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helpless motion as I was wheeled somewhere on a trolley.
    In my mind I saw or heard or remembered the deafening sound of the engines, brilliant flashes of light in the dark sky around us, a loud bang that was repeated whenever I moved my head, a shock of cold as the windscreen in front of my face was shattered by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel, voices on the intercom, the huge and terrifying surge of the sea, the cold, the terror. I gradually emerged from the confusion, starting to make sense of what I saw around me. I realized I was in a hospital, I remembered being on the plane, I knew other men had been with me. My legs hurt, my chest hurt, I was incapable of moving my left hand. I was taken from the bed, placed in a chair, returned to the bed. Medical staff came and went. I saw my mother’s face, but the next time I opened my eyes she had gone again. I knew I was critically ill.
    I tried getting answers about my illness from the staff, but as I slowly improved I realized that they would not give answers unless I asked questions. Before I could do that, I should have to formulate the enquiry in my mind. Before even that, I should have to be clear in my own mind what it was I wanted to know. I worked backwards to find the memories I needed, learning as I went.
    6
    While we were in the Charlottenburg area of Berlin we stayed in a large apartment in Goethestrasse. By good chance it was not far from either the Olympic Stadium or the training area at Grunewald. The apartment was owned by close friends of my mother’s family: Doktor Friedrich Sattmann, his wife Hanna and their daughter Birgit. They lived on the second floor of a huge, solidly constructed building which on one side looked down on the wide, tree-lined street where trams ran to and fro all day and much of the night, and on the other over an area of open parkland with many trees. Joe and I were given a room to ourselves at the back. We had a balcony where we could sit and enjoy coffee and cakes with the family. It was a home full of music: all three of the family played instruments. Frau Sattmann was an accomplished pianist, her husband played the bassoon. Seventeen-year-old Birgit was a violinist, studying under Herr Professor Alexander Weibl, at the Berliner Konservatorium. Everything, they told us, had been banned - they could not even go to friends’ houses to play in their small ensemble, so they played together at home.
    Herr Doktor Sattmann and his wife treated us with great generosity throughout our stay, but we were left in no doubt that the doctor’s medical practice was no longer prospering. He said nothing about it to us, but every morning that we were staying in his apartment he announced formally that he was leaving to attend to his patients, then he would return only an hour or so later, reporting that only one or maybe two patients had required his services.
    Frau Sattmann explained that it was no longer possible for her to continue to work at the publishing house where she had been a translator. Birgit, who was in only her first year of study at the Konservatorium, told us that she had become desperate to leave the country. I was dazzled by Birgit from the moment I set eyes on her: she was dark-haired and pretty and her face became illuminated when she smiled. She stayed shyly away from Joe and me.
    Every evening Frau Sattmann would prepare a meal for Joe and myself, but the portions were small and the quality of the food was poor. Nothing was explained or described. It was during our days in Berlin that I first began to feel the emerging differences between Joe and myself that were to have such a lasting impact on us both. When we were not training together I hardly ever saw him. While I maintained a fitness regime, he went on long solitary walks around Berlin, claiming it was for exercise, but often in the evenings I would hear him discussing what he had seen and the whole area of politics with Doktor Sattmann. I tried to join in, but in truth