Happy seventy-fifth birthday, dear Günter Grass, esteemed colleague and world citizen and brother German. A portrait of Thomas Mann, a gift from a Jewish friend, looks down on me from a wall of the room where I write in my native land, which is the USA. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Number Four in G Major comes from the radio. I did not know Mann or Beethoven, but I am lucky enough to have become a friend of you and Heinrich Böll.

At the behest of the BBC years ago now, Heinrich Böll and I engaged on camera in an unrehearsed conversation about being born German. It was a fizzle. Neither one of us, it turned out, could think of anything vivid to say.

What Heinrich Böll said to me by way of farewell at the entrance of our London hotel, though, remains for me unforgettable. He was on two canes, having trouble breathing, and in the care of his dear wife. The tow of them were about to depart for the airport by taxi, in cold, wet weather. It might have been Danzig on the day you were born.