Some time ago, in a 24-hour minimart on Berlin’s Kastanienallee, in the middle of the night, I happened to run into my psychoanalyst – two years after the end of my analysis and for the very first time outside of the room where I’d lain on his couch for years.

I was out that evening with G, my only writer friend. We’d eaten at an Italian place on Eberswalder Straße, drunk a few glasses of wine together outside a bar, then G had walked me to my tram and on the way to the tram we’d started talking about our mothers. It was that mother conversation, our slight drunkenness and the fact that we were retracing old paths – Arkona, Rheinsberger, Wolliner, streets where we’d spent our youth an actual quarter-century ago; that is, in the days when snow still fell and the world around us was black and white and pure poetry – that led me to skip one tram after another and to sit down with G on the steps in a doorway on Kastanienallee, both of us immediately craving a cigarette, even though we’d given up smoking ages ago.

A girl walked past us, smoking. I asked her for a cigarette and she apologised for not having any more, but over there – she pointed at the late-night shop across the road – you could buy single cigarettes: like in the old days. We crossed the street, went into the minimart; the Arab shopkeeper was behind the counter and in front of the counter was my psychoanalyst, Dr Dreehüs, paying for a nice soft yellow pack of American Spirit Lights.

Many times in my life, I have not recognised people when I’ve met them outside their usual settings. I had never encountered Dr Dreehüs outside his office; nor strictly speaking inside his office. He would open the door to me three times a week, I would walk past him down the hall, enter the room, take off my jacket and hang it over the chair provided for that purpose; then I would lie down on the couch and he would take a seat behind me. At the session’s end, we followed the same procedure backwards – I would get up, put my jacket back on while gazing out of the window, embarrassed, and he would walk down the hall in front of me, open the door, we’d shake hands, and then he’d close the door behind me; it was a miracle that his face, his figure and appearance had made any mark on my memory at all. In the late-night minimart, I was faster than him – I recognised him first, or, I realised first, and I was alert enough to find the situation remarkable and not to give any sign that I found it remarkable. I said a polite and surprised hello to Dr Dreehüs and introduced him to G, which was amusing because they both knew about each other; G had come up in stories during analysis sessions and had, in turn, been forced to listen to a good deal of stories about the sessions.

This is G. So this is G.

G, at the end of the night and after all these years, this is in fact Dr Dreehüs, my analyst.

My former analyst. All three of us feigned bows. In my memory of the moment, I have regretfully lost sight of the shopkeeper, his eyes on us, on Dr Dreehüs, who seemed to be a regular customer and might not yet have revealed himself to be an analyst. Whatever the case, I embraced the curious opportunity to ask Dr Dreehüs for two cigarettes. We left the minimart, exchanged a few words, how are you, fine thanks, how are you, as he elegantly tapped the cigarettes out of the pack, offered them to us and was kind enough not to mention the fact that I’d given up smoking during my years of analysis. He seemed nonchalant, whereas I was having trouble maintaining my composure. I wanted to commit everything to memory at once: gestures and expressions, his slightly extravagant suit, the way he gave us a light, then smiled and kept a relaxed distance. I had assumed Dr Dreehüs did not exist. I had of course brooded at length about Dr Dreehüs’s life outside his office and had come to the conclusion that he didn’t have one, which was partly to do with him, as a professional analyst, never having betrayed the slightest detail of his existence other than his presence, his slightly dandyish shirts, ironed trousers, the interior design of his practice room and the occasional book placed as if coincidentally on the desk. For me, Dr Dreehüs lived in that room, with its couch by the window, its scruffy armchair at the end of the couch, its half-empty bookshelf, its empty desk. Outside that room, he didn’t exist. But suddenly there he was – I lit my cigarette with the light he offered. I was aware of his hands, close to my face. I was aware that he was slightly drunk and, like me, had let go, in a sense, as the night progressed. He gave G a light too. And then he wished us goodnight, walked three or four yards down the road and vanished inside a bar, which to my mind opened solely in that instant, materialising only for him, and then closed tight behind him. Outside the minimart was a crooked bench. I had to sit down; G had to sit down as well. We smoked our forbidden cigarettes in perplexed companionship, G’s sympathy for my shock at the encounter consolatory. He said that he wasn’t at all sure the scene had really just happened, or instead had taken place, like in a Woody Allen or Jim Jarmusch film, in a wormhole, an illusion prompted by the wine, the conversation about mothers, the paths into the past. The situation seemed as surreal to him as it did to me, and he too had never noticed the bar into which Dr Dreehüs had vanished like Alice into Wonderland before, and when I said I absolutely had to follow Dr Dreehüs G said that he’d thought as much. He said: But I’ll walk you to the door, at least.

Trommel – Dr Dreehüs’s bar was called Trommel, like the drum. Front window blocked off, dim light emanating through the gap in the door, Trommel could have been a brothel, a darkroom – which I wouldn’t have put past Dr Dreehüs – an Irish pub, or a club; we stood clueless outside. In the end, G said: You know what, I think I’ll just have a bit more of a sit-down here on the bench. Just because. I’ll just hang out here for a bit longer. And if you don’t come out again in fifteen minutes, I’ll assume everything’s fine. Then I’ll go home.

He said: Is that alright with you?

I said: Yes, that’s fine by me. More than fine.

G nodded, gave me a brief but firm touch on the shoulder, returned to the crooked bench and sat down again; he straightened his back, then raised his hand like a boxing referee.

I raised my hand.

Took a deep breath, opened the door to Trommel – and went in.