But I really do mean two minutes this time!’ And so finally we parted; my wife went back to a life of freedom, while I returned to my cell, my heart seething with emotion. In my mind I went back over everything she had just told me, nearly choking with fury and hatred at the despicable vileness of it all. So my dark foreboding had been right, and I had seen aright: that look in the eyes of the dethroned queen had been a look of hatred, the villainous hatred that a murderer feels for his victim. And that woman was not much better than a murderer, one who lacked the courage to do the deed herself, a coward who got others to do it for her.

When I was taken away and Suse had been left alone in the house with our boy, the first thing she had tried to do was telephone my publisher. But when she dialled there was no answer from the exchange, and that’s how it had been the whole time since: they’d blocked the connection. The postman too had only called on the couple downstairs, and had not even delivered the newspaper to her. She had approached the sentry posted on the street and tried to go past him, but he had told her curtly that she was not allowed to leave the house, and that she would be shot if she attempted to escape. And when she asked how she was supposed to buy food for herself and her son, he had just told her that was up to her. Perhaps, he suggested, Mrs Sponar would be kind enough to buy for her when she did her own shopping, although it was a bit much to expect her to help out when traitorous scum like that had been planning an attempt on the Führer’s life. This was the first gentle hint that Mrs Sponar was perhaps on the other side – it was almost imperceptible, but still, it was enough to make my wife suspicious.

It would have been good if the Jewish lady friend had still been in the house, because she could have taken a message to Berlin for us. But she had slipped away during the final phase of the house search, and didn’t even know that I had been arrested. My wife sat at home, deeply worried. ‘Where have they taken my husband?’ she wondered. ‘When will he be home again?’

Thank God, she hadn’t remembered that headline in bold print: ‘Shot while trying to escape!’ She was not afraid for my safety, only worried because we were apart. But she had always been patient and longsuffering, accepting without complaining whatever fate threw at her; she had her work and the child, and so she kept her dark thoughts at bay by working and playing. She was a little surprised that in the wake of such an event and such an upheaval in their house the Sponars hadn’t even looked in to see if she was all right, so as it was getting dark she went downstairs to ask them if they could get some fresh milk and vegetables for the child. She found the old couple sitting in their darkened room in dead silence, the queen working away blindly on a delicate piece of lace, as she liked to do, and the old man with his actor’s face nodding off in his chair, as he liked to do.

They gave her a warm welcome, and showered her with effusive expressions of regret and sympathy – the sort of thing she hated, but now had to listen to patiently – and quizzed her about what had been going on, and what it was I had done.

My wife’s assurance that I hadn’t done anything, and that the whole thing must be some kind of misunderstanding that would soon be cleared up, was met with a coolly sceptical silence, and when she added, in some agitation, that it might all have something to do with the visit from Mr von Salomon, whose name might have led them to think he was Jewish, whereas in fact he came from French (and later Rhenish) aristocracy, this too was met with cool scepticism. That evening Mrs Sponar went so far as to say that she was sufficiently well acquainted with the SA and its leaders to know that mistakes simply never happened. It was probably just the old, familiar story – a husband up to his tricks without the wife knowing, and she having to pick up the pieces afterwards. It was too dark to tell whom Mrs Sponar was looking at when she spoke these words, whether my wife or her own husband, but Mr Sponar did heave a deep sigh at this point. The dethroned queen added that she was well acquainted with, not to say good friends with, the local Party branch leader, a building contractor by the name of Mr Gröschke; she would contact him tomorrow and ask what the charge against Mr Fallada was. She would be happy to report back to my wife, as long as that was allowed.

My wife didn’t care either for the tone or for the substance of our landlady’s remarks, and she quickly asked if they could do the food shopping for her and then made as if to leave. But she wasn’t going to get off so lightly, because now the Sponars launched into a litany of complaint about my irresponsible behaviour, which, they noted, jeopardized their future as well. They pointed out that there’d been talk of a firm agreement about paying them an annuity and giving them the right to live in this house for the rest of their lives – so where did they stand with that now? Had the mortgages at least been bought up? My wife took the greatest possible exception to their complaints, which made it sound as if I was out of the picture for good. She stood up and said curtly that we would stand by our commitments, regardless of whether it was the husband or the wife who fulfilled them, was somewhat taken aback to hear them heave a huge sigh of relief, and left the room.

I won’t dwell on the details of how my wife’s eyes were gradually opened to the guile of the Sponars, how she came to see more clearly with each passing day how the fearful prospect of an impoverished old age had turned our landlords into heartless criminals. Most of her news came via a little old lady who delivered newspapers and bread, who had taken pity on the lonely and heavily pregnant woman. Isolated though our house was, it was the object of close scrutiny in the village. People there knew a lot – and suspected more than they knew.

On the evening when I had put what I thought was a very generous proposal to the Sponars, namely to provide for them in old age in return for their consent to the auction sale, they hadn’t taken time to ‘think things over’, as they had said to me, but had gone straight to their friend, the building contractor and local Party branch leader Gröschke, to seek his advice. I can’t say much about this man from my own observation, I only saw him the one time, much later, a slimly built man with a curiously small head and a hard face. Like many small skilled tradesmen during the worst years of unemployment he had declared himself bankrupt, probably not because of his own incompetence, but either because of the general hardship of the times or because of his Party commitments – or else for a combination of all three reasons.