[...] Katharina goes to Hoyerswerda to prepare for a touring engagement, but when they talk on the telephone that night Hans has already forgotten the name of that “dump” as he calls it. At the Writers’ Congress in November, Christoph Hein called for the abolition of censorship, and it didn’t get him arrested. The state has become toothless, a wretched old dog. Does she know what that means? He is remote from her day-to-day concerns, and she from his. Can’t we be like brother and sister? Vadim stands with her on an empty stage by a speaker’s rostrum left over from an event, looks down at the floorboards painted black, and says nothing, just quietly shakes his head. Everything always has two sides, her grandmother in Cologne said back then. Really? Everything? In hat and veil Katharina collects Hans from the Party development meeting, another time she wears a garter belt for him, but the tackle seems to conceal more than it reveals. Hans claims fatigue which he can’t explain, she should just lie down and sleep, he puts her to bed like a doctor and sits down at her bedside, even though she’s neither tired nor unwell. For New Year’s Eve she’s up on a Berlin roof with Sibylle and a few others and staring blindly at the year lying ahead. [...]