Such was the sight that greeted his fellow citizens, who assuredly felt no sympathy for him — partly because they all had enough worries of their own, and partly because this was Dr. Doll, after all. And whatever kind of trouble he was in, it was fine by them!

But at the commandant’s office his troubles were quickly ended. There was an officer who conducted the interrogation, and an interpreter in civilian dress who translated Doll’s answers. Having by now fathomed the mystery of the rucksack so treacherously left in their garden, Doll had no qualms about directing the attention of the Russians to the house next door, where the wife of the SS officer lived — a woman who was as stupid as she was malicious, since the provenance of this uniform was always bound to come to light.

A quarter of an hour later, Doll was allowed to return home, into the arms of his anxiously waiting family.

The following day was the ‘Day of Victory’, and everyone was given the day off work. The entire population was ordered to assemble on the square in front of the town commandant’s office and told that the Russian commandant was going to give a speech. When Doll entered the square with his wife, there stood the officer who had interrogated him the day before, accompanied by his interpreter. Doll greeted them politely, and the two of them, after returning his greeting, looked at him earnestly and had a whispered conversation with each other. Then Doll was beckoned over, and the interpreter asked him on behalf of the officer if he felt up to addressing the local German population on the significance of this Day of Victory.

Doll said that he didn’t think he had addressed a public gathering like this before, but he felt sure that he would make as good a job of it as anyone else. Whereupon he was led into the town commandant’s office — his wife had to remain outside, with the waiting crowd — and put in a room on the top floor. Through a glass door, he could see the commandant addressing the crowd from the balcony, and the interpreter whispered into Doll’s ear, giving him a few pointers as to what sort of things he should say. Then it grew very quiet in the room, while outside the town commandant was still speaking. He was a short man with a pale, brownish, handsome face, the archetypal cavalryman. He had taken off the white gloves that he normally wore, and was holding them in one hand, occasionally gesturing with them to underline something he had said. The commandant would speak for two or three minutes at a time, then pause to allow the interpreter to translate. But the translation barely took a minute to say, which is usually the case with poor interpreters. An occasional ‘Bravo!’ could be heard from the invisible crowd below.

Just you wait! thought Doll angrily. Barely three weeks ago you were still shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’ and kowtowing to the SS, and jockeying for rank and position in the Volkssturm. I’ll be sure to tell you what I think of all your ‘Bravos’ now!

All the same, he was finding the day plenty warm enough. It was a fine spring day in May, certainly, but it was only ten o’clock in the morning, and already his brow was beaded with sweat. The interpreter bent down to him again, and asked if Doll was feeling agitated. Would he like a glass of water, perhaps?

Doll opined, with a smile, that he would prefer a glass of schnaps. Whereupon he was whisked off to the officers’ mess and given a whole tumbler of very strong vodka.

Five minutes later, he was standing at the balustrade of the balcony, the town commandant a couple of steps behind him with his interpreter, whose job it was to translate what Doll said. There were other officers besides on the balcony, officers whom Doll would get to know very well indeed in the coming weeks. But today he didn’t even notice them; all he could see was the mass of people below him, a great crowd of his fellow citizens who were all gazing expectantly at him with upturned faces.

At first, all these faces merged into a single, pale-grey line above the darker, broader band of colour that was their clothing. Then, as he was speaking the opening sentences of his address, he could suddenly make out individual faces. While he was listening a little anxiously still to his own voice, which had never been very powerful, yet now seemed to fill the square beneath him quite easily, he suddenly caught sight of his wife, almost directly below him. There she stood, calmly smoking a cigarette with her accustomed nonchalance; the people around her kept their distance, while everywhere else in the square the crowd was packed tightly. Consciously or not, their demeanour reflected the isolation in which the Dolls had always lived in this small town, and in which Doll now found himself, plainly visible to all eyes, up on the balcony of the town commandant’s office.

He gave her a slight nod, imperceptible to anyone except her, without interrupting the flow of his speech, and she smiled back and raised the hand that held the cigarette in greeting. His gaze moved on, and came to rest on the grey-bearded face of a National Socialist town elder, a building contractor by trade and a quiet man by nature, who had nevertheless cunningly abused his position in the Party to put all his competitors for miles around out of business.