The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories

It's 2006. Peter Bayer and his wife, Elsa, live on the East side of Berlin, as they've always done, even when that wasn't an attractive proposition. What limits Peter's freedom nowadays isn't a concrete wall but often feels like one. Elsa has dementia and barely recognises him, so his life is not only hard work, but it's lonely. What makes it lonelier is that his wife's illness has given her a distorted view of the past and one that would horrify the woman he married. When Helen, a recently widowed English woman, rents the flat Peter owns nearby, he experiences the kinds of conversations that used to be normal for him, which makes his current reality all the more painful. Helen's come to Berlin to find out more about her husband's past in the city and learns things from their German friends that she was unaware of when he was alive. During her struggle to come to terms with her present life, Helen sees that the terrible demands on Peter's life are almost impossible to endure....