"No one really knows what love is anyway." A light melancholy hangs over this story, which tells of farewells during the times of division, the twists of fate, and of the one great love for which it is never too late. "This magical memory recounts world history as experienced by the individual." Christoph Dieckmann, Die Zeit. Thomas Falkenhain is at an age where one tidies up and remembers, even when one does not want to remember. For example, a secret student love in the 60s that ended abruptly when Mela, his "cherry thief," had to flee to the West with her husband and son. Only from the Stasi files does he learn that she wrote him letters later on. Unexpectedly, he receives a scholarship for a Roman artist's villa. Hardly arrived there, he catches sight of a woman in the park picking and immediately eating an orange: Mela.