This wretched Mr von Saloman had doubtless been planning another little putsch of some kind, they’d been keeping him under surveillance, and that’s how they knew about his visit to me. Well, whatever: they wouldn’t find anything in my house! Incidentally, the policeman took no part in this house search. He just stood by and watched, looking pretty bored, and let the brownshirts rummage about by themselves. After searching for a whole hour, all they had to show for it was a piece of paper they had found in my work folder for Jailbird. Written on the paper next to a small drawing was the one word ‘Maschinengewehr’ – ‘Machine gun’.

‘Why are you interested in machine guns?’ I was asked. ‘And what’s the meaning of this drawing?’ They had all clustered around me, listening intently. Written across their faces was a mixture of schadenfreude and curiosity – they thought they had got me. ‘Gentlemen’, I said with a smile, ‘as you can tell from the manuscript folder there, I am working on a novel about the fate of people who are sent to prison. To that end I have collected a good deal of material about prison life. And this ‘machine gun’ is part of that. But this is not a real machine gun: as you can see from the drawing, it’s eight prisoners who have got hold of a ninth prisoner, who’s made himself unpopular by stealing, say, and they’ve wrapped him in a blanket and are now about to beat him up in a particular way. They have a special word for this in the nick, they call it “machine gun” . . .’ I beamed at them. But in their faces all I saw was naked disbelief, and their leader screamed at me in fury: ‘Don’t try and pull the wool over our eyes! Do you think we’re going to fall for a pack of lies like that? Tell us right now where you’ve buried the machine gun, or I’ll start getting rough with you. I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks, my friend!’ He glared at me threateningly. My heart sank as I realized I had no other proof if these men chose not to believe me. I was entirely at their mercy, and they had no interest in my innocence, since they were determined to find me guilty. But now, in my hour of need, help came from an entirely unexpected quarter: from a coarse, thuggish-looking man in a brown shirt. ‘No’, he cried, ‘that’s right! We once worked a guy over in the dormitory like that, and “machine gun” is what we called it . . .’ He broke off, cowed by a look from his leader, who probably thought it not quite the thing to be discussing the past history of an upstanding SA fighter in the presence of an outsider like me. ‘Fine’, growled the leader, and pushed the piece of paper into the cuff of his uniform sleeve – for possible use at a later date. ‘I’ll look into the matter later. But for now we need to search the other rooms.’ They did so thoroughly, but not overly skilfully. I was gratified to note that a house guest we had at the time, a Jewish lady, managed without much difficulty to evade these gentlemen by slipping from one room to the next. They never even saw her, despite the fact that the few rooms I had were fairly swarming with SA men. At one point I saw the lady sitting in a corner on the balcony. I signalled to her by blinking my eyes slowly, and she nodded back with a smile. I was glad they didn’t find her – for her sake and also, a little bit, for mine.