a question of cowardice, though it was true  that 
people in authority had always frightened  him  -  
not a good start in life for a German.  Certainly 
not much help to him in prison.  
   It was more that Schulz  had  come  to  regard 
most of the human  race  as  utterly,  hopelessly 
mad. He had also had an intuition at a very early 
age that he was as  utterly,  hopelessly  mad  as 
everyone else. 
   It took only a few childhood flights of lunacy 
to inoculate Schulz from the more pernicious  ef-
fects of this disease.  His  subsequent  immunity 
had taken the form of an instinctive fear of  the  
fanaticism he saw all around  him  and  over  the 
years this fear had mellowed into what  he  hoped 
was an unobtrusive  cynicism, and even a  furtive 
kind of opportunism.  For Gerhard Otto Schulz had 
decided that if everyone, including himself,  was 
utterly, hopelessly mad,  he might as well profit 
from the insanity.
   In a bolder  main this  might  have  developed  
into arrogance.  But  the  fact of the matter was 
that Schulz genuinely didn't like to  hurt  other 
people's feelings,  besides  which he had decided 
it  would  be  prudent  not to make known his own 
until the time was ripe.
   Time ripened erratically with Schulz,  like  a 
distorted clock in a Dali landscape.  As a result 
he tended to oscillate between  long  periods  of 
extreme caution and sudden bursts of genius as he 
swung manically close to his own  particular  sun 
on an elliptical orbit through life. 
   He had, as a child,  been  made  uncomfortably 
aware of this tendency and had developed, to pro-
tect himself against its most harmful  side  eff-
ects,  a habitual meekness of manner - which some 
construed as slyness  -  behind  which  his brain 
peeped out at the world  like  a  pre-electronics 
pocket calculator. Most of the time it was quiet-
ly content to add up and  subtract  but  at  peak 
hours it would speed  up  dramatically,  dividing 
and multiplying like an amoeba  that  had  struck 
lucky, until some automatic fuse within him  shut 
off the whole thing before it exploded.
   On this trembling day in  late  March,  Schulz 
and his brain were more in danger  of  implosion, 
such was his apprehension of  imminent  collision 
with a destructive comet.  The  comet in question 
was Herr Untermeyer,  governor of Hamburg prison, 
down the corridor of which Schulz was  now  being 
marched for his pre-discharge sermon.  The stench 
of skilly and carbolic and the  cocktail of metal 
polish and urine turned  his  stomach,  which had 
already been prodded  mercilessly  by  the  podgy 
finger of the head warder,  Beck,  as  though  he 
were trying to poke one of his rusty keys into  a 
particular intransigent lock.
   'Step! Step! Keep  in  step!'  bellowed  Beck, 
giving Schulz an extra hard dig as  they  reached 
the governor's office.  'Wait  for the Governor!' 
he added, as if Schulz were an obedient but over-
affectionate spaniel who couldn't wait  to  drown 
Herr Untermeyer in slobbery passionate licks.
   It was the practice for  Beck  to  brief  Herr 
Untermeyer in advance,  hand  him  the  departing 
prisoner's dossier and remind him of the  prison-
er's good points,  so  that the governor had them 
at his figertips when the  prisoner  was  ushered 
into his presence.  Schulz  had  already seen the 
Welfare Man who,  with  childlike innocence,  had 
formulated his standard diagnosis for all crimin-
al tendencies.
   'Misunderstood,' said the Welfare Man. 
   Schulz would have given him gold for it.
   On the other side of the office door he  could 
hear Beck singing his praises.
   'Complete fraud.  Thorough bad hat.'
   Behind him the cell doors began  to  clang  as 
they brought  the  skilly  round  on  a  trolley. 
Schulz didn't have any clear  idea  of  what  was 
happening in the outside  world,  and  he  wasn't 
entirely  looking  forward  to  finding  out.  It 
wasn't that he was suffering from jail fever, the 
sort that old lags had, like his  friend  Ephraim 
Solokoff, the Russian-Jewish  forger.  That  kind 
had been in so long they were frightened  to  see 
real trees. It was rather that the real world out 
there was three years worse.
   If that were possible.
   The general conversation in the prison canteen 
didn't concern itself much with politics,  but in 
the intellectuals' wing  the  whisper  was  going 
round that you had to be a Party man to  sell  an 
honest match in the street.  Schulz,  who  had  a 
university education of  sorts,  might  have  put 
this more aptly,  but  he  had  to admit that the 
message was loud and clear.  With his record,  it 
was likely that he would  find  it  difficult  to 
make a start again and it was  therefore  all the 
more important that he made a correct  impression 
on Her Untermeyer.
   Presently Beck returned,  looking inflamed and 
frustrated.
   'Right - next!' he bawled. Schulz looked round 
as though he were at the head  of  a  queue,  but 
there was only one of him.
   'You!' barked Beck. 'Are you blind?  Step for-
ward!'
   In fact Schulz was a little short-sighted  and 
for that reason he wore  steel-rimmed  spectacles 
which lent  him  a  slightly  owlish  appearance, 
though some called it crafty.  He  adjusted them, 
his hair, his uniform, and stepped forward.
   'Stand before the Governor!'
   The door opened and he found  himself  staring 
at a bottle of Schnapps in  a  bookcase, noticing 
Mein Kampf prominently displayed beside it  and a 
photograph of the Führer on the wall behind, with 
a gold eagle above.  Herr Untermeyer stood framed 
in the middle,  a stern-looking man with a close-
cropped iron-grey head.
   'So you are leaving us, Schulz?'  he said in a 
kindly tone.
   Schulz had been misinformed. 'Yes, Herr Unter-
meyer,' he said,  standing stiff and erect on the 
carpet in front of him.
   'This was your second term in prison.'
   'Yes, sir.'
   'The first for defrauding an old lady  of  her 
life savings.'
   'I prefer to think,  Herr Untermeyer,  that  I 
invested them badly,'  Schulz  replied  with some 
dignity. 'I was young and inexperienced.'
   Herr Untermeyer nodded slowly, not wholly con-
vinced. 'And this time it was also for fraud. You 
raised money, life savings in some cases, to form 
a company that was supposed  to  make  gold  from 
iron oxide and quartz by heating them in an elec-
tric furnace - a chemical impossibility.'
   'It wasn't considered so at the time, Herr Un-
termeyer.  I  think I can truthfully say that our 
company was the first to  prove, beyond  a shadow 
of doubt, that it simply couldn't be done!'
   'I  shall  never  understand how normally sane 
people allow themselves to be  fooled so easily,'  
Herr Untermeyer  sighed.  'Well,  I  hope  you've 
learned your lesson.  A man of your education and 
abilities should amount to something,  not  spend 
his life in prison.'
   That was precisely Schulz's intention - but he 
was  actually  thinking  along  rather  different 
lines.
   'The Welfare Officer has  a  high  opinion  of 
your intelligence, Schulz.  His  opinion  is that 
you are often misunderstood.  And  I see that you 
have a gift for languages  that  has  never  been 
utilized.'
   'Yes, sir. That was my English grandmother.'
   'English,  French,  it  says  here  ...  Serbo 
Croat?  And  some Dutch too,'  the governor said, 
squinting at the form sheet.
   'In the diamond business in a small way. Amst-
erdam.'  Schulz  was wondering where all this was 
leading.
   'Then there is every hope you may be  of  some 
use to the Fatherland, Schulz?' It was posed more 
as a question than a statement.
   Nothing was further from  Schulz's  mind.  Not 
only was he frightened of  people  in  authority, 
but he had never believed in the  Fatherland.  Of 
course, looking  back  later,  he  realized  that 
every German of his age had said this, but in his 
case it was genuine.
   'Knowing how hard it is for a man leaving pri-
son to find  work,'  Herr  Untermeyer  continued, 
'I have arranged a post for you with a most  civ-
ic-minded employer,  a most patriotic  man,  Herr 
Krauss of Krauss Underwear.  He is short of staff 
due to conscription and will give you employment. 
Let us hope that peace will prevail  and that you  
will make good there.'

the  last  measured lump of soil. Even the breeze 
came through the courtyard  at  a  precise  right 
angle, and it could almost be heard marking time.
   'One  off,'  Beck  said to the  gate  officer. 
'Herr Schulz.'
   Beck  smiled  his crooked razor-slashed smile, 
showing stumps of teeth like lumps of brown sugar 
dotted in his gums.  He  had replaced his cap and 
now the visor bisected  his  face  and  his  eyes 
glistened.
   'You'll be back,' he said.
   Malevolence flooded every vein of  his  rheumy 
eyes like watered red ink.
   'Thanks, Beck,' said Schulz.
   He was still trembling as he went out  through 
the gate and the sweet smell of the air  did  not 
calm him.  He  had been ejected on to the streets 
like an unwanted  pfennig  from  a  slot machine.
   Perhaps at that moment he had an inkling  that 
he had just finished being an almost-free man ...