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League of Culture and founded a choir that sang in an old Methodist Mission hall. He encouraged local singers to join who had no links with Germany.
    In 1960, the Gewandhaus honoured Joachim’s dedication with an invitation to send one of his pupils to compete in the Bach festival. His first choice falling ill, he called on Peter’s mother.
    She didn’t win. In fact, her performance was a disappointment. But something in her performance appealed to the assistant director. He asked what she would most like to see in Leipzig. “The countryside,” she replied without hesitation, after three days cooped up in a city that depressed her intensely. It wasn’t a common request, but the assistant director enjoyed good contacts with the Party. He arranged for her to spend a week in a cottage near Leipzig and provided her with a hamper of food and fruit, part of a consignment sent by the new government in Cuba.
    On the second day of her stay, her hostess announced out of the blue that she had to go for the rest of the week to Jena. Her English guest would be collected, as agreed, on Monday morning. Meanwhile, she was to treat the house as her own. A number of recommendations were made as to how she might pass the time and she was introduced to a girl of her age who, if she liked, would take her on an excursion to a medieval hunting forest.
    It was the time of autumn when the cherry trees looked their barest. The half-timbered house was a five-minute walk from the Friendship Theatre. It was noon, she was bored and she was on her way to the cinema to see The Mystery Airship – “I was wondering how much of it I would understand” – when the young man walked across the road and took her by the arm.
    They stood a while at the edge of the park, a girl who didn’t speak much German and a strange man in another country.
    â€œThis is an interesting area, round here.” He spoke in English. The precise accent of a schoolboy.
    She raised her eyes. Glanced at his striped shirt, his grey fingers gripping her blouse, and was on the verge of speaking.
    â€œLook at that flowering lavender,” he went on. He might have been speaking from a phrase book. “Soon it will be time to put out the beehives.”
    â€œBees?” she snorted. “In October?”
    â€œCan you help me? I need somewhere to stay.”
    She assessed him. He had an open face. “Are you running away?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhere have you come from?”
    â€œDo not let us talk about it here.”
    She started to walk away. A boy with stuck-out ears paused on his bicycle. The young man reached for her hand. Fumbled for it. Missed. And then she stopped and held it out and they walked to the house together.
    â€œAre you hungry?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œStay here.” She went into the larder and ransacked the hamper. When she came back the radio was playing. He sat at the end of the table facing her. Large forehead. Thin neck. Late twenties. Slanted olive eyes sooted with fatigue.
    She cooked him a meal on the blue tile stove and watched as he ate. When he chewed he became repulsive. His face went the colour of fodder-beets and his cheeks became a series of lumps. Everything she served him he ate: rolled beef, red cabbage, fried Baltic herring, mashed potato and an orange.
    He stretched for the second orange, but she moved it out of his reach. That one was hers. “What did you eat in prison?”
    â€œWatersoup.” He used to see the bottom of his bowl through it. “Who owns this house?”
    She told him.
    â€œWhat about her husband?”
    She pointed to a cast-iron weathervane in the shape of a gun dog on the floor. “That’s what fell on him,” and grimaced. “Just think of surviving two world wars and being killed by a weathervane.”
    On the radio a record came to an end. The room was cold. A log popped in the stove. He moved his eyes from the floor and