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Thick bristles shrieked against porcelain.

"What are you doing?"

A mountain of steel refugees lay at the bottom of the bowl.

"That is enough."

Drowned in the disinfected water that was supposed to have cleansed them.

"Stop it!"

Make me clean, O Lord. Purify my soul as I stand within the flames of purgatory. Our father, who art in Heaven...

"I said that is enough, Annette!"

He took hold of me by the shoulders and shook me hard. The plate I had been scrubbing fell out of my hands and smashed into little pieces against the edge of the bowl. Soapy water spattered my blouse, my face. It was only lukewarm but it seemed to sear little burns into my face. The fingers of my right hand were weeping blood.

Brüno was breathing hard. A few strands of his hair, which he had always kept looking prim with his comb and hair cream, had fallen across his forehead. I had never seen him with his hair looking that way, rumpled like that. Even after love-making his hair looked perfectly combed; every morning his jaw was freshly shaven, his clothes were always neatly pressed and ironed. He had once been a man without creases, a man without shadows.

Now the hair on his neck looked sharp enough to etch a pattern into glass.

"Enough? Enough?" I screamed at him. "Nothing is ever enough. Nothing will ever be enough, you stupid man! You stupid, idiotic man!"

I punched him in the chest again and again, even though it was not his fault. Nothing was his fault, he was a victim, just like me, just like the thousands upon thousands of sad eyes gazing forlornly out of the cattle trucks I would see puttering through the streets, poison gas bullets machine-gunning out of the pipes on the back, like stingers made of steel. He was so solid it was like striking wood. His eyes were closed, so dignified. It made me want to hit him even more.

How dare he? How dare he look so dignified at a time like this, bearded neck and all, when my mind was crumbling, slipping through my fingers like dry sand? I was quite literally losing my mind and he just stood there, so tall, eyes closed as if in prayer, Aryan locks tumbling over his forehead, desperate blonde fingers made of hair gripping his flesh. Skeleton fingers. Children's fingers.

Brüno caught my wrists in his large hands and forced my arms by my sides. Pity brimmed in his eyes. I thrashed furiously for a few moments, yelling and cursing and sobbing, just for the sake of struggling. Then I collapsed against him, a paper silhouette of a woman with a spine of frayed string, sobbing into the rumpled cloth of his chest. I smelled his scent, body odour and the faint ghost of the hair cream that he did not use anymore. Instead of comforting me it made me feel like I was being torn apart.

"It will be OK, Annette," he murmured against my the top of my head as his tears soaked through to my scalp. "It will be OK somehow. We will make it OK."

"We cannot make it OK for the children," I wept, "no matter how hard we try."

For that he had no reply.