he is, our good Harstein,” murmured d'Utrecht next to Bosch's lap, where at the same moment he recovered the pearl and emerged from the floor.

“Don't talk nonsense to the man, d'Utrecht!” rumbled Harstein from above the table. He turned toward Bosch. Goosequill relaxed at no longer being the center of attention.

“The Italians with their art stuff and poetry don't concern me,” Harstein told Bosch.

“Futurist!”

“I've got nothing to do with them!”

“...except to finance them the most bizarre projects.”

“For technology, for looking into the essence of machines,” Harstein defended himself.

“Picky futurist, then!”

With difficulty, d'Utrecht heaved himself back onto his chair. The pearl was no longer in his hand, but a tiny folded paper that looked like a shrunken letter was.

“If you don't think radically, you get stuck,” Harstein ignored the last objection. He bent his massive chest over the tabletop so he could more insistently explain to Bosch. The wood groaned.

“This at least is what all those futurists have understood. They wouldn't celebrate a silly pipe coming out of a wall and glowing. The noise of pistons, Bosch, have you ever really listened to it?”

Bosch finished his beer.

“That's language, you see,” Harstein continued breathlessly. “The language that will count for our limp lot! Here, Unter den Linden, that's where the pale boys cower and cram their heads full with Old Greek...”

D'Utrecht chuckled hysterically. For a split second, the whitish contents of the little letter had lain on the back of his hand. Now they were already up d'Utrecht's nose. And elsewhere.

“...Or with Latin!” Harstein raged on. “Can you tell me what the superstitious nonsense of old men is supposed to teach us today?”

“You and me?” asked Bosch.

“Well?”

“I've never heard anyone order anything in Latin,” Bosch murmured thoughtfully.

Harstein laughed out what, in the case of his voice, resembled the rumble of a tool shed collapsing. D'Utrecht patted the painter appreciatively on the shoulder, and Goosequill headed toward the counter before Harstein—thirsty from the impressive wordiness of the reply—would bark at him and send him anyway.

“That's right! You can't even use all that old shit to get drunk. We've built ourselves some new vocabulary, Bosch, and that's what matters. Gears, boilers, cranes...”

Harstein lowered down his still-raised hand. His gaze fell on the beer warmer next to his head. He gave the device a disdainful snort, the beer-laden Goosequill a grim look.

“And what difference does it make?” asked Bosch.

“Huh?”

“The piston. What does the cob tell me when I listen to it? What does it matter?”

Harstein smiled broadly, pleased. Then he reached for Bosch's hand and patted it in rhythm with each syllable he whispered.

“That. You. Should. Shut. Up. Shall. ...And drive until you crash. And shovel coal until you move cities. And make this whole big ball quiver with energy.”

Bosch didn't understand Harstein. But he kept drinking with him. For every glass he emptied himself, two disappeared into the colossus. Harstein drank and drank, completely unaffected. He did not move from his place until the group was the last to leave the hidden pub at dawn.

Besides Harstein, only Bosch and Goosequill dragged themselves back to the loading ramp. The poet carried d'Utrecht more than he supported him. It looked like he was going to collapse under an oversized sack of grain. After Bosch had descended the small ladder to the courtyard, he prepared to receive the jeweler's rotund body. At the top, however, d'Utrecht slid off Goosequill's back, semi-conscious. He would have hit his head on the loading ramp if Harstein had not grabbed him with one hand at the last moment and set him on his feet like a doll.

“Leave me alone,” mumbled d'Utrecht. The manhandling had thoroughly shaken him awake. “I'll stay here...”

Bosch expected that the others would now start pleading with d'Utrecht, or that Harstein would unceremoniously knock the man unconscious and simply take him along like a handbag. But he only looked deeply into the jeweler's eyes once, then turned toward the ladder, which he cursorily measured, and jumped down into the snow beside it. Goosequill gave preference to the ladder rungs. When he was halfway down, he earned another friendly boot kick to the head from d'Utrecht.

“Idiot!” cried Goosequill.

“Goodbye, my friends!” whooped d'Utrecht gleefully. What little of his spirits had crawled back into him now made him roll backward onto the ramp. There he turned onto his stomach, pushed his balloon-like body up a few inches, and then scrambled, giggling and on all fours, back into the black open door.

Goosequill made his way toward the courtyard gate, where Harstein had already gone ahead.

“Aren't you going to get him?” asked Bosch.

“Why?” asked Goosequill back. He was still rubbing his temple from the kick, but he was alert. He watched Bosch's reaction closely, but did not get what he was waiting for. Bosch remained silent, for he had no answer to the counter-question, although he couldn't shake the feeling that he should have had one.

Further ahead, where Harstein had abruptly turned into a garage, there was a loud clatter. Bosch closed in on the other two men. A crackling tarp came flying out of the garage. Harstein untied its end somewhere in the darkness of the shallow garage shaft and disappeared. After a few seconds, an engine howled like a mortally wounded animal. Goosequill pulled Bosch aside, just in time, because instantly a car shot forward out of the darkness like Bosch had never seen before.

“Rumpler drop car!” roared Harstein from inside. “It can do 100 kph, Bosch. Wind resistance 0.28 CW. This thing is an aerodynamic marvel!”

Goosequill got in through the rear driver's side door. Bosch looked at the shape of the car, which was tinted red by the emerging dusk. The car looked like an egg on wheels, but one that fancied itself a flying cartridge. It was flattened at the top and bottom, the sides curved with tension, everything striving forward. Above each of the four exposed wheels, a fin protruded from the chassis, as if the teardrop car was trying to plow through something—air, water, anything.

“Bought them straight from the motor show, recently,” Harstein explained proudly, “three of them! One of them is gone, unfortunately. Crushed it into the plank on the AVUS. And this one and the other, Bosch, I'm selling to some jerk from the movies. He said he wants to make a film about the metropolis of the future in Babelsberg. Good man, good man! Sense of perspective, of progress!”

Harstein laughed out loud. With his stature, he looked about as much in his place behind the wheel of the narrow car as a heavyweight boxer on a racehorse. As Bosch went to reach for the passenger door, Harstein let the engine rev and effortfully turned his shoulders toward the painter.

“You're staying at the Adlon, d'Utrecht said?”

“Yes.”

“Then see how you get there, to your kingly little bed,” laughed Harstein. And then, suddenly more serious than Bosch had seen him all evening:

“You should live in the villa, man! You'll be in better company there. We can use people with vision among us.”

Bosch smiled politely.

“Think it over, Bosch! Consider yourself formally invited.”

Without waiting for a response, Harstein hit the gas pedal. The teardrop car pulled its lurching rear end ponderously into line with the front axle and hummed away toward the road. Bosch looked after the car and stayed behind.

For a while, Bosch stood in the cold, perplexed. Then he noticed that it had stopped snowing. He looked at the snow at his feet, then at the tracks of the car leading away from him. Looking at them, he couldn't help but think of the sketch Henrik Espen had drawn for him.

8. Gawking

Bastian risked a quick glance. Cautiously, he poked his head out from behind the big stone ...and pulled it back, almost disappointed, as no snowball hit him. He gave the enemy a second chance, peeked, showed himself—but again nothing happened. So Bastian finally ventured out of the shadow of the tombstone. A last critical look confirmed his suspicion: His ambush was simply too well chosen. The others had not discovered him and had shifted the battle. For behind the flat wall that separated the cemetery from the fountain in the Bürgerpark, sharp cries sounded.

Taking two or three grabs in the snow, Bastian armed himself. Holding a ball in each hand, he quietly approached the wall. He peered over the stones once more to get the lay of the land, then crept up to the iron gate through which he had entered the cemetery. It was a good thing he instinctively ducked, because dozens of projectiles instantly whizzed over his head. Bastian realized that he was standing right between the lines. Promptly, a thick load of snow hit him in the shoulder and, seeking shelter, he threw himself behind the nearest pile of ice so that he would no longer be on the receiving end. In his haste, he had not cared where and at whose side he would land. Now he found that he had chosen the wrong of the two parties. Behind the rampart crouched Stine and Manfred. They glared at Bastian as if he had just fallen from the sky. But before he could say anything in his defense, they composed themselves. Two shrill whistles announced the highest alarm. Bastian took to his heels, and not a second too soon. Snowballs instantly came flying from both sides next to Stine and Manfred. Most of them missed, but some hit Bastian's back. One of them made it right into the gap between the scarf and the coat collar. Bastian laughed out in mid-race, partly from shock, partly from wounded pride. He would get revenge for this!

He saw the hand only at the last moment, or so he thought he remembered later. A completely normal hand, wrapped in a light-colored leather glove. It shot toward Bastian like a biting beast, even though the grip did not hurt, but felt quite gentle. The leather glove latched under Bastian's armpit like a wrench that had been made to fit nothing else. And then Bastian found himself in the air. He felt his upper body tilt forward, his feet lose their hold. Already he was hanging, wriggling, on the outstretched arm of the man with the glove—right above him. Bastian looked down at him, or rather at the back of his head. For the man was kneeling on one leg, not even looking at Bastian. With his free hand he brushed through the snow. The other pointed straight up and carried its load seemingly effortlessly, kind of like an umbrella. No matter how many times Bastian would later ask himself the question on the way home, he would not find an answer as to how the squatting man could have seen him coming at all, when he had been looking in the other direction and at the ground.

The hand, and with it Bastian's shoulder, turned sideways. The legs, wriggling in confusion, followed through in a small arc, just in time for Bastian's feet to hit the ground on the other side of the man. The leather glove released its wrench grip, releasing the boy back to the inertia of his own body. Bastian stumbled forward two steps before stopping, stunned. A sharp pain spread from his armpit through his ribs, arm and neck. He cursed. When he turned to complain, he saw the man still squatting, unchanged. He took no notice of Bastian and continued to brush around in the snow. What irritated Bastian even more than the man's ignorance, however, were the people standing around. Witnesses! Only all of them were also staring at the snow. Bastian recognized half his class and many other children from his school, plus an old couple and a young woman with jet-black curls. A few promenaders peered over the children's heads as they passed, slowed down, and finally lined up in the second row too, to see what the squatting man was up to with his fingers in the snow. Bastian's anger and embarrassment faded as quickly as they had come, as absolutely no one seemed interested in him. No one had even registered his acrobatic performance. Silently, he dared to approach the semicircle of gawkers that grew larger and larger to the left and right of the man—until he saw the painting itself.

Bastian was aware that he was looking at nothing but lines in the snow, and yet he had to call it a painting. His parents didn't have one, but there were several hanging in the school because the principal, made a point of it. Bastian thought that the colors and details he knew from the school hallway couldn't have made the motif in the snow any better. This was a painting, and nothing else. The outline reminded Bastian of a snow angel. In the hollows, the man drew more and more fine strokes at lightning speed, some with two or three fingers, others with the edge of a fingernail. There were already hundreds of strokes and ramifications that together stamped the image of a torso upon the snow. The bystanders looked at it with oblivious faces and Bastian too felt instantly captured by the motif. He couldn't get enough of it, had to dart his eyes from one little thing to the next: An earlobe flashed out from under spiraling strands of hair, the eyes looked coyly downward and their pupils seemed to extend deep down into the frozen ground. A coarse coat hung over the shoulders, rippling toward the belly. Bastian made out each and every button. Each looked different from the others in its own way. The man was painting another one in the snow. When he was done, he took off his other glove, then drew hair-thin lines across the coat with all ten of his fingernails.

Before Bastian's eyes, a pattern grew on the coat that seemed to literally push it out of the snow. Bastian was tempted to reach right out and touch it, because he was firmly convinced that the snow coat must be warm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the arm of the young woman with the jet-black curls was also moving in that direction. Instead of reaching for the coat, however, she merely propped herself up on the man's shoulder. Bastian could see her face now. It was the same as in the snow. The coat, too. Bastian recognized the pattern immediately. The hair, the earlobe, the eyes, all hers.

Only the painting in the snow seemed more real to him than the woman.

Bastian snapped out of his silent observation. More and more people stopped and became spectators. The row of two had already turned into a crowd, in which every single one of the gawking people looked down at the snow, smiling. Only the woman whose likeness they were looking at was not smiling, Bastian found. She leaned on the man's shoulder and ultimately seemed to flinch a little. Her mouth was open because she tried several times to say something.

She failed to do so.

9. The Stone

Mavi enjoyed the silence. Bosch didn't seem to mind, and it gave her the opportunity to think more in depth about the impressions of the day. Her mind would not rest. She didn't like going all the way out to this part of town, especially in the winter, but she hadn't wanted to put off the obligatory visit any longer. The fact that Bosch had offered to accompany her had therefore more than suited her from the start. Now he sat before her in the candlelight and drank from his wine glass. He had had it refilled a few times, so Mavi suddenly wondered how much they had both actually drunk. Her mouth tasted like cherries, a whole lot of them, and overripe. Mavi liked the taste, but the hoped-for effect didn't occur. She could remember everything.

The walk from the Stadtbahn to the Pankow Bürgerpark had taken less than ten minutes. Having linked arms with Bosch, the walk was like being escorted. The first of many good feelings that day. Mavi steered Bosch with the gentle pressure of her elbow.

The other ladies had had dogs.

As the pair turned through the south entrance of the civic park, a lady with a German shepherd made way for them. A large coal truck could easily fit through the gate, but the lady still kept a civil distance. The German shepherd had humbly lowered his head and tucked his tail between his hind legs.

Mavi took another sip of liquid cherry.

In the summer, children ran across the huge meadow in the middle of the park, while at the main northern entrance, adults bought refreshments at the fountain bar. Water in all kinds of bottles and from everywhere. In winter, only the wind raged across the open space. No one lingered longer than necessary in the unprotected center of the park. No customers. The bar had therefore been dismantled into its component parts and lay moored somewhere between the trees to form a large package. The ladies, the dogs and the screaming children used the nooks and paths between the trees. Mavi had wanted to lead Bosch around the park in their cover, but a massive snowball attack finally drove them out onto the meadow. And there, all at once, he had looked at her very seriously and intently. Then he had drawn those finger strokes in the snow, and a few minutes later he seemed to have forgotten Mavi, so absorbed had Bosch been in his work. She had guessed from the first line that he was going to draw her, but she couldn't believe what she was seeing until the very end.

Another sip. This time she tasted almost nothing. Instead, something like a sting reached all the way up behind her temples: In the restaurant's hall of mirrors, no one seemed to be saying anything.

It had been his idea to have dinner here. Mavi had not been hungry, but she had gladly accepted this opportunity to stall for time before the obligatory visit. Bosch was being treated like a king, Mavi thought. The head waiter literally bowed to him and had hardly paid any attention to Mavi all afternoon. In between, a woman had come to their table and introduced herself, stuttering, just to make Bosch's acquaintance for a moment. He had been less than polite. Not annoyed, but disinterested in a way in which Mavi would have pondered the thickness of a slice of bread that needed to be cut. For the excited woman stranger, this brief interlude had clearly been a fantastic adventure, as she positively floated back to her own table, where a grouchily eating man was just as positively trying to fork his jealousy down his throat. Mavi wondered yet again why she, of all people, was sitting in this restaurant with Bosch, why she could link arms with him and point him around like a prized trophy. And because she had the vague feeling that, in the end, it didn't really matter to her, she found herself suspicious.

One last sip, then the glass was empty.

“Let's leave, please,” she said.

“A coffee?” asked Bosch. “Before the cold outside?”

Mavi declined. In one of the corners of the hall of mirrors, the maitre d' reacted almost clairvoyantly to Bosch slowly stretching to his full height in his chair. In a flash, the maitre d' reached the table and took note of the request to pay.

Mavi watched Bosch. His face shone in the glow of the candleholder between them. The fact that there was no hair in it gave his skin a milky glow. It struck Mavi that she had never seen Bosch with stubble. She hadn't even felt any, not even in the morning. And yet she didn't find Bosch's face at all soft, feminine, or, simply put, unmanly.

“We'll have to walk some more,” she said.

“It's getting dark.” Bosch gestured toward the window next to their table with a nod of his head.

“It doesn't matter. I don't want to show you anything anyway.”

Mavi reached for her glass, scowling as she remembered it was empty. Meanwhile, the maitre d' jumped to Bosch's side. He handed him an envelope on a small tray. The painter made a cursory examination of the contents, then pulled out his wallet. As he placed bills in the waiting maitre d''s hand, Mavi eyed him from the side. The glow of the candlelight now fell on Bosch's hair, where Mavi recognized a bald spot. That it didn't normally belong there was betrayed by the rest of the hairline between the temple and the crest. It was simply missing a piece the size of a thumbnail. And something else was missing: a scar that accounted for the reason for the missing tuft. While the head waiter humbly thanked Bosch for visiting his establishment, Mavi inconspicuously squinted her eyes, but there really was no scar. The wound she had inflicted with the shard of glass had disappeared.

Out front, it was pretty dark. The gas lanterns hissed patiently away, but otherwise seemed of little use. A few yards beyond the pebbled path lay the trees of the Bürgerpark in complete darkness. The path snaked past the restaurant into the black of night. Mavi took a deep breath. She sucked in the ice-cold air to drive the hall of mirrors and the strangely silent dinner from her thoughts. Bosch buttoned his coat. When he had finished, Mavi grabbed his arm and pulled him along the path into the darkness.

They passed the park's rose garden, where the plants were bare and hard, biding their time. There were few streetlights left here. Anyone who didn't know the paths between the clumps of trees would have gotten lost at this time of year, even though the park was not large. But Mavi knew all the paths here, and Bosch was perhaps the only person who had never gotten lost in his life. She silently guided him toward the cemetery, over the Panke River that divided the park to the east. The narrow stream was frozen. Skid marks had scarred the ice over the past few weeks like the chin of a boxer. Accompanied by the barely audible flow of the water below, Mavi and Bosch turned through a nondescript gate into the cemetery. There were no streetlights here at all. Mavi slowed her pace, here and there feeling her way along tree trunks or gravestones. Bosch followed her until they had almost completely crossed the cemetery to the opposite side. Behind a fence was a deserted but lighted street that shed a little light on the last rows of graves. There Mavi stopped in front of a headstone.

And said nothing. Bosch stood by her side, not having any thought or searching for one. Mavi silently examined the stone and the unadorned patch of dirt in front of it.

“My brother,” she finally explained.

Bosch nodded. This went unnoticed, for Mavi did not avert her gaze from the grave. Her mouth set to elaborate a bit more and explain what she had said. Then she didn't. With Bosch at her side, she knew there was no need to hurry. Therefore, for the time being, she allowed the flood of images to enter her head. She didn't want to remember, as she so often did on that stone. This time, however, she did not resist, knowing that this visit would remain her last.

“My stepbrother, I mean,” she specified at some point. As she expected, Bosch didn't comment on that either. “We used to play together when we were little. His family had a farm, on the other side of the field.”

Mavi squatted down on her knees. She buried her hands in the folds of her coat. Before speaking further, she glanced up at Bosch. He followed her cue and squatted down as well. So they were crouching in front of the stone, like two more of the snow-covered compost piles scattered all over the cemetery.

“Then I moved in with them, and suddenly Hans was my brother.”

Mavi faltered.

“...His name was Hans,” she confirmed, turning to Bosch. She was embarrassed to have almost forgotten that detail. But he only nodded, concealing that he had already read the name on the stone. And the year of death. Hans had died in 1920.

“You can't see a bloody thing here!” laughed Mavi softly. “Anyway, it says ‘Hans Jensen’ and he was my brother.”

“He didn't get old,” Bosch muttered.

“No, he didn't,” Mavi replied quietly. She collected herself. With one hand, she slowly opened her purse and began rummaging through it as she spoke.

“He really wanted to go to war...” she stated without explaining why. She thought about the crack on Hans' face that she couldn't forget, at least not when she came to this grave. The crack that didn't really exist on his skin. Only in his soul. And visible it had been only in that one moment after Hans had told her he loved her. The crack that no one but she had ever seen, because they had both been alone in her room. His heated face, already as he told her that he had something important to share with her. Whenever Mavi thought of it, it was coupled with the memory of that surge of disappointment his words had caused in her. As if someone had robbed her of her brother, right in front of her eyes. Without her being able to do anything about it.

“He was only seventeen, and one morning he was gone,” Mavi said. And then, a few seconds of silence later:

“Father went after him.”

That had been a few months after the confession and Mavi's dumbfounded reaction. One look at her face had been enough for Hans to understand. This had been the moment when that crack split his expression, as if the invisible wedge he had pushed between the two of them had suddenly become visible and crawled up from the bottom to his head. Mavi had never seen anything like it.

From that moment on, there was nothing left of the ease the two children had had in interacting with each other all those years. Mavi, at least, had felt it, even if she had only been able to describe the feeling after it had been lost to her. As for Hans, she wasn't sure anymore. How long had he felt this way? She could have asked him, but didn't dare. She didn't want to think about it, but to undo that evening and those few words he had said. And the longer she wrestled with her loss, the angrier she became with Hans. She would not tell him that. Never.

Neither of them spoke to each other for a few days. Then they avoided each other, as subtly and as well as they could. The parents didn't notice anything. Only Herr Jensen seemed to be unhappy and loud with his son more often than before. Mavi didn't know if she was just imagining it. In any case, she preferred not to interfere.

She was rarely able to bear being with the rest of the family that year, and preferred to help out in the fields longer than necessary. And then one day Hans was gone. Mother and father didn't even look for him in the village. No one had to speculate, it seemed. Herr Jensen simply took his coat and set off on foot for the train station.

“He didn't find Hans,” Mavi whispered to Bosch. “They knew he wanted to go to war. More than once there were arguments about it. His father followed him to Berlin, because he couldn't go anywhere else. Hans could not have stayed at home. It wasn't enough for him to be part of the Landsturm.”

...and not far enough from Mavi. But Mavi only heard that being whispered to herself. It didn't leave her mouth.

“After all, he hadn't been drafted yet, and in the villages everyone would have sent him back to his father. Not so in Berlin. It was chaos there. Where Hans had enlisted could not be found out. Later he wrote that he was a medic and was doing his part. What he didn't write was that he was living here in the park in the military hospital. In the end, this was the place where no one looked more closely in his face. And where it didn't matter if there was still a chance to win or not. Hans could carry buckets and scrub the blood off the floor. That would be enough.”

Mavi paused for a moment. She related all this in the same calm voice Bosch was used to when Mavi told him about her work. There was no sadness in it, no reproach, none of the bitterness about the war that hung in the snippets of party conversation that usually didn't interest Bosch. Mavi recited this story as if it were an overlong baking recipe and as if she expected Bosch to knead anything out of it.

“It only took a few months before the war was over,” Mavi continued. “The military hospital remained, though. They left it open, over there in the old mansion ... where we ate.”

Bosch did not respond.

“There were too many invalids. The hospitals were all overcrowded. And then tuberculosis set in. Hans got it, too. He had been allowed to sleep in the house all that time, because he had no place to live and probably never looked for other accommodation. At least nobody in the military hospital knew anything about it; he hardly ever spoke to others.

They finally put him in one of the beds that he had tended to himself previously. There he lay for half a year, they told us. Then he died and they buried him right here. I guess he had asked for it, and it was only afterwards that they discovered in his things an unfinished letter that Hans had never sent. That's how they found Father.”

Mavi was silent. That was all she had to say, as Bosch found out after some waiting.

“What did it say?” he finally asked.

“It?”

“In the letter,” Bosch added.

“I haven't read it,” Mavi replied as she rummaged in her pocket. She pulled out a handkerchief with something wrapped in it. With one hand, Mavi wiped some snow and dead leaves from a spot on the ground just in front of the headstone. She tried to scrape a small hollow into the frozen earth. The attempt was half-hearted at best and she gave up on it. With her other hand, she placed the clutched handkerchief on the bare spot by the stone. With some foliage, it was quickly covered. On top, Mavi placed a few pebbles and decorative stones that she detached from the border of the grave. Then she stood up, looked at her hidden parting gift, and remained silent.

She hadn't unwrapped the shard because she didn't want Bosch to see it somehow. She had needed the handkerchief anyway to keep the soot from coming off and smearing her pocket. There wasn't much of it left, after all these years. Now the shard lay here and Mavi would not keep it any longer. She would never return to this grave that had always evoked in her more emptiness than sadness. She would leave this city, leaving Hans with the only tangible thing that reminded them of each other. Mavi no longer needed her talisman. At the end of her journey, she could protect her eyes with another tool. The shard had given her support for the last time when Mavi struck Bosch's temple with it.

She hadn't even wiped the blood off, but in the light of the next day she hadn't found it on the soot either.

Mavi felt a cloying waft play around her palate and throat, not a pleasant one. The wine made itself known. And images from the restaurant with the hurried waiter flashed again. And no scar on Bosch's temple. His skin was flawless. Like that of a girl! And that German shepherd which had been afraid of him. And the gawking people in the park, spellbound as if by the Pied Piper's flute song, herself, Mavi, most of all!

She spat her saliva into the bushes with a whistling sound of disgust. Bosch held Mavi upright as she staggered briefly while she did so. Only now did she notice that they were both walking down the street toward the station.

“What is it about you?” asked Mavi of Bosch.

“About me?” he murmured absently, without changing his supporting grip or slowing his pace.

“I don't know who you are, and I don't want to know...” declared Mavi. And right then, it felt good for her to know that Bosch had no idea why she had been able to leave her most important possession by her brother's grave, unadorned and in good conscience. No one knew her plan. She didn't need anyone for it anymore.

“...You know what I'm doing...,” Bosch replied after a pause for thought.

“That no matter where we go, people will either want to kiss your boots or steer clear of you! That's what I mean. What is it with you, Bosch?”

He considered this.

Mavi broke away from the gallant arm and ran her hands through her hair. She shook her curls as if to drive rain from a mane. Only it was doubt about this tall and still strange man.

“I never noticed that before,” Bosch finally replied. But the way he said it left Mavi in no doubt that he wasn't really answering her. It was a note to himself.

“ And I actually believe that...” she whispered, “Sometimes you're like a child, you know that? Discovering things for the first time. Maybe you're famous, but there can' t be as many people in this city who have heard of you as are staring at you already from afar.”

“Do you mean women?”

“Women, men, children, dogs! All of them, Bosch, anything with legs.“ And then, in a near whisper because she hadn't really wanted to say it, “If you at least had some idea of what a normal life was like...”

“Like what? Yours?”

“Why not. Who can I be to you?” she asked. “If you were a book, Bosch, what would I be in it?”

“Don't you want to be a chapter?”

“The bookmark, Bosch! Chapter, my ass! Not a page, not a sentence. The bookmark that has to be stuck somewhere so you don't forget where you are...”

“Nonsense,” he laughed. His good humor made her angry.

“Rude idiot!”

“But it's nonsense after all!”

“Then prove me wrong!”

Bosch seemed to be letting this go, or rather, leaving it in the dim glow of the streetlights that led from the street all the way to the S-Bahn station. But he wouldn't stop smiling, so that Mavi had almost given up hope of a response, when suddenly, without warning, he slapped her back with the flat of his hand. Not painfully, but with a distinct smack. While she cried out in startled shock, Bosch ran off behind her as if struck by lightning.

Mavi found the sidewalk empty as she turned around indignantly. The knee-jerk curse on her lips went away. Bosch was nowhere to be seen. Mavi looked back down the street, at the end of which the tall trees of the cemetery loomed in the night. To her right was an advertising pillar, and Mavi leaned to one side to look cautiously behind it. No Bosch.

“Tagged!” it hissed past her left ear in the next instant. And again a slapping hand landed on her back. Mavi startled again, even more violently than before. But as she cried out and turned in the direction of the words, she could see the painter's tall shadow disappear into the nearest doorway. This time she knew where Bosch had fled to.

Mavi kept her eyes on the house entrance and did not move. Her chest rose and fell like a bellows. Blood rushed to her head. That guy! He wouldn't come out, he didn't make a sound. Mavi did likewise until she heard her own heartbeat. She couldn't decide if she thought this joke was funny or just outrageous. Mavi's feet gladly relieved her of that question, however, silently stalking forward with the rest of her body, toward the wall of the house. When Mavi almost reached the house entrance, she held her breath. A brief, silent stop, then she dashed off, aimlessly flapping her right arm into the house entrance.

Coat fabric and the fleeting feel of a sleeve. A hit!

“Tagged!” she yelled into the night, laughing, because she couldn't take the time to turn around. She had to gain ground!

The next entrance was an open courtyard gate. Mavi ran inside. She couldn't see a hand in front of her eyes and tripped over a couple of stacked cloth bags, which were all she needed for a hiding place. Not a moment too soon, she squeezed behind them, her back pressed flat against the wall tiles. Bosch stopped his run in the doorway as well. The clack of his shoes on the cobblestones gave this away. He walked slowly and quietly past the bags. If Mavi had reached out, she could have touched Bosch. But he didn't even look behind the sacks and passed them, which Mavi found strangely inattentive. Something was wrong. She was alarmed and prepared to run. Promptly Bosch jumped around, who had only wanted to lull her. But she leaped over the barrier of sacks. Bosch dove into a void. He rumbled theatrically between the sacks, making Mavi snort with laughter as she fled.

Mavi recalled the Jensens' creaky hallway as she slipped through a makeshift picket fence where she suspected a playground. Bosch finally caught her there, and Mavi had to close her eyes and count to ten. A hundred more yards further on, by now already completely out of breath, the duel took place behind a huge bush, directly by the main road. Mavi succeeded in taking revenge, after Bosch had been able to escape from her a few times, prancing and under the protection of the shrubbery. Behind the Jensens' chicken coop, Hans and Mavi had made the same kind of feints around a well. She suddenly remembered everything. About the hiding places, the sharp cries they both could hardly control, and the constant sweet breathlessness that almost pained her even now. And yet Mavi didn't stop. Tears streamed down her cheek as she teased Bosch with silly remarks. She laughed and stuck her tongue out at him, and he was terribly outraged and smirking. She could feel everything all at once, everything she had loved about her last summer, back in the country. What it had been like to have a best friend behind the wheat field that was ebbing so beautifully in the wind like a sea. And it didn't matter right then what had followed.

Up on the bridge over which the city train passed, Mavi saw many lights out of the corner of her eye. At full speed, she crossed under the station bridge, turned right, and flew up the stairs to the platform. Bosch's footsteps echoed just behind hers.

“I'm winning!” roared Mavi with the last of her strength. The warning chime of the door system blared. Mavi bet everything on one card without thinking. She leapt sideways through the gap in the closing doors as if to rapier a chivalrous rival to the heart. Bosch, on the other hand, slammed his shoulder against the closed entrance. Some passengers jumped from their seats, startled. They punished Mavi by shaking their heads because she couldn't stop giggling. She laughed at Bosch, who was standing outside. Then the train started to roll.

Mavi collected herself and looked for a seat.

She continued to giggle quietly to herself.

That, too, still attracted glances. But what the giggling also accomplished: It shoved away something in Mavi that had seemed immovable to her for the last few years.

When she finally left the train, Hans was just a name written on a tombstone at the edge of a park in Berlin. A four-letter name of which she knew to whom it belonged—that was all. The feelings that she had allowed to crawl out of the depths of her memory for the last time today no longer clung to the name. Only the letters remained.

10. His Lips

“Mind your head, Herr Bosch!” Henrik Espen warned anxiously. He was beginning to bore Bosch with it. Every few feet, the lanky stranger had something to say. Either he apologized for the trouble he was causing, or he tried to put his infinite joy into words. He complimented Bosch beyond measure. Not that the latter wasn't used to that from the countless receptions and festivities, but here he couldn't just turn away and bump into another bunch of polished people. Here in the basement, there were only bare walls of red brick. At most, Bosch could turn around and let his nocturnal guide go hunchbacking on his own. But he had to admit to himself that he was still curious. And this admission alone he found surprisingly pleasant.

“It's not far now,” Henrik assured Espen. “Please forgive this ordeal! I'm so embarrassed... . I was working in a studio, of course. Light everywhere, dry it was, everything in its place. Until last week, all my paintings were stored there. That's where I wanted to take you, Herr Bosch! This is no place for someone like you, I know that. It does....”

“All right, man, all right,” Bosch interrupted gruffly, “Just find your way!”

“Of course! Of course...” the redhead stammered. Now he was feeling his fingertips along the walls even more nervously. He had to keep his back bent, just like Bosch behind him. They looked like twins carrying an invisible burden.

“Here it is!”

Henrik Espen opened a wooden gate that served as a makeshift door. There was no electric light in the room beyond, as there had been in the hallway. In the darkness, Espen produced an oil lamp, then another at the other end of the room, eventually more and more. While he was trying to get the square basement reasonably ready for his celebrity guest, the guest squeezed through the low gate and inspected the room.

It smelled slightly moldy. Storing paintings here was either the stupidest thing a painter could have done, or his young follower had bigger problems than he had so far admitted. And Henrik Espen did not look stupid at all. Bosch saw restless, deep eyes behind the fiery red strands of hair that fell nonstop into his face. The young man did not trouble his hands to tame them or to have a clearer view. He kept his head constantly moving. The hair barely had a second to hang in the same place. Bosch stared at him, this giant who moved like one of the children who rush from corner to corner in the city streets to sell newspapers: full of boundless energy, self-confident,loud—and nevertheless not yet part of the adult world at all...

“Herr Bosch?” whispered Henrik Espen cautiously.

“Huh...?”

“The paintings, Herr Bosch.” The redhead stood before Bosch with his arm outstretched. He pointed to a handful of paintings that he had freed from a heavy cloth on the wall. They were on the floor, but Henrik Espen now proceeded to set up two easels where he could bring his works to eye level. Bosch didn't wait for that. He squatted in front of the paintings and examined the canvases.

The disappointment was written all over his face. Henrik Espen turned away in embarrassment when he noticed it. To avoid having to address Bosch, he fiddled with the second easel, which was in no need of this. It was already standing firm and well as it was. Bosch didn't register the awkward silence. It was not the art that disappointed him, on the contrary. It literally jumped out at him and bit into his thoughts. No, Bosch had expected these paintings to be like his own. That was the only reason he was here. The next generation wanted his opinion everywhere. Dozens of painters courted him in every metropolis in Europe. None of them had ever interested him. He needed no admirers, no disciples, no students. But none of them had ever made Bosch feel as at home as this nervous redhead. As disappointment now set in, Bosch realized that he had expected nothing less from this strange man than images that could have been by him. But these paintings here were completely different. They confused Bosch. It wasn't because of the technology. Bosch realized that he had not been completely wrong in his anticipations: the brushwork in these paintings was like his! He noticed it right away. Henrik Espen did not paint like him, but he could. Only he put... now, what exactly did he put on the canvases? What was that?

“I do, well, I mean...” stammered Henrik Espen. If he had been visibly nervous before, the prospect that his idolized role model might think this visit was a waste of time now seemed to throw him completely off.

“...There's no concept behind it. I don't even want to hide it. The light is all that matters to me, Herr Bosch.”

Bosch looked at the brightest spot he had ever seen on a painting. It melted out of the middle of a sea of colors so white that Bosch involuntarily squinted his eyes a little. The white interrupted a line that ran across the canvas. Above it, those who tried could see something like a sky, full of clouds and smoke. Below it was a city. They were two completely different color worlds, torn apart by this glistening brightness that reminded Bosch of the flashing lights of photo cameras. But the light did not simply interrupt this suggested horizon, it rested within it like an axis without fixed boundaries. One moment Bosch saw the sky above and the windows of the city below, the next it was the other way around. Bosch looked more closely, but the impression was recurrent. Now the sky was below and the city with its countless windows towered above it, as if it were now growing out of a far too clear sea. Bosch shook his head, relaxed his eyes: now it was the same as earlier. He reached for one of the oil lamps to take a closer look at this optical illusion.

The redhead drew new hope, just from his guest's reaching for the lamp. He needed to talk, to explain himself, before Bosch lost patience.

“I wish I could plant something in the imagery the way you do, Herr Bosch! Something that pops out so clearly, that hijacks my senses as if you knew my innermost being and made it drunk with happiness. A story, ...a story only of color. But every time I've tried it, I've been embarrassed by the result.”

Henrik Espen stopped and cleared his throat. He turned crimson.

“No one can copy you, Herr Bosch, no one! I just wanted to practice, but even at that I couldn't produce anything relevant. And so I resorted to the only thing that flowed from my fingers...”

Bosch interrupted his inspection of the painting and looked up at the young painter, waiting.

“...I stop thinking. Sometimes I watch the brush at work as if I were not moving it. That's how much the motion flows through my hand out into my fingers. I don't really have anything to do with it...”

Henrik Espen had almost whispered the last sentence, as if his own breath was trying to protect him from saying something foolish. But still, he had just denied himself virtually any artistic creativity of his own in the face of his world-famous idol. What was said was said. And Bosch had heard it. He stood up, emphatically unimpressed. But something in him started to stir. Bosch understood what Espen had said about his fingers. He knew exactly what the young man was talking about. This was exactly how he felt every time he painted. Bosch never thought about what he wanted to put on the canvas nor how. It just happened, flowed from his fingers. Bosch himself could not have expressed it better than the redhead, who now felt silly standing next to him with his shoulders drooping. He apparently believed that just because Bosch's paintings were full of clear figures and shapes, he must also be clear about how he painted them. But that wasn't true, and Bosch could have explained that to the stranger now. What harm would it have done, except to cheer the guy up? A small yet generous gesture of fraternization among artists?

No. Bosch remained silent. If anything, he only showed more disinterest, even though everything was now falling into place. The fingers with which Henrik Espen had painted in the snow in front of the Adlon, Bosch saw their movements in his memory. And he realized that he had simply wanted to outdo Henrik Espen on the day he drew Mavi in the snow. With the same movements, and with the short red curls of the man on his mind, not Mavi's features. That was what was brewing inside him. What made him infinitely curious and angry at the same time. He broke the silence with a wordless sharp look. Bosch stared downright into Henrik Espen's face, who involuntarily backed away a little.

Then the wooden gate flew open.

Into the basement cellar which was not large anyway, Oxen-Otto and an almost equally formidable helper squeezed in. Henrik Espen was so startled that he accidentally stepped into the other easel. The painting on it fell to the floor.

“Henrik Espen, that you?” grumbled Oxen-Otto in the direction of the red-headed man. It was a question that could hardly pass for one. Otto's chest pulsed like the gown of a jellyfish: wide, narrow, wide, narrow. The inverted buoy his physique was reminiscent of was threatening to burst. It couldn't have been due to shortness of breath. People in the barn district would have believed him capable of breaking right through the brick wall instead of the wooden gate. No, Oxen-Otto simply hadn't brought any time with him. He had a job to do, and got himself in a proper mood for it.

“What, are you a mute?” snapped Otto, for Henrik Espen was silent. He was as white as a ghost. His gaze wandered from Oxen-Otto and his sidekick to Bosch and back. Then he seemed to compose himself.

“Vous devez m'aider, s'il vous plaît. Je vous en supplie!“ he said to Otto's face. But it was immediately clear to the painter that he was not talking to him, but to Bosch.

“Tell them that I don't speak German, and that I am not the artist”, Espen continued in French.

“Is he bullshitting me?” Oxen-Otto turned to his assistant with some irritation. The latter just shook his head indecisively. He hadn't been listening at all. On days like these, he brought his gloves with him and didn't ask any questions. Sometimes he made plans for the weekend while Otto took care of business.

“Who are you, then?” asked Bosch tonelessly, in French.

“I'm just the agent, trying to sell some of the paintings to you. Trust me, I can explain this, I will...”

“Speak German to me, Männeken!” nagged Oxen-Otto, giving Henrik Espen an impromptu slap in the face. Although he was a lot shorter than the young painter, the slapping motion came with an authority that was unfamiliar to the redhead. He held his cheek and glared into Otto's impatient little eyes, unable to say another word.

“He says he's not Henrik Espen,” Bosch explained calmly.

“What?” Oxen-Otto didn't understand. For the first time, he looked at Bosch. If Henrik Espen hadn't been so dumbfounded by all of what had just happened, he might have wondered why Otto was only doing this now.

“Who is he, then, huh?”

“He is just selling the paintings, he says.”

“That's some mighty big pile of horse shit, mate!” cursed Otto.

“These men, sir, I don't know who they are. I didn't do anything wrong, I swear to you,“ Henrik Espen tried to explain. This time he turned directly to Bosch, hoping that his instigated linguistic confusion would get him out of this predicament, if only he could convince Bosch.

“I told you earlier that I had a studio. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“I met a patron a while ago, and he let me paint there. It was cheap, too, ...until it wasn't. He tripled my rent after a month, and when I explained that I didn't have nearly as much money, he called me a criminal. He said I owed him, and that he would keep all my paintings until I paid him back.”

“What's he talking about?” hissed Otto in Bosch's direction.

“I tried to sell what little I had, but it wasn't enough. I gave him everything, and I would have been glad if he had given me back only a few of my paintings, so that I could try and sell them for food.”

“And he didn't do that...”

“No! So, one night I managed to grab these here from the studio.” Henrik Espen pointed to the covered paintings on the floor. “And then gangsters came to my room. They found out where I lived. I got away, but I've had nowhere to sleep in a week!”

“What am I supposed to do now?” asked Bosch, just as matter-of-factly as Espen tried to convey his secret message.

“I've been tricked, sir! They must not know who I am, please! But if they can be convinced that I am Henrik Espen's agent, and meeting with you, then they can tell their boss that I am getting the money. I'm begging you!”

Bosch listened. He read each word off Henrik's lips. He felt every bead of sweat on his face. And his fingers itched to immediately capture this sight on one of the canvases. He would have painted over absolutely anything in the room for it, with a piece of charcoal or the dust of ground-up bricks if need be.

“He understands that Henrik Espen owes money,” he finally said.

“Well, am I not glad to hear that!” grinned Otto. He looked at his assistant with bulging eyes, so that the latter also grinned. “How nice! And now that we all know that: Who is this guy and why shouldn't I just have a go at him? Does he have the money?”

“I don't have any money on me, I wish I had!” explained Henrik Espen to his pretend interpreter. “You can make up a name, Bosch, can you not? Please! If they let me go, then I'll find a way to pay them, at least a little bit in a day or two...”

“You got the money, man?” roared Otto.

“Je ne parle rien d'Allemand!” retorted Henrik Espen, while Otto was already fiddling with his pants behind his back using both hands. He produced a small pistol, extended his arm and held the barrel directly in the redhead's face. Then it got quiet in the basement.

For a few seconds, no one said anything. Bosch listened to the breaths of all four men. Otto's was quite calm, but his own was shallow and rapid. He was not afraid. He didn't know why his lungs were doing that.

“Now you're speechless, look at you,” Otto finally said. “That's a fairy tale, that salesman thing. Are you Henrik Espen?”

Espen looked over at Bosch with wide, helpless eyes. Gun barrel under his nose, he couldn't get a word out. He silently begged the great master painter. But when nothing stirred in the man's visage, he looked back at Oxen-Otto, then back at Bosch, and back and forth, as if he were cranking an engine—his head engine. Finally, he emitted a stammer.

“Can't you give them a name, please? Any name?”

Bosch studied the features behind the strands of red hair. He felt as if he could see into every pore of skin. But he found almost none. The face could have been made of porcelain. He wanted to touch it. And then there were those fingers, which painted like his. He imagined holding them up against his, ...smelling them, ...licking them calmly....

...breaking them with one of the loose bricks.

“He admits it. He's Henrik Espen.”

“Aha!” triumphed Oxen-Otto. “So, does he have money or what?”

Henrik Espen looked at Bosch in horror. His mouth was open. Before he could collect himself and say anything, Bosch approached him as if to whisper something. He grabbed Henrik Espen by the shoulders, brought his mouth to his ear, only to say nothing.Bosch instead let one hand wander up to his cheek so he could turn his face toward him. Then he kissed him on the mouth and let his lips explore Henrik's ones with pleasure. They were scared bloodless.

Otto's assistant looked bashfully at the floor. Otto did nothing except not move the pistol a single inch.

“No, he hasn't got a penny,” Bosch said, gently pushing Henrik Espen away from him. Their gazes rested locked on each other.

“Tough luck,” Otto grumbled. Then he pulled the trigger and Henrik Espen fell. His head hit the ground amid the covered paintings behind him.

Something shook Bosch to the core, a violent twitch taking power of his body. Had he had an ear for it, he would have been terrified by the violence of his thumping heartbeats. The same pulsating rush coursed through his veins. It made his legs go soft and pulverized any thought at the same time. There followed an internal whirring that threatened to tear him apart: one moment he felt larger than the cellar, than the maze that lay between the wooden gates, even than the house that stood above him. The next, his vision shrank so much that he thought he could make out every speck of dust on the floor.

Then the whirring faded away, as quickly as it had come. Bosch didn't want to let it go, but already he found himself standing with his legs steadied and his thoughts burgeoning.

The way the blood formed rivulets on the basement floor, it reminded Bosch of the snow lines outside the Adlon. And of his own.

His mood turned sour.

11. Early

Some light fought its way through the pane and found Mavi's face. She squinted in the direction of the dirty window, as if the sun was blinding her. But the sun didn't shine until two stories up, if the weather was good. Spent light arrived in Mavi's room. That's what she called the milky glow that, unfortunately, never stung her eyes. Mavi blinked only to distract herself. She would go out later, alone. It had to be a nice day. Mavi wanted to see a nice day.

“What do you mean 'a while'?” she asked Bosch quietly.

Bosch was lying next to Mavi, propped up on one elbow. With his free hand, he played with her curls.

“What do you mean?” he asked back.

“How long are you going to be gone? That's what I mean. When you say it like that, it means you'll be back, doesn't it?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Mavi nodded an additional nod to that statement. She paused. However, nothing else followed the brief confirmation Bosch had given. He remained silent and calmly twirled the next black curl around his index finger. Mavi waited for a few lingering seconds before she was

sure that Bosch really didn't understand what she expected him to say.

“If you know you're coming back, then you must know when. Why don't you tell me? Why are you making me ask?”

“But I really don't know,” Bosch replied. Lack of understanding was written across his face. Mavi was familiar with this, and as so often, she was torn between a sense of fascination that this tall, rich man could seriously be so naive, and an anger that he never made any effort to explain himself.

“You don't have to sugarcoat it for me here, you know!” she barked at Bosch. “Where are you going again?”

“Nowhere...”

“Uh-huh, and you'll be back, however?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't want you to talk to me like that!”

Mavi swung out of bed. She reached for her dress, which she had laid on the chair in front by the window. One of the buttons was still fastened and Mavi fingered it open and fastened one time each. Then she put the dress back on the chair, turned around, and lay back in bed.

“Just say if you don't want to come anymore,” she explained, more quietly than before. “I can't stand cowardice...”

“I'm not a coward.”

“I don't care where you go,” Mavi continued.

“I know.”

“I don't care if you stay away for three weeks or three months.”

“I know that.”

“You always know everything anyway, Bosch! Somebody could put a horse at your doorstep. You'd just ask what took them so long.”

As Bosch chuckled in amusement, her gaze froze.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because the one thing you don't know on principle is precisely what I'm asking you about...”

They were silent for a while. Bosch rearranged himself so that Mavi and he were lying side by side on their backs. They both stared at the ceiling. Mavi found that the moldy stain above the bottom of the bed had developed a new bump in the last few weeks. A bump facing the door.

“Does it matter?” whispered Mavi finally.

“No.”

“It doesn't matter why you have to go away for a while?”

“No.”

Mavi nodded silently. She breathed more calmly the longer she thought about Bosch's answer. She preferred not to hear an adventurous story. In a way, she was satisfied with this sober perspective. What remained was just this one sentence that made her uncomfortable. She hadn't said it yet, and she wasn't sure if she really should. For the time being, Mavi continued to stare at the bump on the ceiling. The first night with Bosch, she had woken up and watched him get dressed. And she had told him he could also stay. To this day, she didn't know why. It had burst out of her. It had been her gut that made the decision, ...and had grown sheepish when Bosch turned down the offer. It felt like a lifetime ago! Now they were both lying here again, in bed. And Mavi thought once again about telling Bosch not to go. But this time, her gut had gotten the short end of the stick over her head. It had to take a back seat to making a judgment about whether Mavi should voice what she was feeling: if Bosch had asked her, Mavi wouldn't have wanted to guarantee him that he would still find her in this house when he returned. He was not in on her plan. He was just there, by now several times a week. Mavi didn't like the idea that Bosch might no longer be lying next to her. But that was one thing. Something else entirely was whether she should tell him that.

“You're brooding,” Bosch observed.

“Huh?” asked Mavi with the atonal reflex with which people betray to not have listened to their counterpart in the first place.

“Please don't go,” she finally said....

...in her mind. And only to imagine what the words would sound like.

12. Gates, Bright and Wide

The Electrical Victoria looked like it was wearing a top hat. The hotel's own cab had been parked in front of the Adlon's side entrance for almost an hour. One hotel page after another came out the door and moored a suitcase on the roof of the car. By now, the black leather cases were piling up in three layers, making the Victoria look far too tall. It was as black as the suitcases. Where the car ended and the suitcases began was hard to tell. The image was reminiscent of a tuxedoed man struggling with a too generously cut hat.

The chauffeur waited patiently until one of the pages tapped his finger on the driver's window.

“That was the last one,” the lad said after the chauffeur rolled down the window.

“And just in time...” the driver replied. He saw Bosch step out of the door and immediately opened his own. The page felt the impact of the metal on his chest.

“Make way, man!” the chauffeur hissed. Then he pulled his cap before Bosch and opened the passenger compartment for him. “Please, sir!”

Bosch sat down without a word. The chauffeur closed the door behind him. It was his first and only ride today. That didn't happen often. He was pleased to have the opportunity to really take the car out for a drive today. Accordingly, he eagerly got behind the wheel, pulled on his gloves and started the engine.

The Electrical Victoria passed through the Brandenburg Gate. Behind it, the Charlottenburger Chaussee stretched through Berlin's Tiergarten as a seemingly endless, wide belt. The chauffeur had to keep his driving in check, for although his fingers itched to take huge swings around the numerous horse-drawn carriages, he had to be mindful of his passenger's comfort. The Adlon may have been a hotel, but its promise of luxury did not stop at the exit. The chauffeur drove in the name of the best house around. The passenger had to feel as if he were in a sedan chair. So the chauffeur steered economically and slowly. The suitcases on the roof thanked him.

When they passed Bellevue Palace, the chauffeur was tempted to tell his passenger something about the history of the house and its park. Bosch, however, was sitting in the back seat so expressionless and uninterested that the chauffeur refrained from his usual anecdote. Something told him that the painter was not to be trifled with. With top brass, it sufficed if they simply didn't like your nose, he told himself. Stories were told among the drivers. One wrong word, just one time caught off on the wrong foot, and the gratuity was gone! So the chauffeur opted to keep quiet. This trip was extravagant enough. Only a perfect brute would not give him a tip for it.

After leaving the palace behind, the chauffeur had to maneuver the Electrical Victoria through a few busy side streets before he found the short line he was looking for.

“We're reaching the AVUS now,” he called to Bosch in the back. Gone was his resolve not to risk the tip by babbling—not five minutes after he had committed to it. But the AVUS? That was something else, especially since the guest had a right to know why they were stopping. After all, he didn't have to tell Bosch how excited he was and that he didn't usually wear protective gloves when driving. Today, he imagined they were racing gloves.

“I have to show my ticket here, Herr Bosch,” the chauffeur explained. At first, nothing stirred in the back. But after what felt like a minute of waiting, a bored clearing of the throat did cross the passenger's lips. That was enough for the chauffeur to justify further clarification.

“Please excuse the delay! The Adlon is, of course, in possession of a permanent ticket. But all the cars have to pass the sales booth. It will only take a few minutes.”

Bosch turned away from the window and glanced in the rearview mirror, where he could see the chauffeur's eyes.

“It costs money to drive on the road?” he asked.

“Only for the AVUS, sir!” the chauffeur replied. He did not look back, but likewise addressed the reflection in the mirror. Basically, the two men were talking on the phone, wirelessly and through glass.

Bosch accepted the explanation. He reached for the cooler that sat in the center behind the driver's bench. He poured himself a glass of champagne. The chauffeur welcomed it, in secret, of course. Alcohol had never been his enemy when it came to tipping. Besides, nothing was happening at the sales booth at the moment. Maybe someone didn't have the ten marks that the short joyride on this fastest of all highways cost. As long as the car was stationary and his passenger was trying to dispel his boredom, he could surely engage in some cultural enlightenment! Obviously, the man was not aware of what the AVUS was.

“Have the gentleman driven here himself before?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“In a race? Please forgive the question!”

“In a race?” repeated Bosch. He did not understand at all what the chauffeur was getting at. And the latter immediately regretted that he had dared to come forward like that. With many guests, it worked when he buttered them up and suggested a daring hobby. As a rule, they puffed up their chests or at least laughed heartily.

“Excuse me, sir! I thought you were perhaps into car racing as well...” the chauffeur stammered, embarrassed by his utter failure at a conversational tactic. Bosch took a sip of champagne before leaning back in the back seat to stare out the window again, just as uninvolved as before.

“I don't drive,” he casually stated at some point. The chauffeur nodded eagerly toward the rearview mirror. He wondered if Bosch meant that he was only ever getting chauffeured, or if he didn't know how to drive at all. But he just nodded in silence instead of pressing the issue any further. He saw his tip dwindling, so he might as well hurry to the end:

“The fastest way to your destination, Herr, is via the AVUS here. It's actually a racetrack for automobiles, not to mention the racetrack! A long strip right through the Grunewald.”

The chauffeur allowed the Electrical Victoria to roll gently. There was movement in the waiting line.

“Sometimes there are a hundred thousand people here when there are races on the weekend. A veritable spectacle, sir! During the week, the AVUS is open to normal traffic, for a fee, of course.”

“Of course.”

Bosch echoed the chauffeur's word with snarkiness that made any further words get stuck in the throat of the man at the wheel. He swallowed his enthusiasm, braked, started rolling, repeated it a few times in total silence before holding up the Adlon's season ticket to the controller in the little cabin. Fine, then! He pulled on his protective gloves once again before hitting the gas pedal of the Viktoria all the way to the floor.

The chauffeur watched the speedometer. He knew all the records that had ever been achieved on this track. Opel's 128 kilometers per hour seemed fabulous to him. He only managed 30 kilometers per hour with the Electrical Victoria. That wasn't even a quarter of what the racing drivers achieved here! And yet the chauffeur now felt like one of them, while he concentrated on keeping the car on track. The one or other fast car overtook him, but that didn't bother the chauffeur. There were no more carriages here. Here he was on the last lap of a race, and whether or not the suitcases on the roof vibrated menacingly did not affect his imagination.

In the back seat, Bosch contemplated the glass of champagne in his hand. Everything on and in this car was shaking, only the gold-colored contents of this glass did not move. He involuntarily smoothed out every bump with his arm.

For about twenty minutes the chauffeur could feel like a racing driver. Then they reached the south bend of the AVUS. When the race cars came flying around the circuit, they had to go through a hairpin here, once across the middle strip, and back through the forest. But the chauffeur simply pulled out, down the Nikolassee exit.

After a few junctions, he found himself in densely tree-lined avenues and the first villas appeared on both sides of the road. Up to this point, the chauffeur would have found his route in his sleep. The remaining part he had first studied very closely on his city map and then memorized step by step. Among the drivers of the hotels, it was frowned upon to have to look up the route while driving. One did not want to give the guests the feeling that something could go wrong along the way. Looking at the maps was the last resort for a self-respecting Adlon driver. And so this one followed the marks that he had mentally transferred from paper to his memory. The intersections became narrower and narrower, the cobblestones ever more rough. Street signs were not to be found at every corner, so the chauffeur had to focus all the more. He ignored the fashion show of fancy facades that presented itself to him on all sides until the street, which he had now followed for a few minutes, constricted into an alley. At its end, a large circular square stopped the journey.

The square now only consisted of a sand track that crept once in a circle around a patch of grass in the center before leading back onto the cobblestone alley. The chauffeur eased the Electrical Victoria slowly to the top of the rotunda, where he stopped. There was nowhere to go. In front of him was the Grunewald. This puzzled the chauffeur, for there was no indication anywhere of the street he was to reach, much less the large villa that had been described to him. Somewhat perplexed, he looked ahead through the windshield to the edge of the forest. Only on second glance did he discover a small path in front of which a rusted chain between two equally rusted iron posts blocked the passage. And before he could ask himself if this was a proper path, he spotted a man and a strange vehicle behind the chain.

Rex Goosequill was leaning against a tree, in the shade. He wore a dark coat, which made him hardly recognizable against the background of the forest. Therefore, the chauffeur had only seen the small red dot on the man's hand at first. The glowing end of a cigarette, as it turned out, when Goosequill looked over at the Electrical Victoria and took a last drag. He eyed the driver. Then he tossed the cigarette away so that he could use both hands to release the rusted chain from its bracket. For a moment he disappeared into the shade of the trees.

Then suddenly a gasoline engine rattled in the forest. Shortly thereafter, Goosequill sped out of the passageway and into the traffic circle on a scooter. He stood on the narrow board like a general inspecting his troops: chest turned to the wind, nose raised high. The narrow strip of hair on the middle of his head wildly trailed the airstream. The corners of the nearly ankle-length coat did the same because Goosequill had left it unbuttoned. Thus he completed a loudly rattling lap around the square, then stopped beside the Electrical Victoria.

“An autoped!” the chauffeur commented. “They don't even make them anymore...”

Goosequill kept quiet. He stared grimly at the driver behind the windshield. The latter, in turn, had no way of knowing that the hostile look was nothing personal. Goosequill's facial muscles just went tensely toward the small mouth. The gaunt man looked grim even when he was in a good mood. Still, Bosch had known the poet long enough by now to realize that Rex Goosequill clearly didn't fancy being here. He glanced once, inspectingly, from the chauffeur to the back seat, where he recognized Bosch, then pushed forward the long metal bar at the end of which was attached a handlebar with brake and throttle. The scooter's clutch engaged with an ominous creak. Goosequill turned the handle, lifted his supporting leg onto the rollboard, and the autoped whizzed back down the passageway and into the woods.

“Do you know this gentleman?” the chauffeur asked unsurely.

“He's picking me up,” Bosch stated. “Just follow him.”

“Yes, certainly!”

The chauffeur carefully steered the Victoria between the iron posts. Although it was only early afternoon, the forest here was already quite dark. So he turned on the headlights. Goosequill on his two-wheeled vehicle was already quite a distance ahead. He made no effort to wait for the car. Involuntarily, the chauffeur slammed down on the gas pedal. He did not want to lose the strange man, even if he overlooked a few bumps in the forest path. The suitcases on the roof rumbled ominously whenever the Victoria ran over a thick root or through a dip in the path.

The chauffeur managed to inch his way closer to Goosequill. The coat was flapping from the narrow shoulders like a torn sail in the wind. The poet labored valiantly at the handlebars, lay into curves, sprang up from his knees when he briefly feinted braking, only to press the bar again and accelerate. The mere pursuit made the chauffeur's hands sweat. His leather gloves were getting too warm on his fingers. He tried wiping the sweat on his pants, which was completely pointless because he was sweating inside the gloves, not on the outside. When he realized this, he felt stupid and missed the moment when the path changed.

From one moment to the next, the Electrical Victoria rolled smoothly over the forest floor. The chauffeur looked back over his shoulder in disbelief: he was driving on asphalt, in the middle of the forest. Here, two cars fit side by side just fine. Behind him was a gray carpet of bitumen, in front of him likewise. Goosequill literally dashed off on his autoped, partly because the road was dead straight from here on.

It took perhaps another minute of stunned pursuit, then the chauffeur made out a building at the end of the road. He slowed down, because Goosequill was soon pulling into another rotunda. This one, unlike the sandy area outside the forest, was an absolutely accurate circle of asphalt. It sat like the head of a pin at the end of the road. In the center towered a monstrous fountain made of marble, almost as tall as a person. The chauffeur could see the goblet-shaped white structure from a distance.

Goosequill stopped at the opposite end of the driveway, just outside the building's main entrance. He hopped off the autoped without deploying the scooter's kickstand. Thus, the vehicle instantly succumbed to gravity. It tipped ominously to one side, but Goosequill didn't even try to stop the fall. On the contrary. He kicked with one boot at the autoped, which crashed to the asphalt. Two rushing servants were too late. Goosequill turned and marched wordlessly between them toward the main door. He disappeared inside. The two servants righted the autoped and gently pushed it out of the way like a critically ill patient.

The chauffeur's mouth dropped open. First the oversized fountain, then Goosequill's dramatic exit, ...he had been so distracted that only now did he have an eye for what kind of building he was parked in front of. Before him stood a huge mansion. The rotunda with the fountain was exactly in the middle of the long facade of dark brown clinkers. To the left and right stretched two wings of the estate, each as large as the noblest mansions beyond this section of the forest. The two wings were connected by a slightly recessed central section with the heavy wooden portal through which Goosequill had disappeared into the interior of the mansion.

The chauffeur had seen quite a few distinguished mansions, but never one like the one here. Not only was it incredibly wide, but it also reached high into the treetops. It seemed to have only two stories, topped by a steep gable roof with countless shingles, oriels and skylights. The windows on the two floors appeared gigantic. They had to be six or eight feet high—just the windows. Behind most of them, the chauffeur suspected heavy velvet curtains. The windows on the second floor were draped.

There was a soft rustling against the chauffeur's fingers. He recognized the familiar sound of banknotes. Bosch had put his hand on the chauffeur's, who was still holding on to the steering wheel.

“Thank you very much, sir!“ the chauffeur was quick to say, as he tucked the bills under his palm with his pinky finger. Bosch didn't even look him in the face. He had gotten out and tipped as usual, although his mind was already wandering. He headed for the fountain.

It was still winter, which was why no water ran over the rims of the large bowl. Bosch touched the cold marble mindlessly and looked over the edge into the fountain. To his surprise, the bowl was not hollow, but filled almost to the brim with marble. This meant that the fountain had to weigh tons. Unlike the exterior of the bowl, which was smooth as glass, the surface inside was warped in many places. Narrow lines crisscrossed the rock, like waves on the open sea. Only in the center of the bowl rose higher lines. They were one to two hand widths tall and at first glance reminded one of the ridges and peaks of a small mountain range. At second glance, however, Bosch saw that they were the outlines of a man. He appeared to be lying on his back, like a swimmer. The knees rose slightly from the sea of marble, along with the tip of a foot, the chest, the hands, and half of the head. Bosch searched for facial features, but the head was just a flawless hemisphere, without any indication that anyone had ever tried to carve eyes, lips, nose, or cheeks in it. The whole thing looked unfinished, which seemed odd to Bosch given the rest of the numerous details.

In the meantime, the two servants who had removed the autoped had given the chauffeur a hand. As Bosch turned away from the fountain and toward the mansion, he saw the last of his large suitcases being hoisted off the roof of the Victoria. He walked past the car and into the mansion through the massive door, its two swings now wide open.

“It' s all right,” one of the two servants waved him off politely as the chauffeur lent a hand with the suitcase to carry it into the house.

“I'll handle it.”

“But this thing is heavy! Your buddy already hauled the other one into the house all by himself. I'll give you a quick hand...”

“No!” the servant replied gruffly. The chauffeur, startled, let go of the suitcase so that it almost hit the floor. The servant intercepted it.

“The car. It didn't make any noise. Is it electric?“ the attendant asked. It sounded to the chauffeur like an apology for the rude answer, even if the words did not suggest it.

“Oh yes! Electrical Victoria! With pneumatic tires and braking energy reco...”

“Go, now!”

“What?”

“Something like that isn't appreciated here. The cars have to have fuel engines. If you're not looking for trouble, just leave now. I'll take the suitcase!”

“That's an Adlon fleet car!” the chauffeur scoffed. He had heard many a thoughtless insult from drunken guests, but never such an absurd accusation in sober conversation.

“I won't say it twice,” the servant grumbled as he jerked the suitcase around and heaved it on his back. “I'm still on shift here all evening. I don't need to get admonished.”

“This isn't your car,” the chauffeur stammered to himself. The servant was already staggering through the large front door and gone.

There was a smell of freshly cleaned carpets and leather in the great hall of the mansion. Behind Bosch, the double door was closed. Before him was a majestic staircase that seemed to take up most of the hall. It was so wide that several pianos could have fit side by side on the lowest step. It visibly narrowed toward the top until it reached about a third of the hall's total height. There it ended in a platform, from which a smaller staircase led up to a gallery to the left and to the right. This gallery spanned the three remaining walls of the hall. Up there, oil paintings hung in grotesquely decorated gold frames. Otherwise, a great emptiness pressed down on any new visitor above all else. The floor was black and white marble tiles, each a good three feet wide and deep. A borderless checkerboard spread out around the staircase. On the sides, two more double doors led into both wings of the mansion.

“Welcome!” it echoed through the room. Bosch looked up the stairs, where a man in a floor-length robe was making his way down to him. The robe was pitch-black, with only a sliver trim around the sleeves, collar, and other seams. It was so long that Bosch could barely see the man's feet as he walked down the stairs. The silver made the almost shoulder-length gray hair look even plainer than it already was. It fell down the sides of the head, completely unruly, precisely split in the middle by a parting. Beneath it rested a lean face, unshaven and with a hint of white-gray stubble. Bosch looked into almost colorless, silent eyes.

“My name is Simian,” the robe-bearer greeted his guest. A hand was held out to Bosch.

“Bosch.”

“I'm sorry we've only now met, my dear Bosch,” Simian said. He smiled at Bosch with a relaxedness that would have reassured even the chauffeur, who, on his way back to the AVUS, was just wondering if the Electrical Viktoria's battery would last all the way to the Adlon.

“The others have told me so much about you,” Simian continued. “It's an honor to finally welcome you here!”

Simian turned on the heels of his shoes, like a mischievous child. He placed a hand gently on the painter's back in a cordial manner and slowly escorted him up the stairs. At the top, a maid appeared as if from nowhere.

“They're all here, and even some guests you haven't even met yet! That is, they will be arriving any minute. In the meantime, let your room be shown to you, Bosch. Arrive! Enjoy the forest air!”

Simian delivered his guest to the housekeeper without further words.

“We'll eat at eight,” he shouted as he left.

13. Rien Ne Va Plus

With a resounding bang, the door to Bosch's room slammed shut. In the narrow corridor, the noise traveled like a fanfare past the other doors. Bosch counted five other rooms in this hallway alone. As he passed them, he heard his footsteps on the wooden floor. The floorboards acknowledged them by creaking.

Bosch reached the end of the corridor, where he had to turn right in order to reach the gallery above the entrance hall. Straight ahead, there was but one window overlooking the garden, through which, however, little could be seen in the nightfalling darkness. Still, Bosch had discovered a few hours ago that a pond extended almost to this side of the house.

Back in the lobby, Bosch found Amelia von Weyerau on the parted staircase. She was waiting for him and held out her hand for Bosch to escort her down the stairs. Bosch tucked her under. A comment on Amelia's dark blue evening gown lingered on his lips. The garment followed the two of them down the steps in a light train. He didn't get to put the compliment into words, however, because a roar burst in from beyond the entrance. A butler in a tailcoat held the large door half open, causing the revving engine outside to stifle any words inside the hall. Almost at the same instant, Roderich Harstein surged through the door.

Harstein did not dignify the couple on the stairs with a glance. Another howl of revving could be heard from outside.

“Yes, let them afterburn!” thundered Harstein with satisfaction and without stopping. Then, with both hands, he pushed open the double doors to the east wing of the mansion, disappearing straightaway into a sea of light.

Bosch and the countess followed without a word.

Behind the door lay a large chamber, the kind of room one would expect to find in a palace rather than in a villa in the woods. The ceiling reached up to above the second floor. As in the entrance hall, a walkway with railings ran along the walls above. As if someone had cut out the floor on the second level with an oval stencil, a void of air overhung the central dining table, and into this void a chandelier poked from above. Electric light seemed to spill from hundreds of bulbs. They flickered with the rhythmic precision of a flock of birds making voltes. Bosch had not seen such sweeping chandeliers anywhere, not even at the Adlon. There were more crystals hanging between the bulbs than cherries on a tree ripe for harvest.

The table in the center of the dining room was set for ten. Theodorus d'Utrecht was already seated next to Karl Sander at the left end of the table. They were engrossed in a conversation and did not even notice that Harstein, Bosch and Amelia von Weyerau had entered the room. Not so Simian, who greeted the guests with a blond woman by his side. He did not spend much time with Harstein, nor vice versa. They exchanged only briefly the kind of glances that people exchange who either know everything about each other or don't expect news from them.

“Dearest!” greeted Simian the countess. Amelia held out her free hand to him without breaking away from Bosch's arm. Simian took it, bent forward with perfect form, and breathed a kiss on her hand.

“And Bosch, may I introduce. My wife, Edith Adamanth!”

“Welcome!” the blonde woman said. She indicated a curtsy that remained hidden beneath her pale green evening gown. Only her head tilted slightly to the side, causing the long earrings, also green, on Edith's earlobes to wiggle. That seemed to Bosch to be the only thing about this woman that had any kind of drive. She was beautiful, with a face like porcelain. But porcelain has no facial expressions, and that was exactly what was true of the perfectly shaped face. The full lips were friendly, but motionless. Even when Edith spoke.

“It's an honor!” replied Bosch, also kissing her hand.

“I apologize for the unorthodox arrival,” Edith said. “I don't think I'll ever overcome the fear that guests get worried when they're directed into a forest without further explanation.”

Her cheeks flushed as she said it. The tinge of embarrassed touch was clearly visible on her face, and yet, once again, nothing stirred on her face. Not a wrinkle, not a movement around her blue eyes.

“I had a navigator,” Bosch said.

“Ah, the good Goosequill!” interjected Simian, amused.

As if on cue, Rex Goosequill appeared through the door at the far end of the room. This entrance had been rendered all but unrecognizable because it lay between a whole battery of bursting bookshelves. They were embedded in the wall along with their colorful spines. A rug hung on the door and the hunting scene on it barely stood out against the splashes of color and the leather bindings of the books.

Goosequill glanced fleetingly and furtively through the row of attendants as he walked. He joined Karl Sander at the dinner table straightaway, pulled out his notebook and began to scribble.

“Seclusion has its merits,” Simian said. “Guests yes, fence-sitters no. That's my motto. And my wife exaggerates her concern for our friends. She worries less about them than she does about there being talk in town...”

Simian laughed. Amelia gave him an amused look. Edith, on the other hand, just twitched the corners of her mouth for a moment before looking down at the floor in dismay.

“Let's all have a seat!” invited Simian with a boisterous gesture. He left his wife behind and escorted Amelia to the near end of the table. At the head of the table, he sat down, Amelia to his left. To Bosch, he offered the seat on his right with a wave of his finger. Edith, meanwhile, greeted another guest, behind the three of them.

“Neiwolf!” she said delightedly.

She was answered by a bottomless deep voice that sounded as if each syllable had to be dragged up a stone basement staircase with heavy chains. Bosch involuntarily turned his head at the voice, only to be more thoroughly irritated by the newcomer's figure than by his voice.

Neiwolf Zossen measured well over seven feet in height. He certainly towered over Bosch, who was usually the tallest man in the room, by more than a head. Edith held his hands in hers, looking like a play doll that was just a tiny bit too tall. They were still standing outside the door that led into the entrance hall. Neiwolf's forehead seemed to Bosch to be undoubtedly level with the door frame. The man had to stoop to move through the rooms in this house. He wore a thin coat under which a rusty brown suit flashed. With his right hand, he leaned on a walking stick that reached just below Edith's armpits. Although he was clearly very slender underneath his tent-sized clothes, Bosch doubted that Neiwolf really needed this walking stick.

Below his forehead, colorless eyes rested on Bosch. Neiwolf examined him with the calmness of a whale, in whose path there was never anything that might require him to take an undesired action. Bosch returned the long stare and finally Neiwolf gave him a thoughtful, friendly nod. Then he turned his attention back to Edith. In order to talk to her, he had to look down so far that his chin folded on his breastbone. When they had assured each other of their joy about the reunion, Neiwolf started to move. Other people just began to walk. With this huge man, however, a machinery of limbs and unhurried sequences set into motion. Bosch could see Neiwolf's shoulders turn stiffly to his side of the table. The left arm acted like a flywheel, bringing a plate-sized hand in front of the body. At the same time, the hip pulled Neiwolf's left knee up. It bulged out the loose trousers at this point like a soccer ball. Finally, the upper body tipped slightly forward, so that the right knee must also fold from its resting position to prevent the long man from falling forward to the ground.

Bosch saw all this as if in slow motion. The scene reminded him of the screening with a cinematograph he had recently seen on a drunken night with Amelia and d'Utrecht. The flickering little film had shown a galloping horse, slowed down so that the moment was visible when all four hooves were in the air and the animal seemed to be flying. With Neiwolf, there was no talk of flying; he moved more like a wall—not built to move. The cane merged with Neiwolf's legs as he moved, forming three stilts that passed in a leisurely relay behind Bosch's chair. The rest of the body strode remarkably upright toward the ceiling, given the enormous length of the back. Neiwolf passed the vacant seat next to Bosch and instead sat down one chair over, right next to Harstein. The latter was the only one at the table who paid no attention to the spectacle of the huge body as it folded itself to the table. Everyone watched Neiwolf as he calmly brought his arms and legs into resting positions, which took a while. Harstein, though, was chewing on a mouthful of cherries he had grabbed from a silver goblet in the center of the table. Judging by the clearly audible crackle, he was chewing not only the pulp, but also a cherry pit or two.

“Harstein, will you stop that,” commented Karl Sander from the seat opposite.

“Why?” mumbled Harstein absently. Chewing muscles the thickness of elevator cables emerged from under his cheeks.

“It's harmful...” replied Rex Goosequill. He didn't even look up from the notepad he was scribbling in in front of him.

“Are you afraid I could die from this or what?” boomed Harstein belligerently. He pumped his massive chest and spat a cherry pit across the table without warning. It hit the poet in the ear, who winced in response, though the miniature impact couldn't possibly have caused pain.

“... Because of the teeth, I mean,” Goosequill replied meekly.

Edith sat down across from her husband at the other end of the table, right between Harstein and d'Utrecht. Neiwolf Zossen and Karl Sander followed as the opposite seated couple, with Rex Goosequill and Amelia lined up next to them on one side, and only Bosch on the other. The space between him and Neiwolf was empty. The large door to the hall was nevertheless closed from the outside.

“My friends,” Simian called out. “It's not right like this yet.”

Everything fell silent. Then Karl Sander leaned over to Rex Goosequill and whispered in his ear. Rex's expression darkened instantly. He looked reproachfully at Simian, who, however, added no further explanation to his enigmatic words. He merely placed both elbows on the table and interlaced the fingers of his hands expectantly.

“Do we have to do this?” hissed Goosequill, annoyed.

There was a crackling in Harstein's head. He puffed himself up again, but kept the cherry pit shoved between his front teeth as a projectile in his mouth as soon as Goosequill pushed his chair back. To be on the safe side, however, Harstein followed the poet's path once around the table with pursed lips and the tip of his tongue wedged behind the pit. Goosequill silently sat down in the vacant seat next to Bosch. The pit remained unfired.

Simian smiled with satisfaction.

“May I ask, countess,” he now turned to Amelia. “That you move up?”

“Of course,” Amelia replied, barely audibly.

Bosch did not understand the meaning of this exchange. He watched Amelia move to the chair next to Sander, where Goosequill had been sitting a moment ago. Now he had no counterpart. He looked at the only empty seat at the table. Simian did the same, immeasurably more pleased with the outcome of this.

“I was really hoping that this seat would be taken tonight, too,” Simian finally remarked thoughtfully. “But this last guest of ours has not shown up, so we're complete.”

Bosch glanced around at the group, all of whom, except for Neiwolf, he knew from numerous gatherings and amusements, and had never seen so silent. Sander picked at the grain of the table with a nail. D'Utrecht was playing with his pocket watch; Harstein had stopped chewing. Amelia was the only one to dedicate a return glance to him. It was one of the cool kind, with which she could unsettle the men in the Romanisches Café if they got too close to her. But she quickly relented from Bosch because he was parrying her.

“I am pleased to have you with us once again, dear friends!” continued Simian. This time he raised his voice to that jovial stiffness common to all toasts and greetings.

The concealed door between the books flew open. Into the room stepped nine befrocked tableservants, men and women. They all scurried to the guests, equipped with silver trays on which glasses and champagne bottles stood as if tacked on. The fact that none of them fell to the floor at the prevailing pace was a testament to the experience of the staff.

Simian's glass was filled the fastest. He raised it and himself along with it. His guests did the same.

“Here's to acquaintances, new and old! Here's to an evening that shall remain etched into our memories like no other!”

Everyone toasted each other. As Bosch sat back down, he flipped Simian's toast back and forth in his head. He found it equal parts awkward and inappropriately pompous. In general, Simian's manner did not sit well with him. The brief interlude with the seating arrangement lingered in the back of his mind. Something bothered him about sitting on Simian's right. And he didn't know what.

Bosch drained his glass in one go. There stayed not much taste on his tongue, but the acid pinched all the more at his throat. The befrocked servants were prepared for anything, including glasses that were emptied at once. One of them pushed a mobile bar between Bosch and Simian. The vehicle featured a red globe above its three legs with wheels. The globe was opened at the equator. More bottles peeked out from inside, half packed in ice, the other half an assortment of dark wines, whiskey and rum. Bosch couldn't decide, but he didn't have to. The servant freed a white wine from the ice with nimble fingers and poured him a taste.

“Müller-Thurgau,” the person explained. In a Berlin restaurant, the tone of voice he adopted could have been misinterpreted as boredom. Here in the villa, Bosch heard only a recommendation of the greatest possible certainty, which needed no long beating about the bush. He did not taste, but only nodded approvingly.

The befrocked filled the glass contentedly.

“My good Roderich,” Amelia spoke up from the opposite side of the table. Red globes were pushed behind her as well. “Presumably that impressive noise just now, outside the door, is attributable to a new toy of yours?”

“Nothing that has an engine is a toy,” Harstein blubbered. The countess smiled in amusement at the lack of any charm towards her person.

“That's debatable,” she added after a second. “The cable just has to be long enough. Not all places have power outlets right next to the bed.”

D'Utrecht laughed wholeheartedly. His monocle briefly threatened to lose its poise between cheek and eyelid.

“Nonsense,” Harstein murmured. “What are you laughing at so idiotically?”

“Nothing, my dear friend, nothing!” snorted d'Utrecht.

“An engine is power. Power is progress. Period.”

“She's not talking about automobiles.”

“... rather of ... automata,” Amelia added. Edith Amaranth dabbed her lips with a napkin, considerably more thoroughly than required, especially since there was no food on the table at all yet.

“I know what she's talking about!” rumbled Harstein.

“Aren't such devices electrically powered, dearest,” Simian interjected. He swirled a glass of cognac in cadence with the syllables of his question. Again Edith dabbed at her lips. She blushed.

“Some, Simian,” Amelia confirmed. “Others have batteries. Clunky boxes. I don't like them.”

“But then the point our engine expert here is making is a thoroughly valid one, isn't it?“ asked Simian.

Harstein nodded eagerly. He had to run a double whiskey down his throat before he seized Simian's pitch.

“Exactly,” he stated. “An engine burns! It starts with an explosion and ends in motion, in propelled power! Where you can't hear anything, there's no real engine.”

“I can't hear anything, and there's light here anyway,” Sander said quietly.

“Sure!” agreed Harstein triumphantly. “That's because Simian had a million wires strung here. The current is flowing, and that's progress, too. The fat ass of progress!”

Now Amelia laughed. Bosch glanced at Rex Goosequill, who by now was filling his notepad next to him at breakneck speed. One chair over, the giant Neiwolf sat motionless.

“You can see the future in electricity...,” Harstein continued. “Just like you can see smoke over a fire. Without the fire, no smoke. Without heavy machinery, oil and pistons, no future! It's a shame people get comfortable. Too few understand that at the beginning of their fancy little machines is gasoline and noise...”

“Have you been to Marinetti again?” asked d'Utrecht, without receiving an answer.

“Harstein is a futurist,” whispered Rex Goosequill to Bosch. He didn't let the scribbling go for a second, but murmured the words at the same time as he wrote them down.

“Futurist?” asked Bosch back softly.

“Marinetti? The Manifesto?”, Rex tested his counterpart's knowledge. But Bosch just looked at him, perplexed, even though he remembered that d'Utrecht and Harstein had argued about futurists during their carousal in the wooden compartment.

Realizing the painter's cluelessness, Rex squinted over at Amelia for help, just for a split second.

“The car, Roderich, the car!”, Amelia thereupon interrupted Harstein's speech.

“Isotta Fraschini,” the latter explained, eagerly. “Tipo 8A, 7.3 liters of cubic capacity and eight cylinders in line!”

“Ah! So you did go to Italy!” d'Utrecht followed up.

“And back over the Brenner Pass with this beauty. Indeed! Nothing's stopping it. Pushed it to 90 miles easy a little while ago!”

“On the forest road, outside?” asked Amelia jokingly.

“On the AVUS!”

“No reason for the noise just now...”

“Bollocks!”, Harstein closed the subject. The servant next to him had been waiting for an opportune moment to refill Harstein's glass, which the latter had emptied and brandished like a scepter. Now Harstein held still. He hammered the heavy tumbler on the table next to him like the dot of an exclamation mark. The befrocked man mustered up his courage and poured.

“Oh, Harstein, they're children, your Italian friends,” Amelia said after a little pause.

“I hear they're in Berlin, too?” added Edith.

“Futurists are everywhere!” corrected Simian. At that, he opened both arms widely, as if waiting for confirmation from far more people than the eight guests at the table.

Rex now stopped writing. He moved his chair a little closer to Bosch and whispered to him like a prompter in a theater.

“Harstein has funded them and brought them here. He's been a Futurist since the beginning, a good friend of Marinetti, the one who wrote the futurist manifesto in Italy. It's a paean to progress and a declaration of war on cultural fetishism.”

Bosch listened intently while Harstein boasted the names and addresses of his futurist contacts.

“Anything that is not of technical origin, they are calling outdated ideas. They hate discussions about books or art, even more so when they are presented as cornerstones of society. For a futurist, Enlightenment is obsolete. They rely on machines and on violence. The louder, the better. Where steam is hissing or bullets, that's where they feel at home. To them, creation can be wrenched and wired.”

“Never heard of it,” Bosch whispered, more to himself than to Goosequill.

“You're a painter!”

“I am, so?”

Goosequill prepared to reply, but abandoned his answer. Instead, he made a note in his writing pad. From all he had heard about Bosch, he was one of the most important painters in all of Europe. It made him sick to think of Edith's or Amelia's glowing description of Bosch. How could an artist whose audience and rivals alike looked up to not know his own scene? The painters had their own futurist manifesto, in which they broke with tradition, derided attention to detail, and tried to capture movement in paint. Wouldn't they be following Bosch in droves?

“Isn't that right, Neiwolf?” asked Harstein of his neighbor.

“There's always a limit,” Neiwolf countered. “Even upwards. No, especially upwards...”

After Harstein's energetic speech, these words decelerated the table conversation, and the room right along with it. They came as if from a swamp that is reluctant to release its contents.

“But it is the steel that makes your houses grow higher than all others. No one knows what else is possible because of it. Even you don't. Isn't that what you said?”

“The weight, Harstein. The limits haven't been reached yet, even in New York. But limits there are, even for steel. Stone breaks because it can no longer support the mass on top of it. Steel bends as soon as the load becomes too great. It's the same problem. I'm just shifting it...”

“To higher levels!” insisted Harstein.

“To higher levels, yes.”

“That's the power we unleash with blast furnaces! Molten steel eats through everything. Hotter than lava and even more dangerous. But we restrain it with technology! It only exists at all because we force it to exist with our machines and processes. Just look at the old palaces, the libraries and museums of the last centuries! All vain buildings, decorated up to the last nook and cranny. In the end, however, built stone on stone, like every farmhouse. Puny compared to your skyscrapers, Neiwolf! You're building them into the sky, man!”

Neiwolf nodded.

“How's business in New York?” asked d'Utrecht.

“I can't complain.”

“That might be the understatement of the year!” mocked Amelia. She raised her glass to Neiwolf. The others murmured their approval and took a sip of appreciation. Bosch didn't know why. He didn't have to wait long for Goosequill to interpret his face correctly and whisper an explanation.

“Neiwolf is an architect, over in America. He's rarely a guest here because he's building one skyscraper after another, especially in Chicago and New York. Everyone wants their houses designed by him since he has been building with steel. Zossen towers are twice as tall as the competition, but don't weigh half as much!”

Bosch looked more closely at the architect's face. Beneath the gray, slightly thinning hair, wrinkled skin covered the large bones of his skull. What he hadn't noticed before: in numerous places Neiwolf wore bright marks on his face, like other people's freckles. They were scars invariably, but so faded that they shone brighter than Neiwolf's healthy skin. There had to be dozens of them.

“Don't let me drag all this out of you, Neiwolf. No false modesty, please!“ appealed Simian. “...Not among friends!”

Neiwolf considered this for a moment.

“Well, maybe just this, yes,” he finally said. “The Waldorf-Astoria is going to close.”

“Impossible, it's a fantastic hotel,” Amelia said.

“Certainly, indubitably! It does not close forever, I should add. The owners are following the spirit of the times. The business is now moving northward into Manhattan.”

“I haven't heard anything about it!”

“The property has already been sold. The deal is top secret, of course.”

“And you're behind it?” suggested d'Utrecht.

“I'm in the middle, if I had to put it in words,” Neiwolf admitted. “There's a race to build the tallest structure in the world. And Manhattan is the arena.”

“Outstanding, break the limits!”

Harstein slapped the table with the flat of his hand, causing all the glasses to shimmer.

“The group at 40 Wall Street is not hiding their plan. I hear they're planning over 60 stories. But Senator Reynolds has his own ideas. Rumor has it he'll be building on 42nd Street soon. I've been slipped plans that indicate only 50 stories, but I doubt the documents are authentic.”

“You're getting forged blueprints from your spies?” echoed Simian.

“It's like politics,” Neiwolf stated. “The matter is not settled by building the tallest house. It comes down to making sure no one builds a taller one.”

“But you are?”

“My clients are leaving that open. Nobody knows they're planning on 80 stories. It's supposed to be the pride of the whole state. They call it the 'Empire State'...”

The roundtable gasped in admiration.

“I've submitted a design that delivers well over 900 feet in height,” Neiwolf continued.

This earned him a pat on the back from Harstein.

“What makes you sure the competition has not also paid handsomely for your plans?” asked Amelia.

“Oh, but certainly they have!” admitted Neiwolf.

“What's your ace in the hole?” asked d'Utrecht. He rubbed his hands demonstratively, like a child eager for the resolution of an exciting mystery.

“No one has asked me for an adjustment yet, but they will as soon as the other two skeletons grow taller than the surrounding buildings. They'll get scared of the girders because they can't know for sure where it stops.”

Neiwolf turned his shoulders to Harstein with the creaking calm of an eerie door. Only the sound of it he omitted, even though Bosch could positively hear it.

“A steel skeleton like this grows like the bones of a spine. The observers don't really see what's growing there. They only see spindly steel. They imagine the rest in their mind's eye. And in their imagination, the finished house is always more massive and imposing than their own. Then they come to me and want a stopgap, a shortcut, or a new plan, whatever the cost. That will happen here, too. I will then produce the design for twenty more floors, smaller than the lower ones, but usable. With an observation deck above the hundredth floor.”

“Genius!” grinned Harstein.

Simian indicated applause by merely clapping his fingers.

“...And I'm going to mount a mast on the top floor that will have all other projects gnashing their teeth for decades.”

“That's how you do it!” Harstein was pleased with how the conversation unfolded. “Expectations need to be broken, not met.”

“A pole? For radio, obviously,” d'Utrecht commented with not nearly as much enthusiasm as Harstein. At Neiwolf's full disclosure of his tactics, d'Utrecht had begun to play nervously with his pocket watch.

“For radio. Primarily, however, the mast is to be used for mooring.”

“For mooring?” asked Amelia, as if she hadn't heard correctly.

“Yes.”

“As in for ships?”

“For zeppelins.”

The group exchanged looks of disbelief. Even Rex Goosequill, for once, disengaged his eyes from his notepad and paused.

“I hear Zeppelin is out of business?” asked Simian, who basically pretended to be informed about any major money matter.

“On the contrary! They just sold a model to the U.S.,” Neiwolf explained. “I have it on good authority that it will be transferred in the summer, ...Friedrichshafen-New York. Nonstop! And the Americans will soon be building ships of that size themselves.”

“I am more of an airplane person,” Harstein conceded, though only half-heartedly, because he thought the rest of his tablemate's plans were terrific.

“Imagine a zeppelin anchored to the tallest building in the world!” continued Neiwolf.

“There's no footing. Do people jump?” interjected d'Utrecht.

“Stairs, my dear d'Utrecht,” Neiwolf replied calmly.

“On your mast, yes. And on the zeppelin?”

“There are ramps. Have you never traveled by zeppelin before?“

“By zeppelin? I'll pass, thank you very much!“

“It's proven technology, d'Utrecht. There are plenty of masts and exit points in the air. No one needs to reinvent the wheel.”

“But the wind!” insisted d'Utrecht. He was clearly in a bad mood by now. “There are storms at altitudes like this.”

“It can happen,” the architect relented.

“And when they do, no zeppelin can dock at your mast without running the risk of impaling itself!”

“Not all weather is suitable for mooring maneuvers.” Neiwolf was less than impressed by d'Utrecht's skepticism.

“Always such hesitation, ifs and but’s!” agitated Harstein. “You can't purchase progress without danger.”

“Our feet belong on the ground,” d'Utrecht insisted. “What's this fetish about air?”

“Transportation belongs everywhere, in the air, in the ground, on water. What would you have?”

“A zeppelin on a leash, we're not in a circus!”

“My friends!” interrupted Simian. “Dinner...”

The globes disappeared through the book door, lined up like a solar system of uniform red planets. In return, the room got three sliding carts on which were arranged tiered trays. Two of them rolled to either side of the table. The third served Edith and Simian alternately.

A little later the tiered trays looked a lot emptier. They were hoisted to the center of the table. Each had three bronze tiers, filled with small bowls or shortened tablespoons in which quail eggs or pies were draped.

“What are you driving, Bosch?” asked Harstein, his mouth rather stuffed.

“What do you mean?” Bosch preferred a counter question while deciding which appetizers went on his plate.

“Which brands you drive! What have you got in your fleet? An Isotta Fraschini would suit you quite well. Although, too much power for untrained hands, now that I think about it. You seem more the chauffeur type to me.”

“The hotel sent me, ...what was it called, ...an Electrical Viktoria today.”

Rex Goosequill slumped a little in his chair. Harstein choked on too many quail eggs in his mouth. He spat some of them out as mush on his plate.

“Harstein, please!” reprimanded Sander. Edith tried hard not to look up from her small soup, which she slurped down emphatically slowly.

“Junk! Bosch, that's an impertinence! A thing like that is an insult to progress. Looks like an automobile, but has neither speed nor character. ”

Harstein leaned over the edge of the table to get a better look at Bosch, who was sitting three seats away. Or, rather, to present him with his disgusted facial expressions.

“How can you possibly get into something like that?”

“Should I have walked?” asked Bosch, unimpressed.

“That would have had more format,” Harstein teased. “The point is, why don't you use one of your automobiles when you travel?”

“I don't have any.”

“Bosch! Which century do you think we live in?”

Harstein grabbed his forehead. It looked more dramatic than it was meant to be. The coarse man genuinely struggled to control himself.

“Others have automobiles,” Bosch thought aloud. “ I get to be driven. And what difference does it make whether I am in a motor car, a train, or a carriage?”

“You are the difference!” declared Harstein angrily. “We forge our future through attitude, Bosch. Only old nobility will let themselves be dragged through the streets today. It was for good reason that the emperors in Rome had themselves announced with fanfare. They were people with attitude! They wouldn't give a shit about their sculptures, gardens and this ruined Coliseum if they were still alive today. That is something only for the bookworms and these so-called scholars. The emperors would get high on the smell of gasoline. At the scream of engineering, which comes from no throat, but from 5,000 rotations per minute. Louder than any fanfare! More audible! The old is slowing us down, Bosch. If you don't care what transports your body, you don't care where your head travels.”

Bosch let this tirade sink in. And he chewed on an artichoke heart.

“I didn't know last week that I would be sitting here with you today,“ he said thoughtfully. “And now I'm here. Would I be a different person if you had picked me up and not an electric cab?”

“Maybe...,” Harstein murmured wanly. From one second to the next his aggression had vanished.

“I once stood on the steps of City Hall in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosch. That was a lifetime ago. Thousands of people around me who couldn't believe what they were seeing: the Ford car dealer driving his Model T backwards up the steps, into City Hall, and then forward, back down. The steps were so steep that the old people had problems to climb up there without a break. That year Ford sold 20,000 cars, three years later half a million. And that was just the beginning, for his factories and for the imagination of the people who stood gaping next to me. They thought they were witnessing magic, Bosch. Then they bought Ford automobiles. Look at America now and tell me what you see...”

Bosch was silent. Harstein answered himself.

“The oil is gushing. Their cities are growing through the clouds. No one believes in magic.”

Simian gave another toast to this statement.

“The world is not the same as we knew it. I would say we should hope it still recognizes us. But it's ultimately about attitude, to use Roderich's words. Therefore, we should not hope, but take care of things. It's up to us. History is just a word. Dreams are just words that don't even make it out of our throats. Let's make sure the world recognizes us!”

The servants waited for the toast. Then they cleared the trays back onto the sliding carts and served up the main course. If the waiters had been busy up to this point, they were now frantic. Plates, bowls and dishes were placed on the table until practically not an inch was left uncovered. Between the individual containers two of the waiters, each carrying a small basket under the arm, scattered flowers, grapes, physalis and all kinds of herbs. In record time, the table resembled an exclusive picnic on the grass.

“Bosch, do you know what gives me the most pleasure whenever Edith and I have so many guests in our house?” asked Simian.

Bosch replied in the negative.

“It's not the anecdotes, not the discussions,” Simian explained. “We eat, we drink. Of course we argue! That' s the way it has to be. I wouldn't want to miss it. But what's missing from our entertainment?”

“Games?” speculated Bosch.

“Games!” Simian raised his eyebrows in surprise. He put his right hand on Bosch's left. “Absolutely right. How wonderful! Do you play?”

“You shouldn't challenge him to chess, in any case,” Amelia interjected.

“Is that so?” gloated Simian.

“I...”, Bosch tried to explain himself, but Simian pushed back his chair so hard that it almost fell over, and stood up.

Edith clung to the edge of the table with both hands at the other end. She suppressed the impulse to stand up, even though this was by no means unnoticed by d'Utrecht and Harstein. They Both followed the serious stare with which Edith regarded her husband on the other side. Simian saw this, but only smiled more radiantly.

“My friends,” he began, his cognac dancing in his free hand. Releasing the other one from Bosch, he reached for a knife and, with a few gentle taps to the glass, hushed the table. “My dear friends! It's been a long time, but may I suggest the game to you? Our splendid good sport, Bosch here, seems not averse to it!”

Rex gawked at Bosch with curious eyes. As Bosch studied the faces of the others, they all seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

“It depends on the game,” he objected.

“Simian's game is unique, Bosch. You'll like it!” opined d'Utrecht. Karl Sander right next to him said nothing. He had both elbows on the table and let his chin rest in his hands. Edith's look had something in it that Bosch could not interpret any other way than great uneasiness. She seemed at that moment like the utter opposite of Amelia, who was grinning from ear to ear. The countess was obviously of d'Utrecht's opinion that Bosch would enjoy the game.

“Shall we play, Bosch?”, Simian now asked the painter directly. “It's a little tradition, if I may say so, that the latest guest in this circle decides whether we play or not.”

“But what kind of game is it?”

“One that every person who has ever played it still remembers,” Simian evaded. This gave him undisguised pleasure.

“It would be a shame to spoil the surprises. And a manual, my dear, only games that amuse children or fools need them. The only important question here is this: Do we want to play, Bosch?”

“Why not?”

There was a hail of applause from all sides. Amelia set the rhythm with an excited clapping in sewing machine time. Harstein was slower, but drowned out everyone else with a rich clap reminiscent of a wrecking ball swinging into a wet wall. D'Utrecht clapped enthusiastically but barely audibly. Karl Sander clapped only out of reflex, as he did in the theater when the curtain fell. Edith clapped as if she were sitting with Sander in a performance she did not understand. Neiwolf Zossen more than made up for their lack of conviction with his applause. He clapped for what felt like only every tenth beat of the countess, but there was a gravitas in every single slow clap that could have been used to hew statues. Only Rex Goosequill fell out of line, because he had only one hand free. With that one he tapped the table. The other wrote while the notepad was perched on bent knees.

“Then here follows the selsction!” announced Simian, as loudly as he could.

One of the servants whispered something in the ear of another, whereupon the latter escaped not through the book door, but through the large door into the hall. While his footsteps echoed on the stone floor outside, a third and fourth waiter bent far over the table, trying not to touch any of the food. They each laid a hand on a covered plate that had been placed along the center axis of the table. As the only part of the main course, these two white mounds had remained obscured with cloth.

The echoing of footsteps beyond the door grew louder again. The dispatcher returned with a handy square wooden box, which he held out to Simian with his head bowed. The landlord solemnly opened the box. Out he took a marbled ball no larger than a plum. It changed color from brown to purple to eggplant in the light of the chandelier.

Simian inspected the ball. He gently tossed it a few inches in the air two or three times, catching it cunningly.

“All right, Bosch, you must get down to business,” he said.

An explanation was unnecessary, at least for the moment. The two waiters hanging artistically over the table received a silent signal from Simian, at which they removed the two cloths from over the towering plates. Beneath them emerged two pie-like constructions that had been laboriously crafted in the kitchen. The layers of potatoes, vegetables and pastry rivaled any wedding cake in terms of color and pattern.

A murmur ran through the group.

The layer cakes were identical except for their crowning elements. On the one closer to Bosch was emblazoned a golden-brown stuffed chicken. The chicken legs stood tall like tiny flagpoles. Dark gravy oozed over the edge of the top layer of cake and ran in thin streams down the walls onto the tier below.

The other pie was right in front of Sander. On top was a carp, with the end split and fixed in the cake. The head, complete with wide-open fish mouth, looked dead but stubbornly up at the chandelier.

“I don't have to put up with this!” cried Sander. He jumped up from his chair and backed away from the carp. Edith and d'Utrecht winced in shock, while Harstein burst into unrestrained laughter.

“This is a bloody disgrace!” scolded Sander. He had no intention of calming down. Instead, he pointed his finger at Simian, as if gauging for his words:

“Do you think that's funny?” he roared at the landlord.

“But Karl, my dear K...”

“A little joke at my expense, is that what you thought?”

“Please, hear me out, Karl,” Simian tried to mollify the policeman. “I'm sorry! You are not someone at whose expense I would make cheap jokes. You know that, Karl!”

“Then what's the point of this thing here?” countered Sander, unimpressed by Simian's assertion.

“It's all about the game, Karl! We need two routes. So the kitchen has prepared for two. That's all. I apologize, please accept that! A faux pas that will have its consequences...”

Harstein clutched his chest. His face had swollen to a red mass of wrinkles of laughter. He was slow to calm down. Amelia and Goosequill were also having great difficulty keeping a straight face. Even d'Utrecht had recovered from the initial shock and was trembling a little. He was hiding a potential fit of laughter behind his napkin. Only Edith seemed to pity Sander and his condition.

“You can sweet-talk all you want. I'm leaving!”, Sander ended the intermezzo.

“Don't be a spoilsport, Karl!” begged Simian, while Sander was already pushing past him toward the exit.

“Some things don't lend themselves well to games,” Sander grumbled, all but out the door.

“I am sorry!” shouted Simian loudly after him. Then he turned to the remaining table guests, who fell silent. Harstein spat out a few more laughs, then fell silent as well. The servants kept in the background, looking embarrassed.

“What was that all about?” asked Bosch in the awkward silence.

“He doesn't like fish,” Simian said laconically. And then grinned from ear to ear until laughter burst from him as well. Harstein and d'Utrecht raised their glasses in salute. The tabl brightened again, as if someone had flipped a switch.

“It's a long story,” Goosequill prompted for Bosch. Unlike he usually did, however, this time he made no effort to elaborate on the story.

“Come, come, Bosch, back to the matter at hand,” Simian urged. “Your last task for today: the selection, your choice!”

“What’s to choose?”

“Partridge or carp!”

Simian pointed to the two pies on the table, with their various decorations.

“I thought it was about the game?” asked Bosch.

“It is, my good man! Partridge? Or carp? Choose!”

Bosch suspected another joke, this time at his expense. But the expressions of the other guests made it clear to him that they were all waiting, transfixed, for his decision. Amelia nodded discreetly, as if to encourage Bosch. Even Neiwolf had shifted his cupboard-high torso in Bosch's direction in eager anticipation. His colorless eyes locked on him.

“What happens if I choose wrong?”

“There's no such thing in the game. Just do what you want.”

“Partridge or carp?”

“Partridge or carp!”

Simian leaned back, relaxed. He flipped the marbled ball back and forth between his fingers.

“Partridge,” Bosch said.

“Rien ne va plus! No more bets!” screamed Simian at the top of his lungs, and without warning threw the ball in a high arc onto the table. It bounced off the edge of a porcelain bowl, which immediately broke into shards. The ball rolled from there a bit more over lettuce leaves and silverware until it came to a stop next to the partridge pie.

“We're playing the partridge!”

Another round of applause, this time with more evenly distributed enthusiasm. Only Edith did not join in. She drained the champagne, which she had hardly touched since the beginning of the evening, in one go.

One guest after the other now turned their attention to the food. The befrocked helped to cut up the cakes. Bites of everything the table had to offer also landed on Bosch's plate. Simian was already tampering with one of the bird's legs.

“What about the game?” inquired Bosch finally, having convinced himself that he was probably the only one asking that question.

“Tomorrow, Bosch!” replied Simian, smacking his lips.

“Tomorrow?”

“There are preparations to be made. Tonight we're just eating and drinking, so please, help yourself! We should be well prepared. You don't want to be hungry tomorrow!“

14. The Game

Bosch slept uneasily. He woke up several times in the middle of the night because he heard noises. Or so he thought. Each time he listened for sounds, however, they didn't come. And so he continued to doze until dawn. Then, when he felt fingers on the back of his neck, the sun had suddenly risen above his window; it had to be noon.

“Wake up, darling!” purred Amelia in his ear.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a formidable morning coat. The hair of her bob had the typical waves, but in a much more untamed fashion than in the evening. The countess cuddled her hip against Bosch's belly and smiled. She patiently continued to nuzzle his neck until he slowly shook off his fatigue.

“It's high time! The game is already on,” she said.

“Where do we have to go?”

“I don't have to go anywhere, Bosch,” Amelia declared. Now she let go of his neck and reached for two glasses that stood on the bedside cabinet. They gleamed a honey yellow. Bosch frowned as she held one of them up to his nose.

“Don't argue!” she said sternly and adamantly. “This game is not for sleepyheads.”

Amelia drained her glass in one go. Bosch smelled his. The scent of peat and almonds pricked his nose. That alone was enough to make him alert.

“Down it!”

Bosch obeyed. He felt Amelia's body against his hip and looked into her eyes. She started to untie her robe, which immediately caused him the same uncomfortable feeling in the stomach area that he had had on the dance floor of the Felicita. Involuntarily, he slid away from her a little.

Amelia stood up and threw off her robe. She stood before him in only her underwear, her hands on her hips.

“Come on now, out you go!” she demanded.

Bosch threw the covers off his body and swung himself out of bed. Amelia did the opposite, diving into the hollow Bosch had left on the mattress. She pulled the blanket up to her chin.

“Ah...,” she sighed with satisfaction.

“Where are my clothes?” asked Bosch. The chair over which he had folded his evening clothes was empty. His suitcases, which he had simply set down in a corner of the room yesterday, were missing.

“Over there,” Amelia answered, by now snuggled up to her eyes. She smelled the covers with relish. When Bosch looked at her impatiently, she begrudgingly freed one arm from the duvet and pointed to a flat white pile lying on the window sill.

Bosch walked over to the window. He unfolded the fabric and held it out in front of his shoulders.

“That's not mine.”

“Now isn't that scandalous!”

“Is it a toga?” asked Bosch after flipping the fabric back and forth a few times.

“A chiton,” Amelia corrected. “Greek, not Roman...”

“Is this part of the game?”

“Get dressed, Bosch!”

Judging by the satisfied blink of the pair of eyes peeking out from under the blanket, the chiton had to fit well. Bosch looked down at his bare legs.

“I don't have shoes,” he noted.

“Neither do I,” Amelia said with a feigned yawn. In fact, there were no women's shoes anywhere in the room, not by the bed, not on the carpet, not by the door where Bosch now stood.

“And you're not coming?” asked Bosch one last time, though he didn't expect to coax Amelia out of bed.

“We all have our roles. I'm busy here, as you can see!”

The countess chuckled. It sounded muffled under the covers.

“I don't know what to do,” Bosch thought aloud, already opening the door to the hallway.

“All you have to do is close the door behind you. That's enough.” And then, after a second's hesitation, Amelia added, “It wouldn't have hurt if you knew a chiton from a toga. But, what the heck! I'm betting on you either way!”

She blew a quick kiss of her hand to Bosch—so she could tuck all her body parts back under the still-warm blanket as quickly as possible.

Bosch closed the door behind him.

Like yesterday, the crack of the door resounded throughout the hallway as it fell into the lock. Once again, the hallway was deserted and completely silent. Bosch was about to decide on a direction, either to the left toward the entrance hall or to the right, deeper into the room tract. But then he heard a tapping, irregular and approaching. He suspected it to be behind him, so he turned around. A man appeared at the corner facing the window to the garden. He was crawling on all fours, like a bug. When he saw Bosch, he tilted his head. Bosch couldn't make out a face, because like the rest of the man, everything above the neck was covered in a poison-green full-body suit. There were not even slits for the eyes. But that didn't stop the figure from crawling anyhow. It headed straight for Bosch.

Halfway between the corner and the painter, a second man appeared in the corridor. He wore the same poison-green outfit, but in his right hand he also carried a whip, which he immediately and without further ado cracked loudly in the air above the crawler. The latter then stopped like a dog on command, right at Bosch's feet. While he was now audibly sniffing for something at the level of the carpet, the second green man slowly approached with his whip. Suddenly, the sniffing one reached under one of the radiators that warmed the long corridor every few feet. He produced a pair of sandals from this hiding place.

The whip cracked again and the crawler continued his crawl. His handler passed Bosch without a word or a greeting. At the next corner, the strange pair disappeared from Bosch's sight. At his feet, the sandals were left behind.

Bosch grabbed his head. On his tongue he traced the peaty taste of his morning drink.

The sandals seemed to be the right size, so Bosch put them on. After wrapping the long leather laces around his calves a few times, a searing headache accompanied him in straightening back up to full size. He shook it off sullenly and followed after the two greens.

At the corner of the corridor he turned left, but found himself alone before the next batch of doors. He followed the corridor to the last one, which was in semi-darkness because the daylight barely reached it. Bosch saw that something was stuck in the door. It jutted out into the middle of the corridor at shoulder height. As he got closer, he found that it was a saw. Its tip was stuck deep in the wood, and the rest of the hand-wide blade hung freely in the air. Bosch touched the installation by the saw's handle, but didn't even try to pull it out of the wood. Instead, he opened the door and stepped into a windowless room. The saw made a singing sound as it moved with the door.

The room was deserted, Bosch sensed that much immediately. Still, he fumbled with his hand for a switch on the wall to turn on a light. He had suspected the crawler and his handler would be here, but neither were, nor was there enough room for more than one person. The rectangular room was the same size as Bosch's bedroom, but incomparably more crowded. The carpet was barely visible against furniture and art pieces. Even the walls were almost completely hung with paintings, small tapestries, stuffed hunting trophies, cords of all colors or slim shelves in which plates with mottoes were lined up. The overall display could not possibly be described as a deliberate arrangement. The room was a storeroom, and quite obviously left to its own devices.

Bosch squeezed his way between two draped chairs, then over to a secretaire that stood in the way. Behind it was the only section not completely cluttered with busts, floor lamps, end tables, and chairs. In the middle of an open space was a potter's wheel. It rested on a small square table with no chair in front of it. Around the wheel was a narrow aisle that separated the tool from the other antiques and utensils.

Bosch inspected the little table. On the disc was a vase made of clay, undecorated and not particularly carefully stretched up in height. If it had been made on this disc, it had been made in haste or in jest. The upper rim was crooked, finger marks clearly visible on the bulbous exterior. But what distinguished the vase from the rest of the room was the dust: there was none. While the rest of the objects lay under a finger-thick layer of dust that forced one to breathe shallowly, the vase was completely free of it. Bosch approached the disc. It had been wiped down; there was some scattered lint on the surface that the mop had rolled up but not picked up. Whatever the reason was for the saw to have shown him the way into this room had to do with the potter's wheel.

Below the surface of the table, a metal axle connected the upper disc on which the vase stood to a larger disc just above the floor. A foot switch next to it was connected to it, and when Bosch stepped on it, the disc swayed forward a little. He tried three or four short tilting motions with his foot, then Bosch had found a steady rhythm with which the axle slowly turned the potter's wheel around in a circle.

The vase now could not hide its design flaws any longer. The upper end rotated up and down in such an elliptical fashion that it could make one dizzy. The vase's belly grew wider, narrower, compressed, stretched—and all over again. Bosch watched the strange dance of imperfection that the vase seemed to be performing for him. It made him think of the flickering movies in which men threw pies in their faces or balanced over scaffolding. The vase, in its clumsy movement, exuded the same subliminal warning: Imminent danger!

He flipped the switch back and forth a little faster until the vase's dance went from clumsy to ecstatic. Bosch propped his hands on the surface of the table to give himself and the device more support. Then he treaded even faster until the vase began to clatter gently on the disc. One last effort, and then the vase slid off the glass with a brief whirring sound and shattered against one of the surrounding chairs with a loud clang.

Bosch let go of the switch and bent over the shards of clay beyond the table. In one of them lay a snow-white slip of paper. Only one word was on it, written in thick brushstrokes:

‘Hall’

Bosch tucked the note under the belt of his chiton for safekeeping. He didn't know whether he would be needing it later. He let the door to the dusty room swing shut, so that the saw blade flapped wildly and made its singing sound.

He walked back down the corridor to his room, from there on to the main hall, where he once more found no one. A quick look around assured him that he was alone on the upper floor, so he went down the stairs to the ground floor, hoping to discover another clue there.

Again, nothing. Bosch walked once around the grand staircase, the back portion of which, where the main staircase branched out into the two stairways, was suspended in the air. When Bosch returned to its foot, a feather floated down onto the marble right in front of him. And then another, and another. He looked up at the gallery, where dozens of figures were now appearing one by one. All of them were dressed like him, except that they also wore white eye masks. Everyone who stepped up to the railing threw a feather into the room, so that within seconds the entire staircase was drenched brown-black. Bosch recognized the pattern from the decoration of the partridge cake. He stood in the middle of the stairs and waited for the spectacle to end, which only happened when the masked people were positioned on all three sides of the upper floor.

No one said a thing. The pairs of eyes behind the white masks stared silently down at Bosch, he up. Try as he might, he could make out none of the evening's guests. At the very least, he should have been able to recognize Harstein and Neiwolf by their abnormal physical builds alone, masked or not.

Meanwhile, the steps and marble tiles around him were littered with feathers. Bosch waited for someone to address him, but he waited in vain. Seconds ticked by without so much as a single gesture from the figures above him. They could have been statues.

“I have the note,” Bosch finally remembered. He pulled the piece of paper from under his belt to show it to the masked ones. He held it high above his head, but no one responded. All remained mute. Bosch stopped paying attention to the silent crowd. He turned toward the large door that led into the dining room. When he tried to open it, it would not. So he crossed the hall to the opposite door, accompanied only by the faint echo that the hard soles of his sandals made on the marble with each step. This door was also locked.

Bosch was losing his patience. He turned back and headed for the stairs. As he put his first foot on the bottom step, someone threw something down to Bosch. A shard of ceramic rumbled down the steps and slid all the way onto the tiles. The impact had scattered a few of its edges, but most of the shard lay there in one piece. Bosch paused, withdrew his foot, and picked up the shard. It was painted, black and gold. Bosch could not make out what the design represented, but he could make out what was carved on the undecorated inside. A single word: ‘Daedalus’.

Upstairs, a sudden commotion broke the silence. One by one, the masked figures disappeared through the door that led to Bosch's left, directly into the circular walkway above the dining room. The masked ones on this side had already collectively disappeared through this exit. Everyone else was pushing in that direction as well. As fast and noisy as the whole thing was, it seemed rehearsed at the same time. The chain of people threaded smoothly and nimbly through the door.

Bosch dropped the shard and headed up the stairs. The fewer masked people still visible above him, the more he quickened his pace. He rushed up the top three steps in one bound, as the last two masked people pulled the door shut behind them.

Bosch grabbed the handle and rushed into the dining room, which he had not yet seen from above. The ceiling here hung just above his head, so that the chandelier was at eye level with him. Around the room ran the slender walkway of wooden planks he had seen from below. Across from the door to the hall was an exit, just above the hidden book door on the ground floor. But to Bosch's right was a second one, somewhat open. Bosch decided to go that way.

As he stepped through the door, he ran into a leather glove. Fingers clamped over Bosch's mouth and pushed his head back. His calves were met by a shin—not forcefully, but deliberately—sweeping forward like a scythe through hay. The combination of his head being pushed back and his legs being jerked forward immediately threw Bosch off balance. He sank backwards to the ground. Above him, two pitch-black shapes slid into his field of vision. They wore one-piece suits, just like the crawler. Their suits, however, were made of leather, including the masks that completely covered both their heads. That was all the men were wearing, except for identical dark goggles for each one.

Bosch tried to stand up, but one of the two leaned on him with his knees. The other grabbed Bosch's legs. Then he jumped up with this load and started walking. The knees gave way from Bosch's chest at the same moment. He took a deep, panting breath, but had to use his arms simultaneously in order not to be dragged down the corridor completely helpless. Therefore, he could not prevent the second man from now lifting him up under the armpits and immobilizing him with a locking grip. The whole operation had not even lasted long enough for Bosch to express his surprise in a scream or a groan. He hung between his two bearers like a piece of prey on a barbecue spit. Ahead of him, he saw the back of the hooded man clutching his legs with an iron grasp. Even from behind, the man's drum-sized belly was clearly visible. His legs stood out massively at an angle from his hips like landing piers of a harbor. The rear bearer was equally massive.

They stomped across the corridor, directly into one of the adjoining rooms. The guy in front didn't have a hand free, so he pushed the door open with his shoulder as they ran. It gave way as if it were the entrance to a dollhouse.

Inside, only a few candles shone. The two bearers got down on their knees, turning Bosch over once and pushing him face down into a pile of white powder that lay prepared on a glass table in the middle of the room. Bosch's lips picked up some of the powder; suddenly the tip of his tongue twitched out so that he could taste it. Except for a slightly bitter sensation, nothing of taste remained.

“Breathe, come on!” one of the two hooded men grunted out with effort. Bosch was fighting back now. Even with the two of them, the massive men could barely keep him face down on the tabletop.

Bosch snorted violently into the pile of powder, causing a white cloud to form. But he had to breathe in again, and noticed how the layer of powder under his cheek crept partly up his nose.

“There you go, have fun!” murmured the same man who had addressed him earlier. He let go of Bosch, as did the other disguised person. Without another word, they left the room and closed the door.

Bosch struggled to his feet. He remained crouched before the table, but wiped his face clean with the sleeves of his chiton. The powder was even in his hair. After a few moments he felt clean enough to take a look at where he was.

The room was padded all over with pillows on one side. Here stood the flat glass table. On the other side, Bosch spotted only a small library and a wing chair. In that chair was Rex Goosequill. He had pulled his knees in close to him and was grinning at Bosch. When he saw Goosequill, Bosch wanted to ask him how long he had been sitting there. He opened his mouth, but fell backwards into the sea of pillows because a flash of lightning went through him, from his toes to his fingertips. The sensation put the brakes on any question that was buzzing through his head at the moment.

Goosequill leapt up from the wing chair like a predatory cat that had waited very long and patiently for the most opportune moment to attack. He sneaked up to Bosch, who was lying in the cushions with his arms spread out. Barely beside him, Goosequill drew out a slender pipe. He pulled it out of the inside pocket of his jacket. As the first resident of the house that day, Rex wasn't wearing a Grecian costume or any strange one-piece suit—or was half-naked like Amelia.

“A breath of fresh air for the player,” Goosequill said cheerfully. He lit the pipe, puffed with a rapid snap of the breath, and blew a yellowish cloud into Bosch's face. He himself stuck his nose into the smoke before continuing.

Bosch breathed calmly. In his mind's eye, the last few minutes flashed by: Again and again he saw his feet flying up the stairs in the hall. He saw the saw swinging in the doorway, Amelia peeking out from under his covers. He heard the trampling of the masked figures above him as they disappeared like ants through the door to the dining room. And he heard the shard slithering across the tiles.

“Daedalus,” Goosequill breathed into Bosch's face. He wrapped the word in another yellow cloud. With his hands, he waved it all over the reclining man.

“Daedalus, is that you?”

“It's decided. Did you think you were above the law? You are a murderer! ”

“Daedalus!”

“You must leave Athens.”

“Daedalus?”

“Crete, you'll be safe there! And so will Icarus. Minos can use you, your ingenuity and your inventions.”

“Your journey is far from over...”

“Daedalus, do you hear me?”

“Daedalus!”

Bosch righted himself. The room suddenly looked different. The candles had burned out, but his pillow castle was as bright as day. He squinted his eyes. Two large windows let in the light of afternoon where before he had perceived only darkness. On either side of each window hung heavy purple curtains. They were now pushed aside. Bosch took notice of the glass table, or rather, that the glass looked clean as a mirror. Nothing to be seen of the white powder.

Then he remembered the wing chair: empty. Bosch looked around the room, but Goosequill was not here. No sign of him nor the two men who had dragged him here.

Something inside of him warned Bosch that it would be difficult to get up. Perhaps it expected a leaden fatigue in his limbs to match his foggy thoughts. But Bosch literally jumped to his feet. Not a trace of fatigue. He felt dazzling and didn't waste a second getting out of that room. In one leap, he was at the door.

Locked. Bosch rattled the handle briefly and violently, but nothing happened. Even a determined push with his shoulder did not change the situation. Bosch stepped back. A look out the window seemed to him the next best step. Outside he could see the pond, which at this spot reached almost to the wall of the house, ...but only almost. Between the water and the villa was a paved path and a hedge. Here on the second floor, the window was at least 14 feet above the ground. Besides, Bosch couldn't make out anything he could have climbed on. He wouldn't be able to escape the room through the window, whether the game even called for it or not.

Bosch's fingers were tingling. As if he were being hunted, he frantically continued to look around his prison. He tripped over the pillows, let his fingers slide over the furniture, spun in circles. Finally, he slumped down in the wing chair to sort out his thoughts. At one point, his eyes caught on the tinny flap opposite the armchair. He measured it for a moment before slowly standing up, walking over and pushing the flap up. Behind it was the shaft of a dumbwaiter. Bosch saw nothing inside but dusty gloom. The most recent portion of food had not been pulled through this elevator yesterday or last month. The only aroma that drifted up from below was a faint musty basement smell.

Bosch pulled the rope on the side of the shaft. It moved, albeit reluctantly. After a few powerful pulls, the elevator's serving platter appeared. It was about a three-foot wide and not quite as deep. Bosch leaned into the shaft with one elbow as a test. There was a soft crack under the wooden plate, which he weighed down with his upper body. But otherwise nothing suspicious happened. So Bosch took a step back, mentally laid out a folding technique for his much too long arms and legs, stretched once, ...and squeezed into the shaft.

He could hardly breathe, so badly did his own body press against him. Both knees pushed hard like flat irons against Bosch's head. His back received an involuntary imprint from the grating that separated the contents of the elevator from the shaft. Somehow, to complete the feat, Bosch also managed to pull his right foot inside so he could try to loosen the pull rope. It hung in front of his right cheek, accessible only by his fingertips.

The first jerk gave two messages: one of them good, one of them not so much. The elevator sagged a few inches. That was good, because nothing broke or cracked more ominously than before. Less good was the extent of progress made. Huffing and puffing, Bosch released one hand-width of slack after another in his folded position on the improvised vehicle. It was a slow descent, but it worked all the same. Bosch didn't even try to go up to the second floor. His own weight was useful downwards, but upwards it was almost immovable, at least not by the force of his fingers alone. So he stoically let himself sink down until he thought he could make out another flap in the darkness. He tapped against the sheet metal, and sure enough, it was sheet metal. At the bottom edge he also found the lever he had anticipated, by which he could open the elevator from the inside. However, it would not move. Bosch had little room to jiggle it with all his might anyhow. Something told him that this flap did not remain locked by pure happenstance, if the one through which he had been able to escape the room had not been open by pure happenstance either.

Bosch refined his technique. The jerks of the elevator became faster, almost rhythmical. The bumpy vehicle descended unerringly toward the basement. There had to be one, because Bosch didn't want to imagine his misery if it wasn't so. Moreover, such a property could not simply be propped up on the forest floor. He didn't have to be an architect like Neiwolf to know that.

As a little more light entered the elevator with each jolt, Bosch knew he had been right. He brought his compressed body down to the level of the basement door and then slowly peeled himself out of the shaft. On the stone floor in front of it, he sank to all fours. He stretched like a cat before getting up to inspect the room.

The light he had seen came from dozens of candles. Each one was waist high. They gave the vault a yellowish glow, for there was no daylight down here. No windows, no electricity. Everything was sparse, from the lights to the furnishings. Between himself and the unplastered opposite wall stood countless folding chairs, some in a theatrical seating arrangement, others placed completely randomly throughout the room. Most of them, though, were facing a small stage, also lit only by candles. In their midst sat an old man.

Bosch could not have guessed how old the man was, for his features were hidden behind a sweeping beard. The hair on his cheeks sprouted from his skin as thick as fur, almost up tp his eyes, so that hardly a wrinkle could be seen. Only the mixture of gray and bright white streaks in his beard and hair betrayed that the man's youth was long gone.

Bosch wanted to go up to the man and talk to him. Talking points presented themselves: Why was he wearing a gold crown? Why was he almost naked apart from that? His upper body, including a balloon-like small belly, hung casually and pale on one of the folding chairs. Only hips and legs were clad in billowing cloth. Bosch sorted his questions in his head, but shelved them when the wall vis-à-vis seemingly opened with a shrill squeak.

It was an elevator door like the one behind Bosch, which made itself heard loudly. Unlike his emergency exit from the second floor, this one didn't involve the sheet metal being fully open. Several fingers squeezed through a small gap. Then a second, longer squeak began, pushing the sheet metal upward. A third man, who seemed to have considerably less trouble with this exercise than Bosch, climbed out of the elevator. He fell out of the side of the shaft and onto the floor. Groaning, he picked himself up. This one, unlike the chubby old man, was clad in exactly the same kind of chiton as Bosch. He patted the dust off his cloth before looking around the room the same that Bosch had done. When he spotted Bosch, he was startled.

Bosch waited. The man across from him was not tall, certainly a full head shorter than himself, and wiry. That was why he had had the easier exit from the dining chute. His face was angular, young, and apparently overwhelmed with the situation. After a few moments, during which all three men in the cellar stood silent and rigid, the little one from the other elevator took to his heels: he grinned curtly, then stormed into the half-light at the end of the room that was furthest from the stage. Bosch's muscles twitched. Involuntarily, he also started moving, closer to the center of the cellar. Trying to see where the little man disappeared to, he knocked over one or two folding chairs. Already the man was gone, escaping through a dark door, behind which there was undoubtedly a staircase. Bosch heard the nimble tapping of feet on steps.

The fat man on the stage watched the process quite impassively. Bosch looked to him, perhaps to get a final impression before making his decision. He didn't know why the little guy was running away from him, let alone if that was even true. But he wouldn't be able to ask him about it if he didn't follow him.

The fat man nodded patronizingly. Without a word, without an explanation, but with the greatest possible degree of dignity that an almost naked man with a razzle-dazzle beard and a golden crown could demonstrate. Bosch then instantly pulled aside all the chairs in his path and likewise leapt through the dark doorway, which turned out to be a passageway to a spiral staircase. Every few steps a tiny torch hung from a hook in the wall. The steps spiraled upward like the circular staircase in a fairy tale castle. It was made of rough stone, both underfoot and on the walls. At its top there was a door frame, no different from the others in the house. The two images did not match, though Bosch had no eye for the architectural discontinuity: he grabbed the doorframe with both hands as he ran, swinging himself by it into the hallway.

And there he stood, breathing heavily.

There was no sign of the little man, his fellow sufferer from the elevator. Ahead of him lay another hallway, which ended here with the stairs to the basement. To the left and right—as usual in this mansion—more doors to more rooms. Bosch did not remember having entered this part of the house before. Most certainly, he would not have overlooked the peculiar entrance to the basement. What he also couldn't have overlooked, right now, was the equipment cluttering the hallway. It was a veritable barricade of doll carts, wheelbarrows, scooters, and all sorts of other strange things with wheels. Bosch saw a floor lamp on three balls, a unicycle, ...even one of the red globes from the night before. All of this had been leaned against the walls or wedged into each other. Some of the stacked equipment tilted ominously.

Bosch looked for a way through this installation. Space had been left for one person, in the form of a serpentine path. Bosch didn't even have to use his hands to move anything. That led him to suspect that this was not an obstacle he was supposed to be dealing with. But the mess couldn't be the result of a lazy cleanup policy by the staff, either. Whatever was behind this, he ignored it for the moment as he reached the end of the barricade. Beyond it, he saw that the hallway turned to the right. He also heard voices from there.

Around the corner, six doors stood open, three on each side. Through the first one, Bosch saw a group of men lying on the floor. They were all dressed in Grecian. Most were propped on one elbow and either gesturing with their free hand, snacking on grapes with it or holding drinking cups. There was animated discussion about the value of some piece of land. A spiteful hissing sound came from the door that was opposite: An arrow was stuck in a target made of pressed hay. It was as big as a wagon wheel, hung right next to the door. At the far end of the room stood a woman with a bow. She was still following the trajectory of her bullet with one eye shut as Bosch stuck his head through the door. At her side, a bald man with a crossbow waited his turn. Neither paid Bosch any attention.

There was even more noise coming from the next set of doors than there had been from the first two, so Bosch took a few more steps down the corridor. To the left, two fighters were thrashing at each other with swords. The room around them was completely empty, not even pictures hung on the walls. Bosch eyed the two fighters critically, but none of them were nearly as bulky as the two hooded men who had overpowered him. For their part, they were too busy alternately ducking the other's blows and then lunging themselves to react to Bosch. He listened from inside the door to the clashing of swords and the accompanying strained grunts until he lost interest.

In the fourth room, across the corridor, there was a flurry of activity for quite different reasons: women and men squatted in a circle on the floor. In turn, four small bones were thrown onto the bare floorboards. After each throw, a murmur went through the group, underscored by the music of two other figures in the background. One played two instruments simultaneously with the mouth. They looked like flutes, one in each hand. The player held them spread in front of his face, only the mouth pieces were side by side on his lips. His fingers moved so nimbly over both round rods that their tips were barely visible. The wondrous melody that this finger dance conjured from the instrument was backed by another musician and his lute.

Someone from the circle on the floor turned to Bosch. The woman held out her drinking cup to him. He took it and had a taste. After a few tosses, Bosch understood what the circle was doing. He reached into the playing area from above, unbidden, to pick up the four pieces of bone.

The man about to make his toss protested with a nonsensical stammer. Bosch ignored that. He looked at the four matching pieces of bone in his hand, turned, and as he walked, tossed them over his shoulder back into the circle.

Next to the door was a sideboard full of bottles and polished glasses. Bosch reached randomly for one of the opened wines. Behind him, another murmur erupted.

“I don't believe it!” exclaimed the gambler Bosch had robbed of his toss.

Bosch walked to the next door. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and took a long draught from the bottle. It tasted like the potion in the woman's cup. With the bittersweet tingle of blackberries on his tongue, Bosch watched the stark-naked couple who were standing alone in the room. That is, the man was standing, the woman had laid down with her back on a narrow table that she just barely fit on. Her naked shoulders protruded a little into the air, her hips as well. The man in front of her helped the woman not to lose her balance by holding her ankles with his hands.

Bosch looked closely at this still life, in which neither character moved an iota. He took another sip from the bottle and waited for something to happen. Obviously, the man was ready to not only gallantly hold the feet of the naked woman before him. Bosch could see the indication of it protruding from the naked man. She, on the table, looked into his eyes while her chest calmly rose and fell. He, in return, was looking at her every inch in detail.

Bosch grew impatient. Nothing happened. From the hallway came the sounds from the other rooms, which he could tell apart better, now that he had visited them all. Every few seconds the swords of the two tireless fighters clanged. Here and there a murmur from those playing. The hiss of an arrow, laughter and in the background the dancing melody of the musicians. Only here, in this room, absolute silence. And no motion.

Bosch kept drinking. His eyes rested on the naked people. They had been holding this pose for how long? He clutched his temples, partly out of boredom, partly because the background noise was too much for him. Suddenly he saw Goosequill looming over him in his mind, in the room from which he had been forced to descend.

“Resourceful you are, Daedalus, no question!” the poet purred in Bosch's memory. “But how could you possibly accomplish this? A man and a bull? She's as bizarre as she is beautiful, the queen, isn't she?”

Bosch kept his eyes closed. Something about this room was off. It was the only one where nothing was happening. The naked people were waiting. Everywhere else, the particular goings-on were in full swing.

“What can you do, Daedalus? What can you build?” said Goosequill with a smug grin before Bosch opened his eyes and mentally blew away that snippet of his befuddled memory.

He turned around, the bottle still in his hand. Making his way back down the hallway, he wasn't fazed by the jeering and general toasting that went on behind the other doors. He headed straight for the dump of carelessly left vehicles.

Bosch didn't have to search very long. He surveyed the array and immediately found what he had been looking for. He lifted a stroller out of the way to get to the custom-made item he hadn't even seen when he first walked past the installation: a sliding clothes rack, the kind Bosch knew from hotels. This one had the typical wide brass bar from which coat hooks normally hung. But someone had tampered with the sides. At both ends, a triangular cowhide extended from the brass rod down to the two wheels on each side of the coat rack.

Bosch took one last sip, then set the empty bottle down and shook the rather rickety construct from its place, out into the corridor with the open doors. He pushed the rack up to the room with the two naked men. They hadn't moved a bit, their gazes still locked on each other. Bosch pushed the clothes rack through the door. He approached the man with the open side, where no skins hung, but the man did not move. He was also towering with his head well above the brass bar. Bosch backed up so he could drive the dummy cow past the man to the reclining woman. The table was so narrow that Bosch could simply slide the clothes rack over it. The naked woman disappeared between the cow skins in the process.

Then Bosch stepped back and waited. As if on command, the naked man bent over the woman. She pulled him on top of her, helped him with a hasty grip, and already they found a common rhythm in which his buttocks and her thighs lifted and lowered. While he sought support with his hands at various points on the edge of the table, he bumped his elbows against the cowhide. The woman, too, lost control of where her feet were from time to time. She banged against the bars. Bosch watched the two—until he heard the scream.

It had to penetrate every corner of the house, that torn rumble. Bosch involuntarily buckled his knees a little, as if to duck from it. The naked man collapsed like a wet sack on top of the woman on the table. She clutched at his back. The background noise from the other rooms that had accompanied the scene so far died away instantly. The scream drowned out everything.

As soon as it ended in almost weeping volleys, it was clear that the goings-on in the other rooms would not resume. After a few moments of absolute silence, someone at the top of their lungs let out a moo. Others—all of them, judging by the volume—followed suit and also mimicked the cow call. The voices became a chorus in which some of the participants sounded more like a pack of wolves.

The mooing calls grew quieter and louder, drawn out, plaintive.

Bosch went to the door. A trampling of many feet began, making the corridor floor shake. From the other rooms, the musicians, archers, gamblers, and revelers all shot out into the corridor one after another. They moved past Bosch's room, down the hallway and around another bend, out of his view. Within seconds, they had disappeared to the sound of various dying moos. The only ones that were left were Bosch, standing in the doorway, and the two naked people, lying on the table beneath the furred clothes rack as if they had merged into one large mass. Bosch looked over at them, then in both directions of the corridor. Nothing, silence. He went through the neighboring rooms one by one. Everywhere the various utensils lay scattered on the floor. Cups and bottles had been tipped over in a hurry. Pools formed on carpets and floorboards.

There was nothing left for him to do here. So Bosch decided to follow the pack. He abandoned the room with the naked people and walked to the next bend in the corridor, where the pack had disappeared. Right at the corner there was another door, but unlike the previous ones it was made of metal, unadorned, and placed inconspicuously at the edge of the wall of the house. Bosch reached the bend and made a turn.

The crowd from a moment ago was staring at him. All of them. They squeezed in rows of three, side by side, four or five feet in front of him. Bosch stopped. They said nothing, neither did he. Then the pack howled and rushed forward. Bosch was pushed backward by the force of a dozen people. Arms, elbows and hands were landing on his torso and face. To stay on his feet, he had to yield to the weight of the charging group. So he staggered backwards, returning to where he had come from, until he crashed his back into the metal door. One of his hands found the handle, causing the door to give way and Bosch to tumble into the room.

He fell softly, and not all the way to the floor either. It was more like he was leaning into something.

The first row of the pack closed the door behind him. Bosch reached for the handle, but from the outside it was locked with united strength. Then a delicate latching sound was heard and Bosch knew they had locked the door. He let go of the handle as pillows and tablecloths rained down on him from behind.

There was only one pale bulb up at the ceiling, giving little light, but Bosch didn't need it to realize he was stuck in the laundry of the house. Normally, though, it was unlikely to have been in the condition he now found it. Laundry pressed in on him from all sides. It was up to his chin, so that he could hardly move. In some places, there were even small peaks towering above his head, reaching almost to the ceiling.

Bosch freed his arms from the sea of sheets, pillows, shirts, pants, tablecloths and other fabrics. He tried to move forward like a shipwrecked man on the open sea. Except with his feet he could move a little easier than in open water. He didn't step into empty space, but was able to create little footholds with the tips of his feet. It felt like he was trying to climb a hill of butter, but at least he was making progress. After two or three swimming-like movements, his head had risen sufficiently above the surface of the laundry that he could survey the entire room.

Before him he saw three things: the bare light bulb hanging so low from the low ceiling that the waves of sheets must have been getting warm from it, the top of a door frame on the other side of the room, and in the very center of the laundry a dinghy.

Goosequill sat in it, with his back bent against the ceiling. There was not three feet of space between the ceiling and the textile sea. The dinghy was partially submerged in the fabrics. The poet held onto it with both hands as if he were on the high seas. He grinned to himself without looking at Bosch and was humming something.

Bosch closed his eyes and shook himself in his mind. No, Goosequill and his dinghy were still there, when he opened his eyes again. He waded toward the other door with his arms swimming. As he got closer to the dinghy, he heard more and more of what Goosequill was humming softly.

“Rip, rap, got my medicine? Rip, rap, I need it bad for him!” purred Goosequill mysteriously. “Rip, rap, only you can flee. Rip, rap, got to drag it after thee.”

Bosch halted in front of the dinghy. At last Goosequill looked at him. He repeated his rhyme. And then again, word for word. He didn't change a thing, and he wouldn't stop. He kept humming this mantra quietly and patiently.

“Rip, rap, got my medicine? Rip, rap, I need it bad for him! Rip, rap, only you can flee. Rip, rap, got to drag it after thee.”

Bosch watched Goosequill's mouth as he would repeat the mantra. The poet rolled the ‘R’ of the first two words in a crunchy, exaggerated manner. It was not his usual dialect. Goosequill normally had no hint of any dialect or accent at all.

“Rip, rap,” it crackled in the narrow space between the ceiling and what felt like a ton of textiles. On impulse, Bosch reached for the edge of a sheet he found next to his right hand. He bit into the hem, leaving a small tear in it. Then he pulled on it with both hands and twisted the parting line so that he could slowly separate a narrow strip from the sheet.

Goosequill's mantra got stuck in his throat. Bosch looked to him when suddenly there was silence. He had never seen Rex so surprised.

“Rip, rap?” he asked him.

Goosequill just nodded. Bosch thought he could detect a hint of disappointment in his expression. But he didn't dwell on further thoughts about Rex. With the finger-width scrap of cloth in his hand, he continued his wading and laborious walk to the opposite door. He reached it with much sweating and rummaging.

Arriving at the door, he had to search beneath the surface of the clothes with his fingers for the handle. He found it, pushed it down and pulled on the door. It moved, if only a few inches. Now that Bosch knew it was unlocked, he braced his legs against the door frame and pulled as hard as he could. The first layers of laundry fell outside like thick layers of snow from a roof in a thaw. With one last strenuous push, he reeled out of the gap in the half-open door and into the hallway beyond this side of the laundry.

It took Bosch a second to realize why this part of the house felt strange to him. There were the same doors here, the same colorless carpet over floorboards. And yet he felt almost physically different in this hallway. As he stood up and stretched to his full height, it was obvious: the corridor was noticeably narrower than the others he had encountered up to this point. This one was barely wider than his shoulders. The walls connected directly to the doorway of the laundry. A little farther down the corridor, they even seemed to curve inward, as if something were pulling the red-papered walls together.

Bosch felt along the wallpaper with his hands. It was velvety soft. This corridor was not only narrower, but also much shorter than the others. After maybe ten feet, it bent to the right, then immediately to the left. Bosch walked on, past completely identical-looking doors, none of which were open, out of which no one stepped, and from which not a sound could be heard.

Half a dozen corridor bends later, Bosch stopped. He recapped what he had just done: first turned right, then left, left again, right, left, left. It made no sense at all, Bosch thought. The mansion was large, but it seemed to him that he must have wandered all the way through it by now. He looked around, then kept walking. When he reached a T-shaped end of the hallway, he turned right, where more winding corners awaited him. Bosch plodded forward. The red wallpaper made him thirsty for more wine. Out of sheer boredom, he began pushing the latches of the rooms as he was walking. All yielded to his grip, but not a single one was unlocked. He was about to kick his frustration away at the next stubborn door when he reached the end of the incomprehensible passage.

Before him, and facing a windowless slim wall, stood Edith Amaranth. She wore a chiton like his, but infinitely more elegant. Hers fell down to her bare feet. One shoulder was exposed. To Bosch, even in the pale light of the hallway lamps, she was still radiant, pale and flawless. He was instantly attracted to her—to the shoulder alone, more than to Edith herself—and his feet did him the favor and walked toward her.

She saw him coming, for she regarded him with clear eyes. Now not only her shoulder shone, but also Edith's hair tied in a tight braid, her hands and even spots on the chiton. The radiance came and went with each step that Bosch took towards Simian's wife. Only just before he reached her did he recognize the radiant spots as reflections of light: Edith was standing behind glass. Bosch placed a hand on it. It was a windowpane, installed between the two sides of the corridor and reaching from the floor to the ceiling. He rapped against it with his knuckles. The dry, barely audible sound surprised Bosch. This was not conventional window glass; it was much too thick for that. Nothing had vibrated under his tapping. The glass could have been a wall of stone, as stiff and hard as it had reacted to his knocking. On closer inspection, Edith also seemed taller to Bosch now than he remembered her from last night. The glass distorted her a little.

She said nothing. Edith simply put both hands on the pane. Bosch put his on hers so that they were separated only by the glass: he on the dim side with the red, narrow hallway, she in her partitioned caboose that had not more space than for maybe two chairs. Bosch noticed that the walls in there lacked wallpaper. They were not red either, but of a grayish, unsightly color that looked completely out of place. This chamber had no visible purpose. And it was empty. And, what seemed most important to Bosch, he had no idea how Edith had gotten in there.

She reached under the hem of the chiton on the side of her exposed shoulder. Bringing out a lipstick, she twisted it open to write in large cherry-colored letters on the inside of the pane:

“Theseus,” Bosch repeated. Edith had drawn seven hand-sized letters for him. He could read the name because she had written in mirror writing. Bosch had no doubt that she must have practiced it somewhere beforehand. For now, after the deed was done, she stood behind the pane like a little girl whose parents had forgotten to collect her. Something in Bosch was tugging in two completely different directions at this sight. On the one hand, Edith was playing this game like everyone else, and in her face, so unreadable, he could now clearly see that she was not enjoying any of this. Bosch didn't know what it was, but at that moment it was clear to him that Edith didn't belong with the others. She belonged with Simian, but not with the group of his drinking companions. He almost felt sorry for her, standing so silently and unsettled by something. She still had the lipstick in her fist.

On the other hand, he felt a cold satisfaction from this sight...

Edith tilted her head to one side. Her brow furrowed as she did so, ensuring that the woman's surging impatience did not miss its effect. She didn't need to talk for Bosch to understand. He should have been doing something, but was just staring at her calmly. Edith pointed to the letters. Then she pulled out her lipstick again and added a cherry-red second word:

“for Theseus,” Bosch read, and he read it aloud so Edith could see him forming the words with his mouth. Then she averted her gaze from his face, and down to his right hand.

He still had the finger-width scrap of cloth from the laundry in that hand. Now he paid attention to it. A hint of the sheet pattern was still visible on the fabric. The other end was dangling above his sandals.

Bosch wound the rag up, tightly around his fist. He checked the pane of glass for an opening or a flap that he might have missed earlier. But he found nothing. Instead, he took a closer look at his surroundings. He stepped back from the pane.. Edith's prison was and remained a dead end. Bosch found the only opportunity to do anything here to his left. The last door of the red corridor was an arm's length from the pane. Bosch tried his luck with the handle. Unlike the others, this one served its purpose.

The door popped open.

Inside, it smelled musty and it was dark. Bosch found a light switch, but it only made loud clicking noises, otherwise it had nothing to contribute to the situation. At least enough light fell into the room through the open door that Bosch could spot matches on a tiny table in the middle of the room. He lit one of them, and everything else fell into place: there were several candlesticks scattered around the room. Bosch lit them all, and then he had a chance to get a good look around.

The room was small. Not as small as the cell behind the pane of glass, but there was barely enough room for him to turn around in a circle without knocking something over. The little table in the middle was round and not much more than a depository for an ashtray. At the far side, a bed took up the entire width of the wall. A plain closet made of solid wood, a couple of paintings above similar wooden wall panels, a narrow desk, and with that the room was already pretty much crammed. There was also a window, but it was covered by a thick, dusty curtain that probably never saw sun.

There were a couple of framed pictures on the desk. One of them caught Bosch's attention. It looked ancient, as if from the early days of photography. A man and a woman stood side by side with serious faces and perfect posture. Even in the washed-out and contrastless photo, the man's accurate moustache and his snugly round head shape were quite recognizable. This was Sander in the photo, and consequentially this was his room.

Bosch studied the photo, taking one of the candlesticks for close-up illumination. The woman beside Sander wore a kind of dress Bosch had not seen in a very long time. The thought dislodged from his memories as quietly and fleetingly as a first bubble rising to the surface from the bottom of a soon-to-boil pot of water. He examined Sander's outfit, which had something of a uniform about it. Apart from the fact that this attire was clearly out of Berlin time and fashion as well, Sander looked exactly as Bosch knew him in the photograph.

It had to be a very poor example of craftsmanship, this photo.

In the dimness by the door, the wall disappeared into the outline of a bookshelf. There, behind the shelf and the wall lay the glass cell where Edith was standing. Bosch approached the shelf. He studied the spines of the books, holding the candlestick in his hand. He quickly gave up reading, for the arrangement of the books told him more than the titles. The lower and upper compartments of the shelf were bulging. The books were crammed there back to back. Only the middle row seemed comparatively empty. A few books had room enough to stand slightly tilted, touching each other only at their top edges, like friends drunkenly propping each other up on their way home. Thus, thick tomes and slim notebooks leaned inward from the edges of the shelf, where three books lay toppled, unsupported. Bosch compared them. Without hesitating long, he reached for the one titled ‘Ancient Mythology’.

Bosch looked up T for Theseus in the directory. He found the page to which it pointed and began to read.

Bosch skimmed over the childhood and youth of the king of Athens. He read more carefully as soon as Crete and King Minos were mentioned. Every nine years, Minos would demand a tribute of seven young men and seven maidens from the Athenians. They were all to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, who was half man half bull. Theseus decided to go among those to be sacrificed in order to put an end to the goings-on in Crete, and to kill the Minotaur. Once there, Ariadne fell in love with Theseus. She was the daughter of King Minos and his wife, Pasiphaë. The latter had given birth to the Minotaur when she was cursed because Minos had not offered an extraordinary bull to the gods as required, but kept the animal for himself. Pasiphaë was mad for the bull. This was the curse.

From here on Bosch just absently turned the pages. He didn't have to keep reading to see the story unfold before his eyes: Pasiphaë would have the bull for herself. She asked Daedalus for advice, the ingenious inventor who lived in exile on the island, tolerated by Minos. The Athenians had driven him out because he had been jealous of his nephew's talent and had tried to kill the boy.

Bosch grinned. Perdix was the boy's name, and he survived the fall because, with divine assistance, he was transformed into a partridge and managed to save himself by taking flight. A partridge, ...that's what Bosch had chosen yesterday. Partridge or carp, that' s what Simian had asked him before announcing the game.

He closed the book and put it thoughtlessly in one of the other compartments. In his mind, the stories intertwined as he cleared the shelf of the mid-level books one by one: Daedalus had been tried and banished for his crime. With Minos in Crete he found shelter and safety as long as he would be of use to him. But it was Pasiphaë's wish in particular that soon preoccupied the inventor. She had him build a device that looked like a cow, but gave her room inside—so that she could be impregnated by the wild bull in her enchantment.

Bosch emptied the entire compartment.

Pasiphaë eventually gave birth to a hybrid creature, the Minotaur. The monster lived in constant rage and frenzy, and Minos ordered Daedalus to build a labyrinth from which the Minotaur could not escape. Nor would anybody else. Theseus had to enter it if he wanted to end the cruel ritual of human sacrifice once and for all, and kill the Minotaur. Ariadne, however, did not want to lose him to the labyrinth. She too turned to Daedalus, who gave her a thread to tie Theseus at the entrance and pull it after himself along his path to the center of the labyrinth. Thus he would find his way back....

The flickering light from the candlestick revealed a slim wooden latch on the wall side of the shelf. Bosch pushed the latch aside, revealing a small, upended slit. This slit was not much wider than a coin, nor was it any higher. Light from the hallway shone dimly through it into the darker room.

Bosch unhooked the strip of cloth from his fist again. One end he stuck into the slit. With the nail of his thumb, he tried to shove the rag to the other side, little by little. Edith had to be pulling it on the other side, because suddenly the strip moved on its own. It hissed through the slit and was gone beyond it faster than Bosch could sort and finish with the story in his head. Leaving the ransacked shelf and scattered books to their fate, he made a dash over to the door. Stretching his neck out the door, he could hardly believe his eyes.

Edith was no longer in the cell behind the glass. She was disappearing through a latchless sliding door in the wall opposite the one with the slit and the direct connection into Sander's room. While Bosch was still wondering how he had managed to overlook this mechanism, and how mysterious this device was, he heard some frantic foot stomping in the hallway. He looked to his right, but there was nothing to be seen, even as the stomping grew louder. Then something to his left snapped, and Bosch turned his head 180 degrees, startled. Behind the pane he saw the black leathery form of one of the bulky masked men. The sliding door was open again. Of the masked man, he could see only one half, to be exact, and it was the rear one. His front half was stuck in the wall—which did seem impossible. Bosch's synapses began to deduce things at lightning speed: First, the loud snap had come from behind him, that is, from Sander's room. Second, the front half of the masked man couldn't have disappeared. It had to be somewhere. Third, where he thought the bookshelf was, there too was the cell wall. Fourth, since the bookcase had already proven with the small slit that faced the cabin that there was more to it than met the eye, the snap was likely coming from yet another mechanical surprise.

With a thump, the beefy naked torso of the old man in the royal crown ended up against the red wallpaper at the far corner of the corridor. Bosch's head shot back to the right so that he could see the old man gasp. The gray long hair was thrown back and he let out a battle cry that sounded considerably younger than the wrinkled and aging hull of the king looked. Next to him appeared the second huge leather man. He immediately took a running start and charged at Bosch.

Fifth, if the front half of the first masked man had entered the room through the secret door that the shelf presumably constituted, then, sixth, by now the back half would have rejoined it there as well and, seventh, the masked man would probably stab Bosch in the back.

And he did.

Bosch was felled like a tree. He was too slow, although he had combined the circumstantial evidence correctly. The distraction on the far side hadn't been helping him prepare for the attack. The masked man rammed Bosch so hard that they both fell out into the corridor.

The old king laughed heartily. The second leathery meatball nearly tumbled on Bosch and his colleague. He briefly considered how and where to tackle. The other two got to their feet groaning. Bosch was accidentally pushed forward by the masked man who had leapt in his back. The second interpreted the clunkiness as a technique and copied it. Bosch let the push happen.

The old man turned around and led their curious parade. Bosch was alternately being pushed forward by the masked men. He did their bidding and shuffled, jumped or stumbled forward faster and faster. The old man's semi-long hair began to sway at a faster pace. He cut the numerous corners of the corridor with somnambulistic certainty. Bosch let himself bounce here and there off the velvet wallpaper. Behind him, the masked men were beginning to gasp for breath. They pushed him more erratically, he stumbled forward faster, ...so that soon the old man had to clutch the crown on his head with one hand while he began to have doubts about who was actually the one being hunted here.

The metal door to the laundry appeared in front of them. The old man saved his little lead until he reached it, whereupon, disregarding age or his own bones, he pressed the handle whilst still running and pried the door open with his momentum. The leathery men, by now breathing laboriously, gave Bosch one last shove. One of those went nowhere, and the other, too, could be considered a formality at best; Bosch staggered of his own accord into the gap, where the old man held the door open with pain-distorted face.

The laundry cushioned him. It slowed Bosch's run like a gentle bumper just as things went banging outside: The two shovers succeeded much less elegantly in bringing their weight to a halt. They pushed the old man involuntarily onto Bosch's body—a derailed train of meat carriages. Just that here, instead of the squeal of compressed steel, there were groans and yelps. Bosch's face drifted deep into a pillowcase. He could barely breathe with the three people on his back. But the latter quickly regained their composure. All the weight lifted, and Bosch gasped for air.

He heard a key click in the lock case. Regardless of where the old man had suddenly gotten it, it was the right one. Bosch tested the latch. The laundry door was now locked.

From across the room, similar commotion as Bosch had just experienced could suddenly be heard. Climbing, he tried to get a good look. As he had done on his original crossing of the laundry lake, he applied his half-climbing, half-swimming technique. A few repetitions of this patented solution later, he found himself with his head above the surface of fabric waves. The dinghy was gone, Goosequill too. Bosch wasn't surprised. But where he had first been herded into the laundry on the opposite side by the howling mob, another person was now meeting the same fate as he had before. Bosch could only see the very top of the open door. A hand appeared, then this entrance also fell shut. The locking sound of a key could again be heard.

Two doors, and nothing more here. Bosch stayed where he was.

After some rummaging and flung up shirts, the head of the young man who had rushed out of the theater after escaping from the dumbwaiter, appeared above the surface. He likewise took a look around, noticing Bosch, but this time not seeming at all surprised by Bosch's presence.

Icarus.

If they wanted him to be Daedalus, then his fellow sufferer had to be Icarus. The pages of the book he had flicked over told of how the inventor had brought his son with him into exile on Crete. Daedalus had better not have given the thread for Theseus to Ariadne. Of course, Minos had to find out that the inventor was behind this ruse. The Minotaur succumbed to Theseus in battle, and as punishment Daedalus and his son were subsequently locked in the labyrinth themselves.

Without the thread. With no possibility of ever escaping from it.

Bosch absorbed the story as it sprouted images in his mind. The young man on the other side got moving. His arm movements were less elegant than Bosch's, but at least he too was moving forward in this sea of textiles. He was keeping at an angle from his counterpart, and headed straight for a shiny protrusion on the wall.

There was a way!

Bosch looked at the silvery box. He had seen it, as well, but had thought it useless. It was neither door nor window nor any other opening. Nevertheless, the young man burrowed closer and closer, until finally he stuck his head under the surface of clothes and, with much ado, hoisted things on top of himself.

He would not emerge again. At first Bosch could still follow his movements because the sheets and shirts were shifting above the diver. But then he must have gotten so deep that the textiles no longer revealed his location. It wasn't until the shiny box began to shake that Bosch understood: it was made of sheet metal, shimmered audibly, and passed on splashing noises.

The dirty laundry, of course, had not been carried down to the room one piece at a time. Bedding and wardrobe from around the house had to be stuffed in here. They would usually be transported here from upstairs via a laundry pipe. And Bosch was staring at it, at least at the bit that disappeared into the ceiling overhead.

Yes, there was a way for Icarus and Daedalus to escape their prison.

They would have to fly...

The splashing noises grew more intense, but above all very regular. Bosch's competitor had already proven to be acrobatic in the elevator. He really seemed to have crawled into the laundry shaft from below and was now climbing up by hands and feet. Bosch didn't know how he was doing it, but he guessed that he didn't need to wait for someone to re-open the doors to the laundry. He began to move. Ahead of him, the sheet metal of the box was bulging dangerously in several places. The steady pattering was now coming from very high up, Bosch reckoned.

The wiry little guy appeared to be making it.

Now Bosch, likewise, was digging a tunnel down into the mountain of laundry. The deeper he reached, the tighter the fabrics were pressed together. The digging degenerated into a sweaty job. He lost track of how deep he had burrowed when the already dim glow of the light bulb no longer reached him because he was completely covered in fabric.

Bosch reached further in front of him into the bank of linen. It was getting stuffy between all the clothes. And then he felt the cold sheet metal on the very edge of his right hand. He corrected the direction of his digging slightly until he could grip the outside of the shaft with both hands. From here on, he merely tried to get further down. He noticed that the sheet metal was eventually bending towards his body. The end of the shaft had already been cleared. Bosch could simply pull himself in by his hands without any more trouble. Instantly, he was able to breathe better here than in the laundry.

Daedalus was the one who had made the wings for himself and Icarus, out of feathers and wax. Bosch felt this thought flash through his mind. There was something about it he didn't like. He was down here and the other one was climbing ahead of him.

Bosch propped himself up with his feet. The sheet metal walls were bare, but not as slippery as he had feared. He dried the sweat of his hands on the chiton, then had a fairly firm handhold. He slipped off the sandals with his toes. He braced the soles of his feet against the insides of the shaft and pushed himself up.

It worked. Slowly but steadily he climbed up like this. To keep from slipping, he moved each hand and foot separately; releasing them only as briefly as possible at a time, then vigorously seeking a hold just a few inches higher. In doing so, he was making the same splashing sounds he had heard earlier from the wired man.

It went silent above him. The sounds from the young man could no longer be heard. Instead, there was more light. Bosch poked his nose upward, from where a small square of light could be seen. It grew larger with each successful patting stroke. It seemed to Bosch like an age of climbing until he saw the opening coming. When he was finally able to reach for the ledge, he pulled himself up the remaining half meter in a combination of pride and anger.

Exhausted, he rolled out of the shaft onto a carpeted floor.

He was struggling to catch his breath, but as he did so, he looked around for his lead climber. Bosch was in a hallway that was more generously spaced than those on the lower floors. Directly opposite the laundry hatch from which he had crawled, the door to an empty room stood open. On the herringbone parquet floor, only a large pair of white wings had been placed in the middle of the room.

Bosch scrambled to his feet and stumbled into the room. Now he could see a pass door leading into an adjoining room. The wiry man was escaping through it—with a pair of wings strapped to his back just like the ones at Bosch's feet.

Bosch reached for the wings. They were made entirely of long, snow-white feathers. From geese, presumably. The smell of the glue that held the whole thing together stung Bosch's nose. Rivulets of the substance had formed along the quills, dripping to the ground like colorless blood. The work was so fresh that some feathers fell off when Bosch heaved the wings onto his back with a determined swing. He strapped the two simple leather belts to which the feathers clung over his shoulders from behind and took one last deep, acidic breath.

“Not even wax,” he scoffed to himself. Then he marched toward the passage door and set off in pursuit.

The book from Sander's room had described the escape of Daedalus. How he took to the skies with his son Icarus. The self-made wings of feathers and wax would carry them both over the sea. Bosch could literally smell the Aegean as soon as he had left the room with the acrid glue behind him. The warmth of the air, the salty taste that rose from his mouth to his nose and tingled gently... , Bosch felt all this as if he himself were wing-flapping over the Greek Sea, trying not to plummet. He imagined Samos to his left, the first island that Icarus and Daedalus would pass in flight. Samos, rich and bustling because that's where the merchant ships came and went. Bosch knew this. He had not read it in the book earlier. And yet it was crystal clear to him what his course and that of Icarus would be.

Bosch pulled back into the hallway. He had to look for Simian's bedroom. The chamber of the landlord and his wife was the only place that would be pompous and stately enough to be compared to the island of Samos.

Doors would not get in the way of his search, he discovered. They were all open, so he only had to look inside as he walked. And every nook and cranny up here was flooded with light. At the level of his head, the inside of the roof cut diagonally through the hallway. Bosch would pass windows every few feet that were like little oriels, propped up on the roof. The hallway skirted along what would outside be the driveway with the fountain, though Bosch could only see treetops from up here.

He stopped. Out of the corner of his eye, a four-poster bed decorated with gold paint was flashing at him. It was as white as the wings on Bosch's back, which still had liquid glue running down the quills. While Bosch was staring at the bed, concluding that it was probably not just paint shimmering golden there, but real gold on a frame of ivory, some glue dripped onto the hall carpet, not impressed.

This had to be Simian's bedroom. Bosch walked in, almost completely silently, because the carpet here lay on the parquet floor twice as high as in the rest of the house. Bosch was walking as if on cushions while he looked around for a clue. Other than extravagant stucco, nothing suspicious caught Bosch's eye. He ignored the modern paintings on the walls, and only briefly examined the pillows made of shimmering brocade, which did not match at all and were generously spread out on a seating area including a sofa. There were many precious things here, but none of them was what Bosch was looking for..

Only on the bed did he find it. A red sparkle caught his attention. Bosch walked over to the four-poster bed, which was littered with avalanche-like waves of blankets and coverlets. What was sparkling was a ruby nearly the size of a fist. It lay right in the middle of the bed. Bosch had to clamber up inside before he could reach for the gem. The ruby was faceted. From within it shone a bluish tinge, like a small heart in a blood-red body. Except it was usually the other way around: the heart red, the veins blue....

Bosch closed his eyes. He recalled the strength-sapping flight, the view down on Samos from above, and the salty smell of the evaporating sea. Where to? Ahead of him had to lie Delos, that stretch of rock, blessed in equal parts with sanctuaries and numerous treasures.

That was it! Bosch playfully flipped the ruby into the air. The bed shook, so hard did he push off with his hands and feet. The ruby was a treasure, a jewel. And Delos was the place where rare stones abounded. His destination had to be the jeweler's room.

D'Utrecht had retired all the way upstairs after last night's dinner. Bosch knew what he had to look for. He carelessly let the ruby slip from his hand and fall onto the carpet. He marched back into the hallway, where he could no longer contain his burgeoning impatience. He began to run.

Again he kept his eyes out, this time sprinting across the hall and from door to door. A quick glance was all he needed to know if it would be the right room or not. He eventually reached the end of the hallway and with it the end of the house. From here, the way ahead extended to the left, parallel to the next outside wall. Bosch dashed around the corner.

As if the updraft was carrying him. Delos had to be close.

The next room was empty. Bosch slammed his shoulder into the door frame because his eyes stopped faster than his legs. He breathed heavily as he surveyed the room. No bed, no closet, bare parquet flooring without the usual rugs of this level. That which the room did contain was on the floor. Bosch felt soil under his feet. The whole room was covered with a paper-thin layer of dirt. Not the kind of grime that creeps onto furniture and into drapes due to a lack of occupancy, but actual crumbs of soil. In between, like mushrooms, lay randomly scattered gems of all possible colors. There weren't many, not all of them immediately stood out to the eye, but they would shimmer out from the dirt here and there.

“How the...!” the wiry man began to curse.

Bosch looked up. Two floor-to-ceiling windows across from him let daylight stream glaringly into d'Utrecht's room. One of them had been opened. It led onto a balcony, and with one leg on it, the wiry little man stood covered by a curtain. He was looking at Bosch in bewilderment. Whatever he was doing here; he didn't seem to have expected Bosch to be this close on his heels.

Bosch grinned wickedly at his counterpart. He saw fear in him.

Then they both practically exploded. The wiry man darted outside and out of Bosch's sight. The latter, on the other hand, pushed himself off the doorframe and sprinted across the soiled and bejeweled parquet toward the balcony as well. He all but ripped the curtain from its mounting. It accompanied his egress to the balcony as if he were wearing a Bedouin gown.

Hastily, he wiped the milky fabric from his face. Below the balcony was the narrow path that separated the villa from the pond. Ahead of him, the wiry one was climbing with hands and feet over the metal railing of the balcony onto the neighboring one.

Beyond Delos, Daedalus and Icarus would have to pass the island of Lebinthos. Bosch didn't even need to close his eyes to be able to picture the rugged landscape. Two bays below him in flight. Two balconies separated by two feet of void that led directly down into the water.

Bosch raised one of his long legs high enough to put his foot right on the railing. Without thinking, he took a leap and landed on the adjacent balcony, where the wiry man had disappeared inside through another open window.

Their journey was coming to an end. And so was the game. The final island was Kalymnos, big and rich. Where fishermen dove for sponges to sell. Beyond Kalymnos, Icarus would fly too close to the sun, exposing his wings of wax to the scorching heat and plummeting into the sea.

Bosch dashed into the room, in the center of which was a bathtub perched on a marble pedestal.

It was filled to the brim with water.

And with sponges.

The wiry one could feel Bosch breathing down his neck. He didn't even want to imagine what he would have to put up with if he messed up his task so close to the finish line. In despair, he jerked both arms forward, ready for a headlong dive into the tub.

His legs left the ground, but even though he was airborne, he didn't make it to the bathtub.

Bosch was clutching the wiry one' s neck with an adamantine grip. He curbed the little man's leap as if he were an oversized vise. The boy from Bürgerpark had felt this grip. Only Bosch himself had not even noticed at the time what he was doing to the human bundle suspended above his head. The wirey one, on the other hand, he had yanked from his trajectory with full intent, so that they both landed with a dry thwack on the tiles before the bath tub.

“I've got to get in there!” the wirey one groaned out in panting, pained syllables. He was pointing at the water.

“Not today, Icarus,” Bosch hissed through his teeth.

“But...”

He didn't get any farther. Bosch jammed a knee into the man's back, who wailed and then surrendered to his fate, exhausted.

Bosch looked around the bathroom. He quickly discovered what he sought. There was a skylight in one corner of the room, and a ladder had already been hooked to it. The skylight was up.

The company on the roof heard the creaking of the ladder for which they had been waiting in complete silence.

“Daeda...!”, began Simian in a loud voice, before his speech was momentarily taken away by surprise. “...lus...”

Bosch pushed the wiry one out of the skylight's hatch onto the roof's varnished wooden planks. Then he climbed out himself, stretched, and grabbed the other man by the scruff of the neck like a sack of potatoes.

Behind Bosch, the small triangular turrets of the windows from the upper floor jutted into the afternoon sky like sharp teeth. The huge expanse of roof was a defiant mouth in the middle of the forest clearing that was the entire estate. A regiment of chimneys stood out from seemingly useless recesses. Twisting paths of planks traversed this landscape. It was covered with thousands and thousands of shingles. Bosch stood before this undulating massif of green-blue scales as before a sleeping dragon.

Ahead of him, they all stood gathered at the eastern end of the roof in a corner toward which the wooden planks ran. They wore heavy-looking gray robes. And Venetian masks that covered their eyes. But unlike their white Italian cousins garnished with splashes of color, these masks were just as gray as the robes.

Simian stood at the head of the tightly packed crowd, a tall glass in one hand, a decanted bottle of champagne in the other. Bosch recognized him immediately, mask or no mask. The gray stubble and long hair revealed the landlord. To his left, behind him, two seats were occupied by only one person: Harstein. There was cloth for two robes sewn between his shoulders. He could have been made out by his contours alone, without looking at his face. Next to him were Goosequill and d'Utrecht, behind them a few more people shared the remaining space up to the edge of the roof.

To Simian's right, Bosch saw the countess standing, surrounded by still more robe-bearers unknown to him. There had to be quite a few of the extras among them who had given him a hard time on the way from his room all the way up here. He recognized only Neiwolf Zossen, because the architect towered over the others from the level of his chest. With his hypnotically slow movements, it must have taken him an eternity to scale the roof.

Edith was missing.

“Is the lad daft?” grumbled Harstein. Perhaps he had only meant to whisper that softly in Simian's ear, but his rumbling voice could neither hide his annoyance at the wiry man nor simulate a genuine whisper.

“We congratulate you, Daedalus!”, Simian passed over the remark. He cleared his throat, thoroughly struggling to compose himself.

“Your escape has come to a close. From Minos' labyrinth you have ascended, carried by...”

“He wouldn't let me get into the...” the wiry one whined apologetically, more to himself than seeking to interrupt the host. Harstein did the interrupting for him:

“Shut up!”

Bosch started to move. He dragged the wiry man along beside him as if he was carrying nothing but a handbag.

“You have ascended,” Simian repeated, this time more composed and solemn. “Carried by the power of your spirit, unbowed and burning eternally as yourself!”

He poured himself a drink as Bosch walked his human baggage across the planks to the group.

“Your flight cost you your son.”

“Icarus is here,” Bosch countered. He stopped in front of Simian and the party, loosened his grip from the wiry one''s chiton, and let him scramble to his feet. A light breeze pushed up over the edge of the roof from below.

“Icarus flew too close to the sun,” Simian said. At this he looked penetratingly at the wiry man, who thereupon wanted again to say something in his defense. Simian, however, pointed forbiddingly at him with the bottle. He wasn't finished yet.

“That's not how the story ends. That's not how the game ends!” he insisted. “Icarus loses his wings and he falls into the sea.”

“I know,” Bosch confirmed.

“Then why are you both here, Daedalus?”

“I am not Daedalus,” Bosch said. Then he gripped the wiry man's chiton by both hands. With a mighty heave, he pulled him over onto the shingles, which reached to the edge of the roof in a short slope. A firm kick of his foot finished off the man, who was completely taken by surprise. He stumbled down the incline and exited the roof headfirst.

The scream that followed pierced the very marrow of the entire group. The robes burst apart; one or the other person had to hold on to the adjacent one in order not to fall off the roof as well. All heads turned to where the flying body had plunged out of their field of vision.

Bosch remained motionless, arms akimbo.

The scream went dead in a loud splash. A bunch of robed people formed a safety chain so that one of them could look over the roof and down to the pond.

“He's surfacing!” the lookout shouted in relief.

“I'm not Daedalus!” yelled Bosch at the group. At this they turned around again, startled.

“I am Apollo! I am the sun!”, Bosch barked at them. “Who commits blasphemy or not, that's for me to decide. People who besmear themselves and take themselves for birds? Whether old man or intoxicated youth, their cunning may carry them aloft. But up in the air they shall find the punishment for not knowing their place.”

All eyes were on Bosch. No one knew anything to reply. Bosch reveled in the pause of absolute perplexity and bewilderment he had created. He inhaled deeply the scent of the trees, felt the wind in his face, and waited with relish.

Harstein began to laugh.

“Apollo!” eventually confirmed Simian. He still had the bottle and the filled glass in his hands. Now he held it out to Bosch, lowering his head in acknowledgement.

Bosch took it.

A burst of applause erupted.

15. None Of Them

The valet who later unloaded Bosch's suitcase from the car didn't understand why he had to do that. First out with it, then back in again?

Amelia was watching the scene at the fountain from her room. She was standing by the window, silent and holding herself. As the suitcases were being brought back to the villa one by one, tears slowly rolled down her cheeks.

“I found him,” she suddenly whispered to herself. Hearing her own voice, even though no one else was in the room, snapped her from the torrent of emotions in which she was helplessly kicking for clarity like she was stuck in some thick blubber. There was no solid footing in her head.

The countess broke into laughter, hesitantly and quietly at first, then with relief and more tears.

“You found him. It was you, not them!” she said proudly to herself.

And then she fell quiet again.

Amelia knew that the others would not thank her for this. None of them had ever thanked her. None of them ever would. But they could not ignore that she had accomplished that which Sander had not achieved in twelve years. No one had ever made it to the roof. And then this! Not a shred of doubt remained.

The last suitcase had been brought into the house.

Amelia closed her eyes against the setting sun. She felt her warm tears on her cheeks and, smiling, submitted to her memories.