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evenings among people who seemed familiar, and who accepted me. I kept (or stole) the yarmulke they had given me and remembered to bring it along whenever I got the train into Munich, just in case.
    Olaf’s parents lived in Schwabing, too, and I wondered whether I had time, before dinner, to stop in on the service. What surprised me is the mild rush of disappointment I felt at the thought of missing it. I had taken the soft leather cap from my pocket and begun to twine it in my fingers.
    The train was making local stops: young farmers from Bruckberg, from Langenbach, got on. A Friday night crowd was heading into the city, in clean jeans and buttoned shirts; a few of them had already opened tall cans of beer. I began to feel a little self-conscious and stubbornly resisted the urge to put the yarmulke back in my pocket. It might misrepresent me, as the kind ofJew who ordinarily wore one, but that wasn’t the thought that made me a little uncomfortable.
    Not that I had ever experienced anti-Semitism in Germany. The Germans of my acquaintance were much too afflicted by their parents’ history to acknowledge even that Jews existed – I mean, as a group with distinguishing features. ‘We’re all the same’ was the lesson they had too faithfully learned. But the Germans of my acquaintance were mostly northern and middle-class. I wondered if Bavarian farmers might show a different curiosity. At the same time it struck me as a measure of my loneliness that I could waste any headspace on such fantasies. Not only headspace: I glanced around to see if anyone was staring at me.
    Nobody was, of course; but then, a girl in one of the backing seats across the aisle gave me a sympathetic smile. My first thought was to hide the yarmulke again. My second, that she looked familiar. She carried her small head with great assurance on a long neck; she had freckles and sandy hair, and blue, slightly unblinking eyes.
    Just as I recognized her, with a hot blush of shame, she leaned over and said, ‘Do we know each other? I have been trying to catch your eye since Gündkofen.’
    She was the girl from the window, and I wondered for a second if she had seen me spying on her. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ I said. ‘At least, in person.’
    In fact, that doubt stayed with me for the rest of our conversation: that she knew I sometimes watched herpreparing for bed. There are girls who might be flattered by such attention, who might think they deserved it. It’s not entirely to her credit that she gave me the impression of being one of them. She seemed very sure of herself, of her looks, for one thing, and treated me with a kind ironic condescension that suggested she knew my secret. But then, pretty girls often have that air. The secret they can be sure of guessing is that young men, however shyly, are attracted to them.
    â€˜Are you very famous, then?’ she said, smiling. There was a seat free next to her, and she began to pat it, nervously enough. ‘Is that what you’re saying? Would I have seen your picture on TV?’
    She was teasing me, I thought, so I said, ‘Not yet, but maybe in the newspaper.’
    At which she clapped her hands together. ‘You don’t mean the Bauernblatt? I work for the Bauernblatt.’
    â€˜Yes, that’s probably what I do mean.’
    â€˜No, but I have seen you more – personally than that.’ After a pause: ‘Do you live on Kardinger Weg, in one of the apartment blocks?’ It was cruel to tease me this way, if she knew, but she went on. ‘That must be it then. You see, I live there, too. We’re neighbors.’ And she held out her hand, stiffly, across the aisle. ‘I’m Anke.’
    To reach it, I had to stand up, and afterwards, it seemed as easy to sit down beside her as return to my seat. She had noticed the yarmulke in my other hand and took it from me, a gesture that annoyed me onlywhen she