Having extensively studied a map of Berlin that Karl bought at the train station he had found the road Erwin lived on. It was in the middle of what they called a working class neighbourhood or what he would call the KPD headquarters if he had dared to raise his voice.

Karl had to cross four backyards to find Erwin’s house. Walking past pale children, who played games he did not recognize, through buildings that all looked the same, dirty and grey, and all smelled the same, like potatoes, people and sewer. They welcomed him with large open doors leading into a damp darkness that made his hair stand, and then back out again into another backyard with another group of children, which could very well have been the same children and the same backyard, so little different were they. He heard them whisper then, white faces in dark windows, old women, the child-rich poor mothers and unemployed men. He was wearing his most civilian suit and had ditched his beloved boots for low ankle shoes, which felt awkward, but his gait was too stiff, his shoes too clean and his face too hard. They could see that he didn’t belong. By the time he stood in front of Erwin’s flat, he was so tense the opening door almost made him jump.

You could tell the time passed since the end of the war from the length of Erwin’s hair. While the stubble all around his head was still kept at the same length that they had sheared it down to in the trenches (to keep away the fleas and lice) a small brown tuft of hair, like a swirled brush stroke, now also sat on it. He looked smart, very smart, when he opened the door of his miserably small flat on the fourth floor, just below the attic. He stood there, entirely out of place in his silk slacks and a starched high collar shirt with an excessive amount of buttons on it, framed by a warm glow of light and a welcoming smell of old things.

Erwin lived like a king in a cupboard. Every wall of his flat was covered with shelves filled with books, wooden boxes, tin boxes, bottles with indecipherable labels and ominous dark liquid in them, round glasses with preserved amphibians next to glasses filled with pickled cucumbers. There was also the dagger that Erwin had taken off the American officer, who had shared his last drink with them, that bittersweet moment in late 1917, and also Erwin’s old Stahlhelm with the bullet dent, a sight that still made Karl queasy, to think about how close it had been. Most of the shelf space was taken up by books though. There were a few new ones, thin and colourful as they printed them now to make up for their grisly contents, but most of them were heavy, old ones, with brown spines. They must have been what gave the place that pleasant organic smell. Erwin’s home was much too small for his belongings but that gave it a cosy feeling like the tunnels they had slept in at the front, deep underground with the pictures of their family hung up on the mud; their little dens, where they curled up together into piles of prickly grey wool and dusty bronze skin.

The kitchen stood out in that the number of books was much smaller than the number of pickles and oddities. There was a small oven with a kettle on it and a sink in one corner and a table with two modest chairs in the other and between them a window letting in some of the afternoon light. The table was drowning in sheets and scraps of paper, most of which seemed to be covered in densely squeezed tiny ink letters. After pushing a few of the papers to the side Erwin motioned Karl to sit down with a grand gesture, which carried his trademark irony that had got him in some trouble with his superior officers, who did not appreciate that kind of humour and had themselves found it much more humorous to subject him to excessive disciplinary measures until he had finally outranked or outlived them.

Erwin offered Karl black tea and served it in small glasses with golden rims. He thought they were made for schnapps. “Turkish custom,” Erwin explained. Karl felt rather silly when he held them, like tiny children’s cups in his crude hands, but they warmed his fingers being so thin.

“What brings you here, Karlo? Business?” Erwin said peering inquisitively at him over the brim of the glass raised to his lips.

The pet name did not fail its intended effect. Karl felt very warm and could not attribute it solely to the tea.

“You could say so.” It was often better to be vague with Erwin. He liked to play games.

“I did not take you for a travelling salesman, it does not suit you” Erwin said. He put down the glass and reached under the pile of papers, feeling for a pack of cigarettes, which he then pulled out, careful not to shake the foundation of the pile, which looked like it could crumble and scatter if any load-bearing paper was removed. “You still don’t smoke?” he said as he lit his cigarette. Karl found himself staring at his fingers when he did so. They were slender and just a little too long for Erwin’s small frame, now carefully manicured and much paler than he remembered, the lack of dirt and sunbathing clearly having some effect. He heard the question but forgot to answer it, being too preoccupied with studying the way Erwin rested his fingers on his lips when he sucked on the cigarette. Memories were attached to those fingers, intrusive thoughts, that did not belong in this place and time. Erwin smiled at him with that expression in his eyes that said he knew everything and cared for nothing. Karl became aware then how much he had missed him and oddly how intensely he missed him still. It felt like looking at a photo of a long lost friend.

“What are you selling then?” Erwin asked, ignoring the lack of reply.

“I’m not selling. I’m buying.”

“And what do you want to buy from me? I could offer you some books I’ve grown to despise, or maybe a war poem?” He pointed at the pile of paper.

Comrades, Karl thought, but “men” he said and regretted the clumsy choice of words instantly.

“Men, Karlo?” Erwin leaned back, looking very decadent when he blew a puff of smoke, one corner of his lips raised. He reminded Karl of the fabulous fox and if he was the fox, that made Karl the wolf and therefore always the butt of the joke. “For what kind of man do you take me?”, Erwin said with mock offence, “I do not have any men to offer you and I am personally not in such dire need as to sell my own body.”

It was his usual sting, but Karl was particularly sensitive to it now. He brought an end to the charade. “I’m looking to recruit old comrades for the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt,” he said dryly.

“Of course you are.” The wit and spark was gone from Erwin’s eyes. In the dim blue light of the kitchen they looked almost black, entirely flat and dull. “I didn’t think they’d make a civilian out of you so easily.”

It sounded hard in tone, but there was something flattering in it to, Karl thought – or hoped. “How do you do it?”, he asked, eyes lowered and fiddling with his empty glass.

“Do what?”

“Live like this.” He didn’t dare look up, scared to see anger or hurt in Erwin’s eyes.

“I write.”

“And that is enough, do you never want to…”, he looked for words that could describe it, encompass all of the things he yearned for, the thrill of the storm, giving yourself into God’s hands and the hands of your comrades, knowing they were always there for you, always someone there to catch him when he fell, always a pair hands pulling him up when it dragged him down into despair and that constant weight of them too on his shoulders that pushed him on to do better, to be there for them also; he looked for words that could describe his utter disgust with the civilian life, the faceless masses who never cared for anything but stuffing their bellies, who spit on his flag and spoke of Germany like an old whore. He could not find the words, so he just said “Do you never want to put the uniform on again?”

Erwin looked at him silently for a long time. “I can wear my uniform any time,” he then said pointing to the door, where Karl now realized, on the back of it hung Erwin’s old uniform, not the formal one, but the one he used to wear on the attack, with rough wool and leather patches on the knees and elbows. It looked small there, smothered by the shelves of food and spices. And then he saw the hole in it right where the medals should be, an open gaping wound. He understood what had happened. He had seen it done to other men, when they returned from the front after the armistice and these people, the ones, who had stayed at home because they were too young, too old or too cowardly and the women too, came and tore them away from each other, swallowed them into their mass and spit them out again, sullied and beaten and all their ranks and medals stolen.

It was painful to look at, impossible to imagine Erwin like that. He quickly turned away. Erwin had observed him coolly, like Karl imagined him looking at a specimen laid out for dissection, one of the creatures swimming in alcohol on his shelves, but there was a hint of sadness in his features too, carefully hidden away in the corners of his mouth and it was tearing at Karl’s heart even more so than the sight of his uniform. He grabbed Erwin’s hand, which lay flat on the table, covering it with his own. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said. The touch was gentle and intimate and it brought back more of those memories Karl has tugged away, knowing he was attributing entirely too much meaning to them.

He remembered all of those cold night in winter when they were on watch, sitting huddled together under a tiny wooden roof, sheltered from the falling snow, listening for intruders while watching the stars and occasionally the flight of the flares fired to dissuade nightly raids.

He remembered that one morning when Erwin’s hands were so cold and pink and Karl rubbed them between his hands, blew on them and kissed his fingers, from the knuckles to the shaking tips and Erwin just watched him, a curious look on his face.

He remembered that night shortly after when Erwin came crawling down into their little den, lay down and huddled up to him like he always did, so close he could feel the warmth of his breath on his back. He remembered how Erwin ran his hand over the front of his coat like he had never done before, up and down and under his coat, under his tunic, into his waistband and down the hot skin of his belly and Karl panicked and turned away, pretending to be turning in his sleep and Erwin quietly withdrew, never to touch him like that again.

Erwin pulled his hand out of the hold. “You needn’t be sorry,” he said, “it’s just scrap metal.”

Karl did not believe it was scrap metal at all, but it was not the right thing to say now. “You still have your name. The men remember you. They worship you. If you’d join us you could draw in hundreds. We are going to go to defend the borders. It could be like before.”

Erwin sighed. He flicked the stump of his cigarette in the sink and lit another one.

“It’s never going to be like before, Karlo, nothing will. The time of guns and glory is over, welcome to the world of dollars and paragraphs. I don’t want followers, I have nowhere to lead them unless you need to know the way to the soup kitchen.”

His words came like a slap in the face and they stung particularly because they rang true, mirroring something that Karl knew deep down, covered by naive hopes and longing. It was the final statement to end their conversation on that topic and politics altogether. They talked for a little while about the rent and the weather and how Karl’s family was doing back home, but Karl felt sick to his stomach and heart, crushed by a sudden feeling of irreparable loss, that stuck with him even after he left Erwin and would stay with him for many years, sometimes a deep blue feeling, cold in his bones, and sometimes the red hot rage of a rifle butt crushing a skull.