I’m three years old now and living, in rather reduced circumstances, on the southern edge of a town called Solingen.

Solingen is famous for its knives, its scissors and its surgical instruments. From a catchment area that spans much of central Europe, the knives, the scissors and the surgical instruments are gathered here in Solingen and turned into steel. Also, and quite near by, we can offer golf, riding, tennis and archery. In addition, modest Solingen harbours a proud secret. I’m the only one who happens to know what that secret it. It’s this: Solingen is the birthplace of Adolf Eichmann. Schh … Hush now. I’ll never tell. And if I did, who would believe me?

Soon I’ll be born too. This terraced house will be my birthplace. It’s a pretty tense situation, I suppose, but I don’t let it get me down. In fact my lucid intervals are increasingly brief and rare. Father is a sallow-fleshed skeleton with half a right foot. Mother is like warm pastry in the icing of her nightdress. She is a nurse: she works in Solingen’s Home for the Old. Odilo’s days are fabulous drugs but we still need to cry sometimes until Father takes the pain away with a rhythmical upward sweep of his rattling hand. Then we are happy again (and up to no good). Mother’s faith is intercessionary, but she has the power. The morning coos at Odilo and me in a language only we can hear. To our mother we say things like:

‘Mummy? Chickens are alive. We catch them and burn them – and then they’re dead! But you can’t eat chicks. Not little good chicks. Because chicks are good. You can just stroke them and everything. But you can eat ducks. Because ducks are fat.’