Butrus Frings left Stammheim on 30 September 2026, after seven and a half years, released early for good conduct. He behaved well because being noticed is stupid, not because he has changed. I should know. I am the one telling his story.
He does not know that. He thinks he has simply come home to Essen with a suitcase, a grudge and a list of people who owe him. He is wrong about the suitcase. There is no suitcase.
His first public sentence will be about coffee. Qishr, coffee husks with ginger, the way his mother made it in Al-Hudaydah. It sounds like nostalgia. Read the last line again when it appears: I have some experience with imports. He put that there on purpose. Butrus never says anything by accident, least of all when he sounds sentimental.
Over the next days he will talk about Turner, Van Gogh, his father, the dead. And, as if in passing, about the work of his old friend August Mond: Vita Bona, and the Edition. He will make it look like a man sharing his taste. It is not. He works on commission, and he has never in his life shown anyone what he wants.
I will keep this logbook. I will note what he does, what he hides, and where I misjudge him. That will happen. Characters who have survived interrogations are hard to read, even for the one who writes them.