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while the fact that he knew became ever more terrifying. The long-expected attack on Russia was finally to be launched. And he knew the date and the hour.
    Operation Barbarossa, a code name for murder, obviously, even as it was a childish appeal to old myths and legendary heroes. Super-kitsch, if it weren’t for the deadly intent. Emma had been incapable of keeping the news to herself. She had blurted it out to her father, who she was sure would know what to do. The fear in her tone had been unmistakable, as well as the urgent, unvoiced appeal for action.
    At the station of Lausanne he had got off, feeling choked by the stuffiness of his compartment, and even more by the turmoil in his mind. He had no appointments in Berne that evening, so there was plenty of time for a stroll by the lake. Trees and bushes were heavy with blossom on this late afternoon of May 28, in the second year of the war. Theboulevard was agreeably alive with strolling couples, cyclists, sailors, tourists. Oscar wandered off in the direction of the music he could hear in the distance. It came from the terrace of Hôtel Beau Rivage, where a small orchestra was playing English tunes – emphatically English, he thought. A few tables were still vacant. He sat down, ordered a glass of Dôle, and waited. Spring on the shore of Lake Geneva. As though time stretched out into forever.
    He watched the gulls flying in wide arcs over the water. Where on earth did all those birds come from? They belonged by the sea, surely. He remembered standing at the window as a boy and throwing out crusts of bread for the gulls to catch, which they did with ease, somersaulting through the air, watching him with their orange beady eyes.
    And so Oscar sat, wrapped up in his thoughts, at a neatly laid table not far from the band: violinists in dinner jackets, pianist in evening dress, trombone player in red. Uniforms of peace, clownish outfits of neutrality. He picked up a newspaper left behind on a nearby table.
Die Nation
, extra edition. “BISMARCK SUNK” was the headline splashed across the entire front page, with further down, in much smaller font: “Crete All But Lost”. News from the front: filed by a reporter, typeset by a compositor, delivered by a paperboy, only tobe discarded on a white tablecloth beside an empty wine glass on a summer’s evening. Texts such as these circled the globe, and were read without their portent being properly understood by anyone. A banner of blank letters, bloodless, hollow:
Bismarck
destroyed, Crete all but lost. Oscar read the paper; he knew what it said, but felt nothing. Everything going on simultaneously, all the things happening around him, it was all too much to grasp. Man’s imperviousness to what was going on outside his field of vision was extraordinary. He traced a pattern of lines on the tablecloth with his fork, stared at the newspaper, laid the fork down, signalled a waiter and asked for the menu.
    “This morning shortly after daybreak, the
Bismarck,
virtually immobilised, without support, was attacked by British battleships that pursued her,” Churchill was quoted as announcing to the House of Commons. “And I have just received news that the
Bismarck
has sunk.” Applause. Hear, hear. Shortly after daybreak, Oscar mused. The bleak morning sky over a stormy sea. And then sinking, sinking to the bottom fast. Ears and eyes aflame, throats parched in terror and rage. How did such a calamity proceed, he wondered. The newspaper provided no answer, all was rumour and speculation. There were reports of hand-to-hand fighting in Crete, meaning the fixed bayonet,pistol in hand, grenade-packed belt, possibly even a knife between the teeth. Fighting and falling. Blown to bits, mown down, lost and destroyed. Headlines for polite discussion over a lakeside dinner. Shortly after dusk. Music.
    Despondency crept up on him as he realised yet again how relentlessly things took their course, how simultaneously and obscurely, and how the