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until you’re sitting behind the glass, only then does it become visible as light—when it is being used. Dürer too peered through colored panes of this sort, seeing only the light of the world and not the world itself, he sat indoors creating his own world. If Dürer’s wife wanted to know who was strolling about in the Nuremburg marketplace, she had to open a little flap to look down at the square. The thicker the walls and the smaller the windows, the less warmth was lost by the inhabitants of a house. Fieldstone, straw, plaster: all local materials. In the crotch marking the transition from the gabled to the side-gabled area of the roof was a small shed dormer. The house was to look as if it had just grown here like a living thing. He’d helped brick the chimney himself. He’d always gotten along well with workers and farmers. But not with this state in which one official never knew what the other was doing.
     
     
    In summer he always took one last swim before leaving. Now, in January, he’s taking a bath too, but not in the lake. Not even his wife would laugh at this lousy joke, though she’s generally quite free with her laughter. When he will have swum here for the last time is something he no longer knows. Nor does he know whether the German language contains a verb form that can manage the trick of declaring the past the future. Maybe at some point in early September. The last time, it wasn’t yet a last time, that’s why he didn’t take note of it. Only yesterday did it become the last time. As if time, even when you grip it firmly in your hands, can still flail and thrash about and twist which way it will. Down in the bathing house his green towel is no doubt still hanging. Perhaps someone else will use it now to dry off. When he acquired the bathing house from the Jews, their towels were still hanging there. Before it could occur to his wife to wash them, he’d gone swimming and rubbed himself dry with one of the strangers’ towels. Strange towels. Cloth manufacturers, these Jews. Terrycloth. Top quality goods. Not too much to ask. His first application to join the Reichskulturkammer was turned down because on the line asking about his Aryan ancestry he had written “yes and no.” In any type of attack, it is essential to assail your opponent from behind. Terrycloth. An official well-disposed toward him, someone he knew from school, had pointed out to him that the race of his great-grandparents was not relevant to this application, and he was then allowed to submit the application a second time, answering the Aryan question with “yes” and attaching the certificates attesting to his and his wife’s ancestry as far back as their grandparents’ generation, whereupon his application was accepted. The yes and the no. The gaps between the planks of the bathing house had been stuff ed with oakum. All the carpentry provisional. Still, he’d paid the Jews a full half of market value for the land. And this was by no means a paltry sum. They’d never have managed to find another buyer in so short a time. Oakum. His father’s mother’s mother. Yes and no. By buying the property, he’d helped the Jews leave the country. No doubt they went to Africa. Or Shanghai. For better or for worse. By buying the property, he’d helped his “no” leave the questionnaire. To Africa or Shanghai, what difference did it make? Just so it was gone, done away with, gone, gone. Yes and no. Keep the sun behind you . Assail the sun from behind, until everything burns up, then put out the fire with the waters of the Märkisches Meer. Yes and no. With any luck the deserts in Africa and the primeval forests of China were large enough that his “no” would starve to death there, die of thirst, be eaten by wild animals. Are you of Aryan descent? Yes. So why is he having to leave now? Baron Münchhausen pulled himself out of the swamp by his own hair. But this swamp was not his homeland. The architect knows far less than he