I become so enraged that I veer off and jump back into the Landwehr Canal. I swim freestyle, yes, I even swim butterfly, despite the Wehrmacht coat. I feel that the truth of the moment is that I am the embodiment of the collected madness of West Berlin - the landmark, so to speak. Berlin in the 1980s, a frontline city caught between paranoia and stagnation. Gray backyards, the smell of cabbage, old Nazis, new bureaucrats. But also megalomaniacs at the theater, excesses in Kreuzberg's club ruins, concerts like nightmares of machine people, nights that never end. In the midst of this walled-off patch of freedom is Robert. His lean body wrapped in a floor-length Wehrmacht coat, a backpack full of books on his back, he traverses the streets in endless violent marches, driven by rage and nervous energy, plunging into madness.