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that, but somehow impose a kind of order on it all. She’s a strong girl.”
    Marko saw her as a bit of a babe more than anything,and jabbed Andreas in the side with his elbow. “What’s up with Jörg? Why chuck her out of bed? Does he want to be a Muslim and martyr—on earth, battle and prayer and women only in heaven, an endless supply of virgins?” He shook his head. “He’s never …”
    Andreas turned away without a word. But when he was about to climb the stairs, Jörg came toward him. He had taken off his nightshirt and put his jeans and shirt back on. “That was an unlovely situation, and I wouldn’t like the evening to end with it.” It was a great effort for him to look at Andreas; his eyes kept drifting away, and he kept forcing them back to look into Andreas’s eyes. Then he walked over to Henner and Karin’s husband, who were in conversation, and repeated the sentence. Andreas had followed him, Marko had joined them too and heard the sentence, and now they stood facing him waiting for him to continue. When they realized that he had prepared only one sentence, he realized that it wasn’t enough. “I’m … I’ve cut a poor figure, I know. Christiane had a nightshirt made for my first night in freedom, because I like nightshirts and you can’t get them anymore, and I put it on. I had no idea you would all see me in it.” He realized that even that wasn’t enough. “She and I … we had a misunderstanding, just a misunderstanding.” Now it was OK. He had regretted what had happened, he had acknowledged that he had not cut a good figure, he had admitted that they had misunderstood each other—he had done his part, and the others should leave him alone. He looked at them all. “I’ll have another glass of red wine.”

Nine
    Ulrich sat by his daughter’s bed. She had pulled the covers up to her chin and turned her head away. Ulrich didn’t see her crying, only heard it. He laid his hand on the covers, felt her shoulder and tried to give his hand a comforting, calming heaviness. When the tears subsided, he waited for a while and then said: “You mustn’t feel humiliated. He’s just the wrong one.”
    She turned her tear-stained face to him. “He hit me, not hard, but he did hit me. That’s why I screamed.”
    “You were too much for him. He didn’t want to hurt you—he only wanted to get rid of you.”
    “But why? I’d have done him good.”
    He nodded. Yes, his daughter had thought she would do Jörg good. Not that that had been her intention; she hadn’t thrown herself at him to do him good. Or because she had suddenly fallen in love with him. She had wanted to sleep with the famous terrorist so that she could say she had slept with the famous terrorist. But she wouldn’t have wanted to do it if she hadn’t told herself she would do him good after all those years in jail.
    He remembered how he had collected famous men. He had started with Rudi Dutschke. He was still a schoolboy—he skipped school, went to Berlin anddidn’t let up until he had met Dutschke and exchanged a few words with him about the struggle in the schools. The others thought he was very left-wing, and he put up with that and sometimes fell for it himself. But in fact he knew that all he wanted was to have experienced them in person: Dutschke, Marcuse, Habermas, Mitscherlich and finally Sartre. He was particularly proud of that one; again he simply set off, not by train this time but by car, and waited for two days outside Sartre’s apartment building until on the third day he was able to talk to him and spend a few minutes with him in the café drinking espresso. Then a woman came to the table and he left—he was still annoyed about the fact that he hadn’t recognized Simone de Beauvoir, and hadn’t, with a charming remark, suggested to the pair that he join them for dinner. His French had been good back then.
    How much is in the genes, he wondered. He had never told his daughter about his passion for