That’s where Mr von Salomon lives, and if he was really preparing a putsch they’ll have to take me there for interrogation and not leave me mouldering here. It was no good: try as I might, the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle just would not fit together. And then my thoughts kept coming back to the dethroned queen, and that hate-filled look of hers. There were many times when I felt certain that the Sponars were behind all this, but then I asked myself the question the ancient Romans used to ask, which should be asked whenever a crime has been committed: cui bono? Who benefits from this? And in the case of the Sponars I could not see any way in which they would benefit. Rather the reverse, if anything.

But as the weeks passed I became more and more concerned about my wife and child, and sometimes I would stand beneath the high window of my cell late into the night, quite convinced that Suse was now standing at her window, looking down at the SA sentry still patrolling outside, and thinking of me. I shook with helpless rage and despair. But in the end I would always go back to bed and sleep a little. What could I possibly do? Poor blighter that I was, they had me where they wanted me, and I could do absolutely nothing about it.

And then suddenly everything changed. One morning the policeman was suddenly standing there in my cell – it was the Stahlhelm man – and saying: ‘Come with me, Fallada, you’ve got a visitor.’

‘What?’ I cried, and couldn’t believe my ears. ‘A visitor – ?! Who on earth would be visiting me here?!’

‘Well, who do you think?’ he said, viewing my agitation with astonishment. ‘Who else but your wife?’

‘My wife – ?’ I exclaimed, and for a moment I was so shaken that I wanted to burst out crying with happiness. ‘Ah, my wife! Well, that’s all right, then!’ And I composed myself, adjusted my clothing, which was looking pretty shabby by now, and followed my leader. And it really was my wife, standing there in a wide corridor, holding my son’s hand and looking towards me. Her pale face lit up with her smile, such a patient, kind and gentle smile!

So I had a visitor, but let me say straightaway that this visit was a ‘clerical error’ on the part of the court office, because this visit should never have been allowed. But as I have already said, in these early days after the Nazi seizure of power it was still possible to find basic human decency and also personal courage (completely eradicated in the meantime) in many parts of the system. By now I had been in the jail for weeks on end, and although I had only had any real contact with ‘my’ two police constables – Mr Nazi and Mr Stahlhelm – the message had filtered through that I was a quiet and well-behaved man with tidy habits. Nobody in prison is more highly regarded than the man who doesn’t make trouble. I had never made any applications or complaints, I hadn’t even written any letters, and smuggling out secret messages was the last thing on my mind. I had been like a man who doesn’t exist, the complete opposite of a conspirator in my innermost being – and as for what the people downstairs really thought about a conspiracy against the beloved person of the Führer, that is anyone’s guess. And so on this particular morning a woman had turned up with her little boy holding on to her hand, clearly in an advanced stage of pregnancy, and had implored them to let her speak to her husband. The husband was only here temporarily, having been taken into protective custody on ‘political’ grounds: all the more reason why visits would not be allowed. But someone must have said to the constable: ‘Oh go on, take the lady up to the corridor – no, not into the visiting room. This isn’t a proper visit, we’ll just pretend it didn’t happen. It’s just so that husband and wife can see each other again, do you see – just for a minute or so, that’s all . . .’

I wasn’t there in the office, but that’s more or less how the conversation will have gone. And that’s how we saw each other again, the two of us, standing there and looking at each other. The Stahlhelm constable sounded almost threatening: ‘You know you can’t discuss your case, not a single word. And I can give you five minutes, maximum!’ He gave us a very severe look, then did an about-turn and walked to the far end of the corridor, where he turned his broad back on us and found something very interesting to look at in the street.

We hugged and embraced and smothered each other with kisses, weeping a little with emotion and joy, and our little boy was there in between us and asking: ‘Daddy, why aren’t you at home with us any more? Why are you here in this horrible house? Do we have to live here for ever in this horrible house, Daddy?’

But then came the moment in the midst of all this rejoicing and excitement when my wife surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder at the policeman, who had his back turned towards us the whole time, and urgently whispered a single word, and that word was the name of our landlords, traitors and Judases: ‘Sponars!’ And then we talked at length, or rather Suse talked, since my life had been so uneventful that there was little to tell. This visit that never happened definitely lasted longer than five minutes, it may have been fifteen, or then again fifty minutes – the time just flew past, until the policeman finally turned round and said: ‘Right, now it really is time for you to stop!’ And when we looked at him imploringly: ‘Oh, all right then, another two minutes.