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the sideboard. He counted the knives, the forks, the spoons and locked the drawer. Then he took the key, returning it to the bureau and locking that too. He ranged things in order, put things away, turned off anything that was lit, pulled plugs out of sockets to prevent short circuits, and placed the silver candlesticks in the washing basket – just in case. He checked the radiators, which had to be set at 2½ precisely, went out and closed the garage doors and the garden gate before locking the doors to the house – the front door, the garden door, the cellar door and the doors to the utility room and the garage – and then he hid the keys to make sure no one could break in. Once he had finished locking up and checking lights and packing the house away for the night, he would kiss Mother and me goodnight and lie down in bed. Then he took the key of keys and placed it in his pyjama pocket, drew the duvet over him and, with a mind at ease in the knowledgethat all was secure, he would click the lamp on the bedside table, and the last light in the universe went out.
    F or some reason or another, I decided on ham sandwiches, and that was what I took with me to school. I wouldn’t have anything else. There was something wrong – I could feel it quite clearly – and they began to talk behind my back and laugh at me and move away from my table when we had our dinner break. I didn’t know why and did my best to fit in, but it got worse and worse, until finally there was someone who pointed a finger and said it to my face. It was my ham sandwich. Instead of being cut lengthways with crust around each slice, it was cut across with the crust on the ends – and that was not how you did it in Denmark.
    Mother sliced bread the way she was used to doing in Germany, and I could not bring myself to tell her. I went to school with my alien ham sandwich and chewed my way through the lunch break, but after a while I stopped taking it out of my school bag at all. I left it there, tried to pretend all was as it should be and after school I cycled round trying to find a place where I could throw my packed lunch away without being noticed.
    This wasn’t as easy as I had thought. There were either too many people or too few, and I was sure that someone would see me through the window if I threw it into a garden. There was always something that held me back, and at last I chucked the package of sandwiches in betweensome bushes and cycled on. But I knew straightaway that my mother would walk past that very spot and find it, so I turned around, fished it out and took it home with me.
    Even before I got past the garage it was more than I could bear. I parked my bike and ran up the cellar steps shouting ‘Hiya!’ to Mother. She was standing in the kitchen, and I looked at her, my face wreathed in smiles for fear of discovery. My guilty conscience was smouldering in my school bag. I went to my room and carefully opened the drawer of my desk – it was the only place that I could call my own and that could be locked. I held my breath, laid the packed lunch in the drawer, closed it as quickly as I could when I heard my mother calling from the living room,
‘Knüdchen! Håndewaschen! Essen!’
and obediently went to wash my hands before eating.
    My mother would sit at the table with her cheroot and a beer while I ate. She looked knotted and tense and almost always sad. The only thing holding her in place was her will, and she locked herself inside herself and clenched her fists until they looked like hand grenades, the knuckles shining white. I would have given my life to make her happy, would often take one of her hands and stroke it and tell her about my day. We had played football, and I had gone up to the blackboard. Susanne had got braces and the twins were sending out invitations to their birthday… And it was all lies. For the day had been spent being a German pig, hiding in the breaks,