'There's blood on your face,' said a woman with diamond-studded spectacles, reaching past me to get more Leberwurst and potato salad. 'Naughty boy. You look as if you'd been fighting.'

'I have,' I said. 'I found Santa Claus in my sitting room helping himself to my whisky.' In the Tiergarten the bearded man's sleeve buttons had cut my cheek, and when I dabbed the place, I found it had been bleeding again.

The diamond spectacles discovered a dish of smoked eel garnished with jelly. Uttering a whoop of joy she heaped her plate with eel and black bread and moved away.

I put a selection of food onto two plates and, balancing them carefully, moved off through the crowd. Enough space had been cleared in the centre of the floor for a dozen or more people to dance, but they had to hug really close. Berliners give themselves wholeheartedly to everything they do: Berlin opera and concert audiences cheer, boo, jeer or applaud with a mad tenacity unknown elsewhere. And so it was with parties; they sang, they danced, they gobbled and guzzled, hugging, arguing and laughing as if this party were the final expression of everything they'd ever lived for.

A very handsome young black man, dressed in the shiny silk shorts and brightly coloured singlet of a boxer – and with gloves suspended from his neck in case anyone missed the point – was talking to Zena Volkmann, his hostess, while both were picking at one plate of food.

Zena Volkmann was wearing glittering gold pants and a close-fitting black shirt upon which a heavy gold necklace and a gold flower brooch showed to good effect, as did her figure. Her face was still tanned dark from her recent trip to Mexico and her jet-black hair was loose and long enough to fall over her shoulders. She saw me and waved a fork.

'Hello, Zena,' I said. 'Where's Werner?'

'I sent him to borrow ice from the people downstairs,' she answered. And immediately turned back to her companion, saying, 'Go on with what you were saying.'

I saw other people I knew. In the corner there was Axel Mauser who'd been at school with me and Werner. He was wearing a beautifully tailored white-silk jacket with black pants, bow tie and frilly shirt. He was talking to a woman in a silver sheath dress and waving his hands as he always did when telling a story. Tante Lisl's here,' I told him as I went past. 'She'd love you to say hello, Axel.'

'Hello, you old bastard,' said Axel, getting me into focus. 'You look terrible. Still up to your tricks?'

'Just say hello,' I said. 'She'll be hurt if you forget her.'

'Okay, Bernd, I won't forget. You know my wife, don't you?'

I said hello. I hadn't recognized the woman in the silver dress as Axel's wife. Every other time I'd seen her she'd been in a grimy apron with her hands in the sink.

By the time I took the plates of food, cutlery, and black bread to Lisl, I was too late. Old Lothar Koch had already brought a plate for her. He was sitting beside her, embarrassed perhaps to see her here and explaining his sudden recovery from the influenza that had prevented him dining with her the previous evening. Koch was a shrunken little man in his middle eighties. His ancient evening suit was far too big for him, but he'd long ago declared that his life expectancy precluded him wasting money on new clothes. I said hello to him. 'Miracle drugs,' said Lothar Koch to me and to Lisl and to the world at large. 'I was at death's door last night, Bernd. I was just telling Frau Hennig the same thing.' I called her 'Lisl' and he called her 'Lisl', but when he talked to me about her she had to be 'Frau Hennig', even when she was sitting there with us. He was like that. He wiped his large nose on a crisp linen handkerchief.

I decided to abandon both plates of food. What I really needed was a drink. I joined a big crowd at the table where an overworked waitress was dispensing champagne.

'That's a bloody good costume,' remarked a very young sheriff doffing his ten-gallon hat to a man dressed as a Berlin cop. But the man dressed as the cop was not amused. He was a Berlin cop, desperately trying to find someone who'd left a light-blue Audi blocking the entrance to the underground garage.

'Cocktails to the right, champagne to the left,' said a waitress trying to disperse the crowd.

I moved forward and got a bit nearer to the drinks. In front of me there was an elderly architecture lecturer talking with a delicate-looking female student. I knew them both as people I'd met with the Volkmanns. The lecturer was saying '… leaving politics to one side, Hitler's plans for a new Berlin were superb.'

'Really,' said the pale girl; she was a history student. 'I think the plans were grotesque.'

The Anhalter and Potsdam railway stations were to be rebuilt to the south of Tempelhof so that the centre of the city could have an avenue three miles long. Palaces, magnificent office buildings, and a huge triumphal arch. On the northern side there was to be a meeting hall with a dome eight hundred and twenty-five feet across with space inside for one hundred and fifty thousand people.'

'I know. I went to your lectures about it,' said the girl in a bored voice. 'Afterwards I went to the library. Did you know that the only part of Hitler's plan ever put into effect was the planting of deciduous trees in the Tiergarten? And that only restored the old mixed forest that Frederick the Great had felled to help pay for the Silesian Wars.'

The lecturer seemed not to have heard. He said, 'City planning needs firm central government. The way things are going, we'll never see a properly planned town anywhere.'

'Thank God for that,' said the bored girl. She picked up two glasses of champagne and moved away. He recognized me and smiled.

As soon as I'd got my champagne I began looking for somewhere to sit. Then I saw Werner. He was standing in the doorway that led to his bedroom. He was looking harassed. I went across. 'Quite a party, Werner,' I said in admiration. 'I was expecting a small sit-down for eight or ten.'

He ushered me into the bedroom. Now I saw how enough space had been cleared for the dancing. Furniture was packed into the bedroom so that it was piled almost to the ceiling. There was only just space enough for Werner and me to stand. He closed the bedroom door.

'I just have to have a few minutes to myself,' he explained. 'Zena says we need more ice, but we've got tons of ice!'

'Well, it's a hell of a spread, Werner. I saw Axel… Axel Mauser dressed up like I'd never believe. Is he still working for the police?'

'Axel's wife got a big promotion in AEG. She's some kind of executive now and they're moving out of that lousy apartment in Märkisches Viertel to a place near the forest in Hermsdorf.'

'You'd better give Tante Lisl a kiss and a formal greeting,' I said. 'She keeps asking where you are. In her day, the host and hostess stood at the door and shook hands with everyone as they were announced.'

'Zena loves this sort of party,' said Werner, 'but it's too noisy for me. I come and hide. I don't know half those people out there. Would you believe that?' He wrung his hands and said, 'Did you go and see Lange?' He straightened some of the dining-room chairs that were stacked one upon the other. Then he looked at me, 'Are you all right?'

'I phoned him and went across there this morning.'

Werner nodded mournfully. 'He's still the same, isn't he? Still bad-tempered. Remember how he used to shout at us when we were kids?' Werner wasn't looking at me. Stuck under the seats of the dining chairs there were manufacturers' labels. Werner suddenly began reading one as if deeply interested in the dates and codes.

'I didn't realize how much he hates Bret Rensselaer,' I said. 'Lange still blames Bret for his having to leave the Department.'

Werner abandoned his study of the label and gave me a little smile that showed no sympathy for Lange. 'He only says that because he's been on the shelf ever since. When Lange resigned from the Department he thought he was going to get a wonderful job somewhere else and go back and show your dad and all the rest of them what a big success he was.¹