The German House

Part One

THERE HAD BEEN ANOTHER fire last night. She smelled it the moment she stepped out, without a coat, a thin layer of snow blanketing the quiet Sunday-morning street. It must have happened near her house this time. The sharp odor cut through the familiar smell of damp winter air: charred rubber, burned fabric, and melted metal, but also singed leather and hair; some mothers used lambskins to protect their newborns from the cold. It was not the first time Eva wondered who could do such a thing, who could sneak through backyards to break into apartment buildings and set fire to the strollers parked in the entryways. Must be a lunatic—or a bunch of hoodlums! many thought. Fortunately, none of the fires had spread to the building. No one had yet been hurt. Other than financially, of course. A new baby carriage cost 120 marks at Hertie’s. No small peanuts for young families.

“Young families” echoed in Eva’s mind. She paced nervously up and down the sidewalk. It was freezing out. Although Eva wore no more than her new, light blue silk dress, she wasn’t cold—she was sweating with excitement. She was waiting for none other than, as her sister teased, the “apple of her eye,” her future husband, who would meet her family for the first time today, the third Sunday of Advent. He had been invited to the midday meal. Eva checked her watch. Three minutes past one. Jürgen was late.

The occasional car crawled by. It was snowdusting. Eva’s father had coined the term to describe this weather phenomenon: tiny ice flakes came sailing down from the clouds, as if someone up there were shaving an enormous block of ice. Someone who made all the decisions. Eva gazed up at the gray skies over whitish roofs. She discovered then that she was being watched: standing at the second-story window—above the sign that read “German House,” above the letters “ou”—was a beige figure looking down at her. Her mother. She appeared unmoved, but Eva had the feeling she was taking her leave. Eva quickly turned her back on her. She swallowed. That was all she needed right now. To start crying.

The door to the restaurant opened and her father came out, heavy and dependable in his white chef’s coat. He ignored Eva and opened the display case to the right of the door, to place a supposedly new menu in it, although Eva knew there wouldn’t be a new one until Shrove Tuesday. Her father was actually very worried. He doted on her and now jealously awaited the unknown man making his way there. Eva heard him softly singing one of those folk songs he delighted in butchering, pretending everything was normal. Much to his own dismay, Ludwig Bruhns was utterly unmusical: “While a-clownin’ at the gate, a little song comes to meeeee. Under the linden treeeeee.”

A younger woman with teased, light blond hair appeared next to Eva’s mother at the window. She overeagerly waved at Eva, but even at this distance, Eva could tell she was depressed. But Eva did not blame herself. She had waited long enough for her big sister to marry. Then Annegret turned twenty-eight—her waistline expanding with every passing year—and following a secret discussion with her parents, Eva decided to break with convention. Before it was too late. She was practically on the verge of becoming an old maid herself. She hadn’t had many admirers. Her family couldn’t understand it. Eva had such a healthy, feminine presence, with her full lips, slender nose, and long, naturally blond hair that she cut, styled, and sculpted into an artful updo by herself. Her eyes, though, often appeared troubled, as if she were anticipating some impending catastrophe. Eva suspected this frightened men away.

Five minutes past one. No Jürgen. Instead, the door to the left of the restaurant opened. Eva watched her little brother Stefan come out. He wasn’t wearing a coat, which prompted a concerned rapping on the window and gesticulation from their mother upstairs. Stefan obstinately trained his gaze ahead. After all, he had put on his orange pompom hat and matching mittens. He tugged a sled behind him. Purzel, the family’s black dachshund, scampered about his feet; he was a sneaky dog they couldn’t help but adore.

“Something stinks!” Stefan said.

Eva sighed. “You now, too! This family is a curse!”

Stefan began pulling the sled back and forth through the light snow on the sidewalk. Purzel sniffed at a streetlight, circled excitedly, then pooped in the snow. The pile steamed. The sled runners scraped across the asphalt, joined by the rasp of a snow shovel, as their father got to work before the entrance. Eva caught the way he clutched his back and screwed up his eyes. Her father was in pain—something he would never admit. One morning in October, after his back had been “smarting like hell,” as he put it, for some time, her father was unable to get out of bed. Eva called an ambulance, and the hospital X-rayed him and discovered a herniated disc. They’d operated, and the doctor advised him to close the restaurant. Ludwig Bruhns explained that he had a family to feed. And what about his measly pension? They urged him to hire a cook and get out of the kitchen. But Ludwig refused to allow a stranger to enter his realm. The solution had been to stop offering lunch, so since that fall, they’d opened only in the evening. Revenue had dropped by nearly half since then, but Ludwig’s back was feeling better. Still, Eva knew that her father’s greatest wish was to start serving lunch again that spring. Ludwig Bruhns loved his job, loved it when his guests gathered in good company, when they enjoyed the food and went home smiling, satisfied, and tipsy. “I serve up full bellies and happy hearts,” he liked to say. And Eva’s mother would tease back, “He who can, does. He who cannot, serves.”

Eva was feeling a bit chilled now. She crossed her arms and shivered. She hoped fervently that Jürgen would treat her parents with respect. There had been a few times she’d witnessed an unpleasant, condescending attitude toward waiters or shop girls.

“Police!” Stefan bellowed. A black-and-white vehicle with a siren on its roof was approaching. Two men in dark blue uniforms sat inside. Stefan froze in awe. The officers were surely headed for the burned stroller, Eva thought, to collect evidence and question the building’s residents whether they’d noticed anything suspicious the night before. The car glided by almost soundlessly. The policemen gave first Ludwig, then Eva a nod. People knew each other in this neighborhood. The car turned onto König Strasse. Sure enough, the fire must have been in the housing estate. That new pink apartment building. Lots of families live there. Young families.

Twelve minutes past one. He’s not coming. He reconsidered. He’ll call tomorrow and tell me we aren’t a good match. The disparity in our families’ social standing, darling Eva, is just too great for us to bridge. Pow!!! Stefan had thrown a snowball at her. He hit her square in the chest, and the icy snow slid down into her dress. Eva grabbed Stefan by the sweater and yanked him toward her. “Are you crazy?! This is a brand-new dress!” Stefan bared his teeth, his guilty face. Eva would’ve scolded him further, but at that moment Jürgen’s yellow car appeared at the end of the street. Her heart leapt like a spooked calf. Eva cursed her nerves, which she’d even seen a doctor about. Breathe deeply. It was something she failed to do now, because as Jürgen’s car drew near, Eva was struck by the realization that nothing would ever convince her parents of Jurgen’s ability to make her happy. Not even his money. Eva could make out Jürgen’s face behind the windshield. He looked tired. And serious. He didn’t even glance at her. For one horrifying moment, Eva thought he might step on the gas and drive off. But then the car slowed. Stefan burst out, “Gee, he’s got black hair! Like a Gypsy!”

Jürgen steered the car a bit too close to the sidewalk. The rubber tires squealed against the curb. Stefan reached for Eva’s hand. Eva felt the snow melting inside her bodice. Jürgen switched off the engine and sat in the car for another moment. He would never forget this scene: the two women—one fat and one short—standing at the window above the word “House,” in the mistaken belief that he couldn’t see them, the boy with the sled gawking at him, and the father, massive, standing in the door to the restaurant with a snow shovel, ready for anything. They studied him as though he were a defendant entering the courtroom and taking his place for the first time. Except for Eva. Hers was a gaze of anxious love.

Jürgen swallowed, put on his hat, and picked up a bouquet wrapped in tissue paper from the passenger seat. He got out and approached Eva. He was about to smile, when something nipped him painfully in the back of the leg. A dachshund. “Purzel! No! No!” Eva cried. “Stefan, bring him inside. Put him in the bedroom!”

Stefan protested, but grabbed the dog and carried the struggling animal back into the house. Eva and Jürgen locked eyes timidly. They weren’t entirely sure how to greet one another with Eva’s family watching, so they shook hands and began speaking at the same time.

“I’m sorry, they’re just so curious.”

“What a welcoming committee! To what do I owe the honor?”

The moment Jürgen released Eva’s hand, her father, mother, and sister vanished from their posts, like rabbits slipping into their burrows. Eva and Jürgen were alone. An icy wind swept across the street.

“Are you in the mood for goose?” Eva asked.

“I’ve thought of nothing else for days.”

“You just need to get along with my brother. Then you’ll have everyone on your side.”

They laughed, neither certain why. Jürgen headed for the restaurant, but Eva steered him to the left, toward the door to the house. She didn’t want to lead him through the dim dining room that smelled of spilled beer and damp ash. Instead, they climbed the polished staircase, with its black banister, to the apartment above the restaurant. The two-story house had been rebuilt after the war, having been almost completely destroyed in an air strike. The morning following that inferno, all that survived was the restaurant’s long bar, which stood there defenseless and exposed to the elements.

Eva’s mother waited by the apartment door upstairs, wearing the smile typically reserved for regulars at the restaurant. Her “sugar face,” as Stefan called it. Edith Bruhns had put on her double-strand garnet necklace, along with her gilded stud earrings with the dangling cultured pearls and her gold brooch shaped like a clover leaf. Edith was wearing all the jewelry she owned, which Eva had never seen before. She was reminded of the fairy tale she had read aloud to Stefan, about the fir tree. After Christmas, the tree was stored in the attic till spring, when it was carried outside and burned. In its brittle branches hung the forgotten remains of Christmas Eve.

Fitting for Advent, at least, Eva thought.

“Herr Schorrmann, what is this weather you’ve brought with you? Roses in December?! Where on earth did you find these, Herr Schorrmann?”

“Mum, his last name is Schoormann, with two o’s!”

“I’ll take your hat, Herr Schooormann.”

In the living room, which also served as the dining room on Sundays, Ludwig Bruhns met Jürgen, wielding a roasting fork and poultry shears. He offered Jürgen his right wrist in greeting.

Jürgen apologized, “The snow.”

“Not to worry. No harm done. It’s a big goose, sixteen pounds. It takes its time.”

Annegret emerged from the background and fell upon Jürgen. The eyeliner she’d put on was a little too black, the lipstick a little too orange. She shook Jürgen’s hand and smiled conspiratorially. “Congratulations. You’re getting the real deal.” Jürgen wondered whether she meant the goose or Eva.

A short time later, they were all seated at the table, regarding the steaming bird. The yellow roses Jürgen had brought stood to the side in a crystal vase, like flowers brought to a funeral. The radio played unidentifiable Sunday music in the background. A Christmas pyramid powered by three flickering candles twirled on the cupboard. The fourth had yet to be lit. At the center of the pyramid, Mary, Joseph, and the newborn child in the manger stood before a stable. Sheep, shepherds, and the Three Kings and their camels scurried around the family in an endless circle. They would never reach the Holy Family, never be able to offer their gifts to the Baby Jesus. This had saddened Eva as a child. She’d finally snapped the gift from the Moorish king’s hands and placed it before the manger. By the following Christmas, the little red, wooden package had gone missing, and since then, the Moorish king had spun empty-handed. The gift never had turned up. Eva’s mother told this story every year, when she brought down the pyramid from the attic for the Christmas season. Eva had been five at the time, but she had no memory of it.

Eva’s father carved the goose along the breast with the poultry shears. “Was the goose alive once?” Stefan looked quizzically at his father, who winked at Jürgen.

“No, this is a fake goose. Just for eating.”

“Then I want breast meat!” Stefan held out his plate.

“Guests first, sonny.”

Eva’s mother took Jürgen’s plate—the Dresden porcelain patterned with fanciful green tendrils—and held it out to her husband. Eva observed the way Jürgen looked around without being obvious. He eyed the worn sofa and yellow checked blanket her mother had arranged over a tear in the upholstery. She had also crocheted a small coverlet for the left armrest. That was where Eva’s father, once he’d closed up his kitchen, would sit after midnight and rest his feet on a low padded stool, as the doctor had recommended. The weekly newspaper, The Family Friend, lay on the coffee table, opened to the crossword puzzle, a quarter of which had been solved. Another doily protected the precious television set. Jürgen inhaled through his nose and thanked Eva’s mother courteously for the full plate she set before him. She positioned the dish to look especially appetizing. Her earrings swung as she moved. Eva’s father, who had traded his white chef’s coat for his Sunday jacket, sat down next to Eva. There was a small green fleck on his cheek. Probably parsley. Eva quickly brushed it off his soft face. He took her hand and gave it a little squeeze without looking at her. Eva swallowed. She was furious at Jürgen for his appraising look. Fine, he might be used to something else. But he had to see how hard her parents were trying, how good they were, how endearing.

They started eating in silence. As she always did in front of company, Annegret restrained herself and poked at her food, as though she weren’t hungry. But afterward, she would stuff herself with leftovers, and then go for the cold goose in the pantry later that evening. She offered Jürgen the salt and pepper caddy and winked.

“Would you like some pepper, Herr Schoooormann? Salt?”

Jürgen politely declined, which Eva’s father registered without looking up.

“No one’s ever had to season my cooking.”

“Eva tells me you’re a nurse? At the hospital?” Jürgen addressed Annegret, who was a mystery to him. She shrugged, as if it weren’t worth mentioning.

“Which department?”

“Nursery.”

In the silence that followed, they could suddenly all hear the radio announcer. “From Gera, Grandma Hildegard sends her regards to her family in Wiesbaden, especially her eight-year-old grandson Heiner, on this third Sunday of Advent.” Music started to play.

Edith smiled at Jürgen.

“And what do you do professionally, Herr Schoooormann?”

“I studied theology. Now I work in my father’s company. In upper management.”

“Mail-order business, isn’t that right? Your family runs a mail-order business?” her father chimed in.

Eva elbowed him. “Daddy! Now don’t pretend to be dumber than you are!”

A short silence, then everyone laughed, including Stefan, although he didn’t understand why. Eva relaxed. She and Jürgen exchanged a glance: It’ll be fine!

“Of course we receive the Schoormann catalog too,” Eva’s mother admitted.

Stefan sang the jingle in falsetto. “Schoormann’s got it, Schoormann gets it—to you. Ding dong! Dong ding!”

Jürgen feigned seriousness. “And have we also ordered from the catalog? That is the question.”

“Of course,” Edith responded solicitously. “A blow-dryer and a raincoat. We were very satisfied. But you should start selling washing machines. I’d rather not go to Hertie’s for such a big purchase. They always talk your ear off. With a catalog, you can consider your options in the comfort of your own home.”

Jürgen nodded in agreement. “Yes, you’re right, Frau Bruhns. I happen to have several changes planned for the company.”

Eva gave him an encouraging look. Jürgen cleared his throat.

“My father is sick. He’ll not be able to run the company much longer.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Eva’s mother said.

“What has he got?” Her father passed Jürgen the gravy boat. Jürgen wasn’t prepared to say any more, though. He dribbled gravy on his meat.

“It tastes delicious.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Eva knew that Jürgen’s father was growing increasingly senile. Jürgen had only spoken about it once. There were good days and bad. But his unpredictability was only getting worse. Eva hadn’t met Jürgen’s father and his second wife, yet. After all, the groom was supposed to visit the parents of the bride first. Eva and Jürgen had argued about whether he should ask for her hand today. Jürgen was against it. Eva’s parents would think him unserious if he stormed in with such a request. Or—even worse—think that there was something else going on. The quarrel went unresolved. Eva studied Jürgen’s face, trying to detect whether he planned to ask her father today. But his expression revealed nothing. She looked at his hands, which clenched the silverware tighter than usual. Eva hadn’t experienced an “intimate encounter,” as Doctor Gorf called it, with Jürgen. She was ready to, considering she’d already lost her virginity two years ago. But Jürgen had clear expectations: no intercourse before marriage. He was conservative. A wife was to submit to her husband’s authority. From the first time they met, Jürgen looked at Eva as though reading her from the inside, as though he knew what was best for her, better than she did herself. Eva, who most of the time didn’t know what she really wanted, had no objection to being led—whether dancing or in life. This marriage would also allow Eva to move up in society. From the innkeeper’s daughter born and raised in Bornheim, to the wife of a distinguished businessman. The thought made Eva dizzy. But it was a happy dizziness.

Right after lunch, Eva and her mother started fixing the coffee together in the spacious kitchen. Annegret had left. She had to work the late shift at the hospital, had to feed her infants. Plus, she didn’t care too much for cake with buttercream icing.

Eva sliced thick pieces of Frankfurt Crown Cake while her mother ground coffee beans in a small electric grinder. Edith Bruhns stared at the growling appliance. When the noise stopped, she said, “He’s not at all your type, Evie. I mean, I can’t help but think of Peter Kraus. He was always your heartthrob….”

“Just because Jürgen’s not blond?”

Eva was shocked by how obviously her mother didn’t like Jürgen. And she considered her mother a great judge of character. Working at the restaurant, Edith had met countless people. At first glance, she could tell whether a person was decent or a lout.

“Those black eyes…”

“Mum, his eyes are dark green! You just need to look more closely.”

“I mean, it’s up to you. His family is certainly above reproach. But I have to be honest, child, I can’t help it. He will not make you happy.”

“Would you just get to know him first?”

Eva’s mother poured bubbling water into the filled coffee strainer. The coffee smelled like the expensive kind.

“He’s too withdrawn, Eva. He’s spooky.”

“He’s thoughtful. Jürgen did want to become a priest….”

“God forbid!”

“He had already studied theology for eight semesters. But then he met me and started rethinking celibacy.”

Eva laughed, but her mother remained stony-faced. “Surely he left school because of his father? Because he needs to take over the company.”

“Yes.” Eva sighed. Her mother was not in the mood to joke. They watched the bubbling water seep through the coffee filter.

Spooky Jürgen and Eva’s father sat in the living room with cognacs. The radio played untiringly. Jürgen smoked a cigarette and studied the ponderous oil painting hung above the cupboard. It depicted a marshy landscape at sunset, the red sky flaring up beyond the dike. Some cows grazed upon a lush meadow. There was a woman hanging laundry beside her cottage. A short distance away, on the right edge of the painting, stood another figure. It appeared out of focus, as if sketched in after the fact. It was unclear whether this was the cowherd, the husband, or a stranger.

Stefan crouched on the rug and prepared his plastic army for battle. Purzel had been let back out of the bedroom, and he lay on his belly and blinked at the soldiers gathered before his nose. Stefan assembled long rows. He also had a tin wind-up tank. It lay waiting in its box.

Meanwhile, Eva’s father was sharing a general outline of the family history with his future son-in-law. “Yep, I’m an old sandworm. Grew up on Juist, as you can probably hear. My parents owned a shop. Supplied the whole island. Coffee, sugar, window glass—we had everything. Actually, Herr Schooormann, just like you. My mother died early. Father never really did recover. He’s been gone for fifteen years now, himself. Edith, my wife, well, I met her at the school of hotel management in Hamburg. That was in ’34, and boy were we wet behind the ears! My wife comes from a family of artists, if you can believe it. Her parents were both musicians in the philharmonic. He played first violin, she played second. It was the other way ’round at home. My wife’s mother, she’s still alive. Lives in Hamburg. My wife was meant to play violin too, only her fingers were too short. So her hope was to become an actress, which her parents nipped firmly in the bud. At the very least, she wanted to see the world, so they sent her to study hotel management.”

“And what brought you here?” Jürgen asked with friendly interest. He’d enjoyed the roast goose. He liked Ludwig Bruhns, who was giving such an enthusiastic account of his family. Eva had inherited her sensuous mouth from her father.

“‘German House’ had belonged to one of my wife’s cousins, and he wanted to sell it. Boy, if that didn’t fit like an ass on the can. Pardon the expression. We seized opportunity and reopened in ’49. We’ve never looked back.”

“Sure, Berger Strasse is worth it….”

“The decent part, I’d like to point out, Herr Schoormann!”

Jürgen smiled reassuringly.

“Anyway, since the episode with my back, my doctor’s been saying I should close up shop! So I spelled out my pension for him. Now we don’t open till five. But there will be an end to this decadent lifestyle, come spring!”

They fell silent. Jürgen sensed there was more Ludwig wanted to say. He waited. Ludwig cleared his throat and did not look at him.

“Yes, well, my back issues. They’re from the war.”

“An injury?” Jürgen asked politely.

“I served in the field kitchen. On the Western Front. Just so you know.” Eva’s father polished off the rest of his cognac. Jürgen was slightly perplexed. He didn’t sense that Ludwig Bruhns had just lied.

Pow pow pow! Stefan had released his tank. It made a tremendous racket struggling over the rug, as though the pile were eastern marshlands. It ran over one soldier figurine after the other.

“Young man! Take it into the hallway!”

But Stefan had eyes only for Jürgen, who feared children’s directness. Then he remembered Eva’s advice, to win over her brother.

“Can you show me your tank, Stefan?”

Stefan stood up and handed Jürgen his tin toy.

“It’s almost two times bigger than Thomas Preisgau’s,” he said.

“Thomas is his best friend,” Ludwig explained, pouring more cognac.

Jürgen admired the tank with due care. Stefan snatched up a figurine from the floor. “Look, I painted this one. It’s a Yank! A Negro!”

Jürgen glanced at the small plastic soldier with the painted face Stefan was holding out for him. It was blood red. Jürgen closed his eyes, but the image remained.

“And I’m getting an air rifle from Father Christmas!”

“An air rifle,” Jürgen repeated absently. He took a long draft from his glass. The memory would fade in a moment.

Ludwig drew Stefan close. “You don’t know that for certain, little one.” Stefan squirmed loose.

“I always get everything I ask for.”

Ludwig looked at Jürgen apologetically. “It’s true, I’m afraid. The boy is spoiled rotten. My wife and I, well, we certainly weren’t expecting anything to come after the girls.”

The telephone rang in the hallway. Stefan reached it first and flatly recited his lines: “Bruhns family residence, Stefan Bruhns speaking. Who’s there, please?” Stefan listened, then called out, “Eva, it’s Herr Körting! For you!” Eva came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron, and took the receiver. “Herr Körting? And when? Immediately? But we’re all here—”

Eva was interrupted. She listened and looked through the open door at the two men sitting at the table. They look quite comfortable with each other already, she thought. Then Eva spoke into the phone, “Yes, all right. I’ll come in.” She hung up.

“I’m so sorry, Jürgen, but that was my boss. I have to go to work!”

Her mother emerged from the kitchen with the coffee tray.

“On Advent Sunday?”

“Apparently it’s urgent. There’s a trial date scheduled for next week.”

“Well, it’s like I always say, you can’t mix duty with pleasure.” Ludwig got to his feet. Jürgen stood too. “But you stay here! You’ve still got to try this cake!”

“It’s made with real butter. A whole pound!” Edith added.

“And you haven’t even seen my room yet!”

Jürgen escorted Eva into the hallway. She had changed and now wore her modest business suit. Jürgen helped her into her pale checked wool coat and murmured in comic desperation, “You planned this as a test, didn’t you? You want to leave me alone with your family and see how I fare.”

“They don’t bite.”

“Your father’s got those bloodshot eyes.”

“That’s from his pain medication. I’ll be back in an hour. I’m sure it has to do with that suit for damages. Those faulty engine parts from Poland.”

“Should I drive you?”

“Someone’s picking me up.”

“I’m coming with you. If you’re not careful, you could end up compromised.”

Eva pulled on her deerskin gloves, Jürgen’s gift to her on Saint Nicholas Day.

“The only client who’s ever compromised me is you.”

They looked at each other. Jürgen moved in for a kiss. Eva pulled him into the corner beside the coatrack, where her parents couldn’t see them. They embraced, smiled, kissed. Eva felt Jürgen’s arousal, saw in his eyes, that he desired her. Loved her? Eva stepped out of the embrace. “Would you ask him today, please?”

Jürgen did not respond.

Eva left the apartment, and Jürgen headed back into the living room. There the Bruhnses sat at the coffee table, like actors waiting onstage for their prompt.

“We’re not at all dangerous, Herr Schoormann.”

“Totally harmless, Herr Schooormann.”

“Except for Purzel. He bites sometimes,” Stefan called from the rug.

“Well, let’s get a taste of that cake.”

Jürgen returned to the warmth of the living room.

Eva came out of the house. It was already getting dark outside. The snow cover glowed soft blue. Circles of amber lay beneath the streetlights. A large vehicle, its engine running, stood in the middle of the street. The driver, a young man, impatiently beckoned to Eva. She climbed into the front passenger seat. It smelled of cigarette smoke and peppermint in the car. The young man was chewing gum. He was not wearing a hat, nor did he shake Eva’s hand. He just nodded curtly: “David Miller.” Then he stepped on the gas. He wasn’t a good driver—too fast—and routinely shifted gears either too late or too soon. Eva didn’t have a license, but she could tell he was not familiar with this vehicle. He was a bad driver in other ways too. The car repeatedly fishtailed. Eva studied the young man out the corner of her eye. He had thick reddish hair a little too long in the back, freckles, fine, pale eyelashes, and slender hands that gave off a strangely innocent impression.

It was evident Herr Miller had no interest in conversation. As they drove in silence toward the city center, the lights grew brighter and more colorful, with a particular tendency toward red. The lower section of Berger Strasse featured several such establishments. Suzi’s or Mokka Bar. Eva thought of Jürgen, who had by now returned to the table, sat, and eaten the Frankfurt Crown Cake she’d baked, barely tasting a thing. Because without question, he was nervously debating whether he could ask of his family that they accept hers, and whether he wanted to spend the rest of his life together with her.

The law offices were in a tall building on one of the city’s main streets. David Miller stepped into a small elevator alongside Eva. The doors shut automatically twice. Double doors. David pressed the eight, then looked at the ceiling, as if expecting something. Eva also looked up, at a screwed-shut hatch with countless little holes. A ventilation duct. She suddenly felt confined. Her heart pounded faster, and her mouth went dry. David looked at Eva. Looked down, although he wasn’t much taller than she. He felt uncomfortably close. His eyes were strange.

“What was your name?”

“Eva Bruhns.”

The elevator stopped with a jolt, and for a moment Eva feared they’d gotten stuck. But the doors opened. They stepped out, took a left, and rang at a heavy glass door. An office girl in green trotted up from the other side and let them in. Eva and the girl swiftly looked each other over. Same age, similar figure. The girl had dark hair and bad skin, but her eyes were a clear gray.

Eva and David followed the girl down a long corridor. As they walked, Eva scrutinized the girl’s tight suit and the folds that formed on her rear with every step. The heels on her black pumps were brazenly high. She’d probably bought them at Hertie’s. What sounded like sobbing could be heard from a room at the end of the hallway, but the closer they came, the softer the noise grew. It was silent when they finally reached the door. Perhaps Eva had simply imagined the cries.

The girl knocked, then opened the door to a surprisingly cramped office. Inside were three men, surrounded by cigarette smoke and document files stacked on tables, shelves, and the floor.

One of them, a short, older gentleman, sat bolt upright in a chair in the center of the room, as though the entire room—the entire building—had been constructed around him alone. Perhaps even the entire city. A younger man with light blond hair and fine, gold-rimmed glasses was wedged behind a desk laden with files. He had cleared himself a small spot, where he was now writing. He was smoking a cigarette but had no ashtray. As Eva looked over at him, the ash fell on his notes. He mechanically brushed it to the floor. Neither man rose, which Eva thought quite rude.

The third man, a gnarled figure, even turned his back on her. He was standing at the window, peering out at the dark. Eva was reminded of a film on Napoleon she had seen with Jürgen. The general had assumed the same stance at the palace window. In despair over his planned campaign, he had gazed across the countryside. Only they could see that the landscape outside the window was painted on cardboard.

The blond man behind the desk gave Eva a nod. He gestured toward the seated man. “This is Herr Josef Gabor, from Warsaw. The Polish interpreter was meant to come with him today, but he encountered some difficulties in leaving the country. He was detained at the airport. Please.”

Since none of the gentlemen made any moves to help her, Eva removed her coat herself and hung it on a stand behind the door. The blond man pointed at a table against the wall. On it were dirty coffee cups and a plate with a few leftover cookies. Eva loved speculoos. But she refrained from indulging. She had put on two kilos in recent weeks. Eva positioned herself at the table so she could look Herr Gabor in the face, and removed the two dictionaries from her handbag. One general, the other a lexicon of specialized economic terms. She slid aside the cookie plate and set the books in its spot. Then she pulled out her notebook and a pencil. The girl in green had taken a seat at the other end of the table, at a stenotype machine. She fed the paper tape into the machine, the roller chattering. She never took her eyes off the light blond-haired man. She was interested in him, but it wasn’t mutual, which Eva detected straightaway. David Miller also removed his coat and sat down in a chair against the opposite wall, as though he weren’t involved, his coat across his knees.

Everyone waited, as if for a starting pistol. Eva looked at the cookies. The gnarled man standing at the window turned around. He addressed the man in the chair.

“Herr Gabor, please tell us what, exactly, occurred on the twenty-third of September 1941.”

Eva translated the question, although the year struck her as odd. That was more than twenty years ago. They must be examining some crime (although hadn’t the statute of limitations expired?) rather than a contract violation. The man in the chair looked Eva straight in the face, clearly relieved to have finally met someone in this country who understood him. He began to speak. His voice was in direct contrast to his upright bearing. It was as if he were reading from a letter faded with time, as if he were at first unable to decipher all of the words. He also spoke in a provincial dialect that gave Eva some trouble. She translated haltingly.

“That day it was warm—almost humid, in fact—and we had to decorate all the windows. All the windows in hostel number eleven. We decorated them with sandbags and filled all of the cracks with straw and dirt. We put a lot of effort into it, because mistakes were not tolerated. We finished our work toward evening. Then they led the 850 Soviet guests down into the cellar of the hostel. They waited till dark, so you could see the light better, I suspect. Then they threw the light into the cellar, down the ventilation shafts, and closed the doors. The doors weren’t opened till the next morning. We had to go in first. Most of the guests were illuminated.”

The men in the room looked at Eva. She felt slightly nauseous. Something was wrong. The woman tapped away at her machine, unfazed, but the blond man asked Eva, “Are you sure you understood that correctly?” Eva paged through her specialist dictionary. “I’m sorry, I usually translate in contract disputes, regarding economic affairs and negotiating settlements for damages….”

The men exchanged looks. The blond man shook his head impatiently, but the gnarled man by the window gave him a placating nod. From across the room, David Miller looked at Eva with disdain.

Eva reached for her general dictionary, which was heavy as a brick. She had the feeling it wasn’t guests, but prisoners. Not a hostel, but a cell block. And not light. No illumination. Eva eyed the man in the chair. He returned her gaze, his expression as if he were suddenly feeling faint.

Eva said, “I apologize, I translated that incorrectly. It was, ‘We found most of the prisoners suffocated by the gas.’”

Silence filled the room. David Miller was trying to light a cigarette, but his lighter refused to catch. Chk-chk-chk. Then the blond man coughed and turned toward the gnarled man. “We should be glad we found a replacement at all. At such short notice. Better than nothing.”

He responded, “Let’s try to continue. What other option do we have?”

The blond man turned to Eva. “But if you’re ever uncertain, look it up immediately.”

Eva nodded. She translated slowly. The woman typed on her machine at the same trickling pace. “When we opened the doors, some of the prisoners were still alive. About one third. It had been too little gas. The procedure was repeated with double the amount. We waited two days to open the doors this time. The operation was a success.”

The blond man stood up behind his desk. “Who gave the order?” He moved the coffee cups and laid out twenty-one photos on Eva’s table. Eva regarded the faces from the side. Men with numbers under their chin in front of whitewashed walls. But some in sunny yards, playing with big dogs. One man had the face of a ferret. Josef Gabor stood up and approached the table. He gazed upon the photos for a long time and then pointed at one so suddenly, it made Eva jump. The picture showed a younger man grasping a large rabbit by the scruff, holding it toward the camera with a proud smile on his face. The men in the room exchanged satisfied glances and nodded. My father used to breed rabbits, Eva thought, at their garden plot outside the city, where he grew the vegetables for the kitchen. The endlessly chewing animals were kept in little enclosures. But the day Stefan realized he wasn’t just petting and supplying his silky soft companions with dandelions, but also eating them, he had thrown a terrible fit. Her father got rid of the rabbits.

Later, Eva had to sign her translation of the testimony. Her name looked different than usual. As though written by a child, clumsy and rounded. The blond man gave her an absentminded nod. “Thank you. Invoice goes through your agency?” David Miller rose from his chair against the wall and said brusquely, “Wait outside. Two minutes.”

Eva put on her coat and stepped into the hall, while David conferred with the blond man. She could make out, “Unqualified! Utterly unqualified!” The blond man nodded, picked up the telephone, and dialed a number. The attorney general dropped heavily into a chair.

Eva stepped up to one of the tall windows in the hallway and peered out into the shadowy back courtyard. It had begun to snow. Thick, heavy flakes. Countless dark windows, deserted and mute, in the high-rise opposite returned Eva’s gaze. Not a soul lives there, Eva thought. Just offices. Three mittens had been laid to dry on the radiator under the window. Who do they belong to? she wondered. Who does the single mitten belong to?

Josef Gabor appeared beside her. He bowed slightly and thanked her. Eva nodded at him. Confused. Through the open door, she noticed that the gnarled man was observing her from his chair by the window. David Miller joined her in the hallway, pulling on his coat as he walked. “I’ll drive you.” He clearly wasn’t happy to.

Neither spoke in the car. The wipers moved fitfully, driving off the innumerable snowflakes from the windshield. David was beside himself. Eva could sense his fury.

“I’m sorry, but I just jumped in. Normally I just handle contracts…. It was absolutely horrible, what that man was—”

The car skidded narrowly past a streetlight. David cursed under his breath.

“What was he talking about? An incident from the war?”

David did not look at Eva. “You’re all so ignorant.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You all think that the little brown men landed their spaceship here in ’33. Am I right? Then off again they went in ’45, after forcing this fascism thing on you poor Germans.”

It wasn’t until he spoke for a longer stretch that Eva could hear he wasn’t German. He had a slight accent, maybe American. And he placed his words very precisely. As though everything he said had been rehearsed.

“I’d like to get out, please.”

“And you’re just another one of the millions of idiot Fräuleins. I saw it the moment you got in the car. Oblivious and ignorant! Do you know what you Germans did?! Do you know what you did?!!”

“Stop the car this instant!”

David hit the brakes. Eva seized the handle, opened the door, and got out. “That’s right, just run away. I hope your German comfort ki—”

Eva slammed the door. She hurried through the falling snow. Suddenly everything was quiet, the furor behind her. The heavy vehicle swooped off. Eva thought, That driver, or whatever he is, isn’t mentally stable!

Jürgen’s car had disappeared from out in front of German House. Where he’d parked was covered in snow, as though Jürgen had never been there. The windows of the restaurant glowed warmly. The drone of voices inside could be heard from the street. Company Christmas parties. Those meant good business for them every year. Eva watched the silhouettes moving behind the panes. She saw her mother, laden with plates, approach a table and serve the guests swiftly, deftly. Chops. Schnitzel. Goose with red cabbage and the endless dumplings her father, the magician, formed with his soft, dexterous hands and sent into the seething salted water.

Eva wanted to go in, but she hesitated. For a moment, the place seemed like a maw that threatened to swallow her. Then she pulled herself together. Herr Gabor had experienced something terrible, but the question of the hour was: Had Jürgen asked for her hand in marriage?

As Eva stepped into the restaurant—into the human warmth, the haze of sizzling goose fat, the roomful of bodies, all a bit drunk and merry—her mother came up, balancing plates. Edith Bruhns was now wearing her work clothes: black skirt and white blouse, a white apron and her comfortable beige shoes. She whispered in alarm, “What happened to you? Did you fall?”

Eva shook her head indignantly. “Did he ask?”

“Talk to your father!” Edith turned and carried on serving.

Eva entered the kitchen. Her father was hard at work with his two helpers. Her father, in his white coat, dark trousers, chef’s hat on his head, his belly always pushed out a little in front, which gave him a funny look. Eva whispered, “Did he ask?” Her father opened an oven, which released a massive cloud of steam in his face. He didn’t appear to notice. He heaved a large pan of roast goose—two whole, brown birds—from the oven. He did not look at his daughter. “Nice young man. Decent.”

Eva sighed in disappointment. She had to struggle to keep from crying. Then her father came up to her. “He’ll ask, Eva, sweetheart. But if he doesn’t make you happy, heaven help him!”

That night, Eva lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. The streetlight in front of the house threw a shadow into her room that looked like a man on a horse. A tall man with a lance. Don Quixote. Eva studied him every night, the way he floated above her, and asked herself, What is it I’m fighting in vain? Eva thought of Jürgen and cursed her fear that he might leave at the last moment. Maybe women didn’t interest him. After all, who voluntarily decides to become a priest? Why hadn’t he ever touched her? Eva sat up, switched on the light on her bedside table, opened a drawer, and pulled out a letter. The only letter from Jürgen in which he’d written “I love you.” It was, however, preceded by “If I had to settle on a feeling, then I could definitely say that…” There it was. In Jürgen’s awkward way of expressing emotions, this was an untarnished confession of love! Eva sighed, placed the letter back in the bedside table, and turned off the light. She closed her eyes. She saw flakes swirling, and an indistinct façade with dark windows. She began to count them. At some point, she fell asleep. She did not dream of Jürgen. She dreamed of a hostel, far to the east. A hostel tastefully covered in flowers and grasses to keep out the wind and cold. She had invited many guests. As Eva and her parents served the crowd, the guests reveled heartily till early morning. Till none of them were breathing.

Monday. The city lay under a thick blanket of snow. Those responsible for the roads ate breakfast standing that morning while making phone calls about the precarious situation, only to spend the rest of the day in their overheated offices, being bombarded with complaints about vehicular damage and streets that hadn’t been cleared.

Mondays meant that German House was closed. Ludwig Bruhns got in his “weekly beauty rest” till nine. Annegret, who had gotten home from her shift earlier that morning, hadn’t made an appearance yet, either. The remaining family members ate breakfast in the big, bright kitchen that faced the back courtyard. The fir tree that towered there was covered in white, a few crows perching motionless in its branches, as though they couldn’t comprehend the snow. Stefan had stayed home, supposedly with a “beastly” sore throat. Edith Bruhns had feigned mercilessness and responded, “Well, someone decided to play in the snow without a coat…” But then she had rubbed his little chest with eucalyptus salve, which lent the kitchen a gentle aroma. She’d wrapped a scarf around his neck and was now slathering a third slice of bread with honey, which was good for sore throats. Meanwhile, she was also comforting Eva, who paged unhappily through the morning paper.

“Your worlds are too different. I can understand the attraction, child. But it would be the end of you. Just the thought of that estate. I know the ones, up there in the hills. People’s properties the size of ten soccer fields…”

“Can I play soccer up there?!” Stefan asked with his mouth full.

“After the first flush of love has faded,” Edith continued, “you need to represent. You need to keep a smile on your face and stay strong. And don’t expect much of your husband. He’s got such an important post, you’ll barely set eyes on him. You’ll be alone. And that’s not the life for you, Eva. It’ll make you sick. Your nerves always were so delicate….”

“Nerves.” The word bothered Eva every time she heard it. It was as though her nerves were something outside of her, cladding her body. As though her delicate nerves were a matter of having chosen the wrong clothing. Eva thought of Brommer’s Costumes, by the train station, a store as musty as it was magical, as dark, dangerous, and impenetrable as the jungle. Since childhood, she had loved plunging into their wares every year in preparation for Carnival. She imagined coming across strong nerves hanging among ruffled princess gowns on one of the store’s countless racks. A coat woven and knotted out of thick, steely strands. Impregnable, impossible to tear, protection from all pain. “Mum, that’s something you can learn! Just look at Grace Kelly. First an actress, and now she’s a princess….”

“You have to be the right type for something like that.”

“Then what type might I be, pray tell?”

“You are a normal young woman who needs a normal man. Maybe a tradesman. Roofers make very good money.” Eva snorted in outrage and was about to voice her disdain for every last type of tradesman, when a small black-and-white photograph in the newspaper caught her eye. It showed two of the men she had spent an hour with in a smoke-filled room yesterday: the younger, blond man and older fellow with the funny windswept hair. They were pictured in serious conversation. The caption read, “Lead prosecutor and Hessian state attorney general holding preparatory discussions.” Eva started to read the one-column article. A trial against former members of the SS was evidently set to begin in the city that very week.

“Eva? Are you listening? I’m talking to you! What about Peter Rangkötter? He courted you for such a long time. And tilers never run out of work.”

“Mum, do you seriously think I would ever want to be named Eva Rangkötter?” Stefan, his little chin covered in honey, giggled and gleefully chanted, “Frau Rangkötter! Frau Rangkötter!” Eva ignored her brother, pointed to the article, and looked at her mother. “Have you heard about this? This trial? That was my assignment yesterday.”

Edith took the paper, glanced at the photograph, and skimmed the article. “It’s terrible, what happened. In the war. But no one wants to hear it anymore. And why in our city, of all places?” Edith Bruhns folded up the paper. Eva looked at her mother in surprise. It sounded as though she had some stake in it. “And why not?” Her mother didn’t respond. Instead, she stood and began to clear the dirty dishes. She was wearing a tight-lipped expression—her “lemon face,” as Stefan called it. She turned on the boiler above the sink to heat dishwater.

“Can you help downstairs today, Eva, or do you have to work?”

“Yes, I can. Things are slow around Christmas. Besides, the boss always asks Karin Melzer first. Because she always wears such pointed brassieres.”

“Shhh,” Edith hissed, with a glance at Stefan, who merely smirked.

“As if I didn’t knew what a brassiere is.”

“As if I didn’t know,” Edith corrected him. The water in the boiler began to seethe. Edith stacked the dishes in the sink.

Eva opened the newspaper again and finished reading the article: twenty-one men had been indicted. They had all worked at a camp in Poland. The trial had been repeatedly delayed. The main defendant, the camp’s final commander, had already died on them. His adjutant, a Hamburg businessman of excellent repute, had been indicted in his place. Testimony would be heard from 274 witnesses. Hundreds of thousands of people in the camp were allegedly—

“Boo!”

Stefan unexpectedly smacked the bottom of the paper, one of his favorite jokes. As always, Eva was terribly startled. She tossed the paper aside and leaped to her feet. “Just you wait!” Stefan stormed out of the kitchen, Eva on his heels. She chased her little brother through the apartment, finally capturing him in the living room, where she held him tight and threatened to squish him like the lousy louse he was. Stefan squealed in delight, his peals so shrill they shook the crystal glassware in the cupboard.

In the kitchen, Edith still stood at the sink, watching the boiler. The water was now boiling loudly, unsettlingly. The dirty dishes waited in the sink. But Edith didn’t move. She stared, motionless, at the big, hot bubbles dancing behind the glass.

At the same time, in the offices of the prosecution, the atmosphere resembled backstage at the theater shortly before the curtain rises on a world premiere. David Miller attempted to appear composed and professional as he stepped into the corridor but was instantly seized by the feverish surge: every office door was open, telephones were ringing, pastel-colored office girls balanced towers of files or wheeled documents across the linoleum on squeaky carts. Ring binders were laid out along the length of the hallway, dark red and black, like collapsed rows of dominoes. Plumes of smoke spilled from every room. The clouds reminded David of greyhounds hovering, as if in slow motion, over the nervous chaos and dissipating before their chance to chase the mechanical hare. David almost laughed. It made him uncomfortable, it seemed cynical—but he was excited. He was there. Of the forty-nine applicants for the clerkship, only eight had been selected. Himself included, despite having passed the bar only a year earlier in Boston. David knocked on the open door to the lead prosecutor’s office. He was standing at his desk, on the phone, a glowing cigarette between his fingers. The outlines of a construction crane in the courtyard outside were visible through the foggy windows. The blond man gave David a curt nod and, as usual, appeared to struggle to recall exactly who he was. David entered.

“The length of the trial will depend on the chief judge,” the blond man spoke into the phone. “And I cannot read the man. If he acts according to the consensus, then things will be hushed up and relativized and we’ll be through in four weeks. But the prosecution will insist upon a thorough evidentiary hearing. Personally, I’m expecting more along the lines of four months.” He paused. “Sure, consider it a present. Go ahead and write it.” The blond man hung up and used the butt of his cigarette to light the next. His hands were steady. David didn’t waste time with a greeting: “Has he been in touch?”

“Who?”

“The Beast.”

“No. And I would prefer it, Herr Miller, if you would refrain from using such slanted terms. We’ll leave that to the public.”

David waved off the rebuke. He couldn’t comprehend how the prosecutor could remain so calm. One of the main defendants had been released from custody three months earlier, citing health issues. For the past five days now, they’d been unable to reach him at his registered address. And the trial was scheduled to begin Friday morning.

“But then we’ve got to get the police involved! They’ve got to launch a manhunt!”

“No legal basis, I’m afraid. The trial hasn’t begun yet.”

“But he’ll abscond, damn it! Like all the others, to Argentina and—”

“We need that young woman. The one from yesterday. What was her name?” the blond man interrupted him. David shrugged reluctantly, although he knew who he meant. The prosecutor didn’t wait for a response.

“They won’t let Dombreitzki leave the country.”

“Dommitzki.”

“Exactly, him. Negotiations are under way, but he’s staying where he is for now. In a Polish prison. An agreement could take months to reach.”

“I don’t believe that a young German woman, of all people, is suitable for such a demanding position. Sir”—David was becoming more insistent—“we are entirely dependent on our interpreters. They could tell us whatever the hell they wanted—”

“She’ll take an oath. You could also see it this way: a woman might have a calming effect on witnesses. And that’s exactly what we need, witnesses who feel safe! We need to get everything we can out of them—and they have to tell us what happened, have to endure the strain. So drive over there straightaway. You remember the address?” David nodded hesitantly and shuffled out.

The blond man sat down. This Miller fellow was too keen, too dogged. He’d heard a rumor that Miller’s brother had died in the camp. It would be tricky if there were any truth to that rumor, because they’d have to replace him then, due to conflict of interest. On the other hand, they needed dedicated young people like him to spend day and night processing the thousands of documents, comparing dates, names, and events, and helping maintain order in this cacophony of voices. The blond man deeply inhaled the smoke from his cigarette, held his breath for a moment, and turned to the window. Outside in the courtyard, the shadowlike crane traced its usual circles.

Eva mopped the floor of the cavernous German House dining room. Her father, who had since risen from his beauty sleep, was in the kitchen polishing surfaces with the radio on. A Schlager pop song Eva and Jürgen had once danced to carried into the dining room. Peter Alexander crooned, “Come with me to Italy!” Jürgen was a good dancer. And he smelled so good, like resin and the sea. He held her so tight when they danced. He always knew what was right and what was wrong. Eva swallowed. She pushed him away in her mind, furious and disappointed. Jürgen, who for half a year had called from his desk every morning at eleven, hadn’t been in touch today. Eva slapped the wet mop on the floorboards. She resolved never to see him again if he didn’t call by two. As for his letters, the white gold bracelet, deerskin gloves, angora undergarments (she’d had pneumonia in November, and Jürgen had been very concerned), collection of Hesse poems, and… boom boom boom! Someone was thumping on the locked front door. Eva spun around: a man, a young man. Jürgen, overcome by emotion, had uncharacteristically abandoned his desk to ask for her hand in marriage, right here, right now. On bended knee. Eva set aside the mop, hastily shed her smock, and rushed to the door. Everything was fine. But then she recognized the unfriendly man from yesterday through the glass. David Miller. Annoyed, she opened the door. “We’re closed!” David shrugged and looked at her, unfazed. “I’m here on behalf of…” Eva was astonished to notice that David hadn’t left any tracks in the fresh snow, as though he’d flown up to the door. Strange.

“The lead prosecutor sent me.”

Eva hesitantly waved him inside. David entered. They stood at the bar, while in the kitchen, an Italian tenor sang his heart out. Eva could have joined in. “Seven days a week, I want to spend with you.”

“The interpreter can’t enter the country, at least not yet. He was deemed politically unreliable, and he’s got to get his affairs in order. So we need a replacement. Trial begins Friday.”

Eva was stunned. “You mean to say I should translate?”

“I’m not the one saying it. They just sent me.”

“Oh, my. And for how long? A week?”

David studied Eva almost pityingly. He had pale blue eyes, and his left pupil was larger than the right. Perhaps it had to do with the light, perhaps it was something he’d been born with. It gave him an unsteady, permanently searching expression. And he’ll never find himself, Eva thought instinctively, although without a sense of why.

“Have you already spoken with my agency? With my boss, Herr Körting?”

But David appeared not to have heard the question. He recoiled, as though Eva had struck him, and leaned against the bar.

“Are you unwell?”

“I forgot to eat breakfast. It’ll pass in just a minute.”

David caught his breath. Eva stepped behind the bar and filled a glass of water from the tap. She handed it to him, and he took a sip. As he drank, his gaze traveled to the opposite wall, which was densely hung with autographed black-and-white portraits. There were men and women, mostly local celebrities, he assumed—actors, soccer players, or politicians who had eaten at German House. They smiled at David and showed him their best side. He didn’t recognize a single one of them. He straightened and placed the half-empty glass on the bar.

“Call this number.” David handed Eva a business card with the name of the attorney general, an address, and a telephone number. “And if you take the job, you’d better start learning the necessary vocabulary.”

“What do you mean? Military terms?”

“Every conceivable word for how to kill a person.”

David turned abruptly and left the restaurant. Eva slowly closed the door behind him.

Her father had come out of the kitchen in his white coat and dark trousers, chef’s hat on his head, a red checkered dish towel slung over his shoulder. He looks like a clown about to get a cannonload of spaghetti and tomato sauce blown in his face, Eva mused.

“Who was that? What did he want? Perhaps another suitor, daughter dearest?” Ludwig winked, then got to his knees before the bar and with the dish towel, began polishing the tin facing at its base, which was there to protect the wood from being kicked. Eva shook her head impatiently. “Daddy, can you think of nothing else? It was about a job. As an interpreter in court.”

“Sounds major.”

“It’s a trial against SS officers who worked in that camp.”

“And what camp would that be?”

“Auschwitz.”

Her father kept polishing the facing, as though he hadn’t heard her. Eva studied the back of his head for a moment, where his hair was thinning. Every eight weeks, she trimmed her father’s hair in the kitchen. He couldn’t sit still for long and fidgeted like a little boy. It was always a tedious process, but Ludwig refused to go to a barber. Eva had a deep aversion to the hairdresser’s, herself. She had a childlike fear that getting her hair cut there might hurt. Annegret called Eva’s fear “nervous nonsense.” Eva reached for the mop, dunked it in the bucket, and wrung it out with her hands. The water had gone lukewarm.

Later that evening, her parents sat in the living room. Ludwig to the left, on his shabby end of the sofa, Edith in her little yellow armchair, whose velvet upholstery had once glowed gold. Purzel was rolled up in his basket. He yipped occasionally as he dreamed. The Tagesschau was on television, and small images appeared onscreen as the anchor presented the news stories. As usual, Ludwig provided commentary for each segment. Edith had pulled out some sewing. She was mending a tear in Stefan’s orange mitten—apparently Purzel had gotten hold of it again. The anchor was reporting on West Germany’s largest dike construction project. After only four months’ time, the final section of the three-kilometer-long protective dike on the Rüstersiel mudflats had been completed. The footage showed a great deal of sand.

“Rüstersiel,” Ludwig said, with a bit of homesickness in his voice. “Do you remember the time we were there and ate fresh plaice?”

Edith didn’t look up, but answered, “Mmh.”

“In an art gallery in Detroit, a fire has destroyed thirty-five paintings by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The damage amounts to approximately two million Deutschmarks,” the anchor read. A Cubist painting appeared behind him, but on the small black-and-white screen, it had no impact.

“That’s almost sixty thousand marks per picture! God only knows why these pictures are all worth so much.”

“You wouldn’t understand, Ludwig,” Edith replied.

“All the better.”

“Federal Minister of the Interior Hermann Höcherl has ordered the transfer of former SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Wenger from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution to the Federal Office of Administration in Cologne.” The wall behind the anchor remained gray. Viewers did not get to see what Erich Wenger looked like. Eva’s parents were silent. They breathed in time with one another. The weather forecast followed, showing a map of Germany covered in white crystals. It would continue to snow.

“She should hurry up and marry that Schoormann fellow,” Ludwig said, putting on his thickest Low German dialect.

Edith hesitated. But then she responded, “Yes. It would be for the best.”

In the Schoormanns’ mansion, Jürgen sat at dinner with his father and his second wife. Like every evening, they didn’t sit down to eat until half past eight, a by-product of working in the mail-order industry. Jürgen had worked well into the evening with his staff on the new catalog. Now he watched his father, who sat across from him at the table, warily dissect his bread and cheese. His father was deteriorating noticeably. He’d always been bulky but was now turning into a shrunken little man. Like a grape becomes a raisin when left in the sun, Jürgen thought. Brigitte sat close to his father, stroked his cheek, and placed a slice of cheese back on the bread.

“It’s Swiss cheese, Walli. You like that.”

“At least Switzerland is neutral.”

Walther Schoormann took a careful bite and began to chew. He sometimes forgot to swallow. Brigitte gave him an encouraging nod. She’s a blessing, Jürgen thought. He was certain his mother would approve. The first Frau Schoormann, whose gentle face appeared in soft focus in a photograph on the sideboard, had been killed in an air raid on the city in March of ’44. Jürgen, then ten, was living on a farm in the Allgäu region, where his parents had sent him. The farmer’s son told him his mother had burned up, that she had run through the streets like a flaming torch. Screaming. Jürgen knew the boy just wished to torment him, but he couldn’t escape the image. He began to hate everything. Even the good Lord. He nearly lost himself to it. His father was in prison at the time. The Gestapo had picked him up in the summer of ’41 for his membership in the Communist Party. On an early morning two months after the war ended, he appeared on the farm in the Allgäu to get his son. Jürgen shot out of the house and embraced his father, refusing to let go and crying so hard and for so long that even the farmer’s son had pitied him. Walther Schoormann hadn’t said anything then, and even now, he refused to speak about his time in prison. Since falling ill, however, he had taken to spending hours in the little garden shed, perched on a stool and looking out the barred windows, as though an eternal prisoner. Whenever Brigitte or Jürgen took his arm and tried to lead him out, he fought back. Jürgen was baffled by this, but Brigitte believed that his father was doing it perhaps to come to terms with something he’d experienced. Walther Schoormann swallowed and took another bite, lost in thought. The bread and cheese tasted good. As a former Communist and later businessman, he was a much-respected anomaly. He had always insisted, however, that his social attitudes were the very reasons for his success after the war. He wanted to help those people who had lost everything by offering affordable products. Affordable because he bypassed retailers, saved on sales and distribution, rent, and employees, and delivered straight to households. Within ten years, the “Schoormann Shop” grew into a company of 650 employees, whose proper treatment and social security Walther Schoormann always prioritized. In the mid-fifties, he built a house in the Taunus hills that turned out a little too big. Its many rooms served no purpose, and the pool was only filled that first year. The blue-tiled basin remained drained and deserted after that. Now, five years after Walther Schoormann remarried—one of the underwear models from the Schoormann catalog, thirty years his junior, worldly and ever optimistic—there was at least one person in the house who appreciated the luxury. The pool was filled with water once more, and Brigitte swam her daily laps. The smell of chlorine gently pervaded the house again. Eva would live here too, and maybe even swim, Jürgen thought. Eva. He knew she was waiting for his call. But something he could not pinpoint—nor wanted to—was holding him back. Jürgen had wanted to become a priest since childhood. The captivating rituals, numbing smell of incense, magnificent robes, and infinitely towering naves had fascinated him. And God undoubtedly existed. His devout mother supported his inclinations and played Mass with five-year-old Jürgen. She sewed him a purple cassock, and when he stood at the little table in his room and intoned “O Lamb of God…” she represented the congregation and humbly responded, “Hosanna.” Lit candles and incense were the only things he was not allowed. His father, an unwavering atheist, always disparaged the performances. And when, shortly before his final exams in secondary school, Jürgen expressed his wish to study theology, father and son found themselves at odds. Ultimately, Walther Schoormann deferred to the wishes of his late wife. Jürgen was free to begin his studies. But everything changed two years ago. Walther could no longer be left alone, the company suffered marked losses under a succession of new managers, and Jürgen traded in his life plan for his father’s lifework. But if he was honest, the idea of celibacy had increasingly concerned him. Eva. She had come to the office a few times to translate correspondence with their Polish suppliers. The first thing he noticed was her hair, which she wore in an updo, rather than a more current style. There was something touchingly antiquated and naive about her, he found. She would take direction—she would behave in subservience to her husband. He wanted to have children with her. Only he wasn’t sure what would happen when he confessed to his father that Eva’s family ran a restaurant on Berger Strasse, of all places. It helped that the Bruhnses were Protestants. But a restaurant in the “merry village” of Bornheim? No matter how innocent Eva was or how vehemently Jürgen stressed that their business was in the decent section of the street—anything on Berger had to be a flophouse! Walther Schoormann was not only a socialist businessman, he was also one of the rare examples of a prudish Communist.

“Jürgen, what’s so funny? Can I get in on the joke?” His father looked at him directly, his eyes clear, as though a line in his brain had been reactivated. Jürgen set down his silverware.

“Do you know what Schurick wanted to include in the catalog? An electrical device that pokes holes in eggs. Apparently it’s all the rage in America.”

His father smiled, and Brigitte shrugged. “I’d buy one.”

“Because you’d buy anything.”

Walther Schoormann took Brigitte’s hand and gave it a quick, but loving, kiss, then held on to it. Jürgen looked past the two into the snowy yard, which resembled a park. The outdoor lamps wore snowy caps. The bushes were still. He had to call Eva.

Eva sat at her desk, an extremely useful piece of furniture, and made an attempt at a letter to Jürgen. She voiced rage and disappointment and threatened blackmail, while also attempting to spark love and desire for her and her body and her virginity (which, of course, he didn’t know no longer existed). It was useless. She crumpled up another piece of paper, sat there for a moment, at a loss, and then pulled the business card David had left out of her pocket. She turned it indecisively. There was a knock on the door, and Annegret came into the room. She was wearing her powder pink dressing gown and hadn’t put on her face or done her hair. Eva welcomed the interruption. She put the business card on the table.

“Don’t you have work?”

“I have off. I worked a double shift yesterday.” Annegret dropped heavily onto Eva’s bed and leaned back against one of the posts. She’d found a package of pretzel sticks in the pantry, and she pulled them out by the dozen and snapped them off in her mouth.

“We’ve got a newborn, a boy, two weeks old, who almost died. He was totally dehydrated.”

“Again?”

“Yes, it really isn’t funny anymore. Someone must be carrying these germs in. The doctors, they can’t be bothered about hygiene, but of course there’s no talking to them. I sat with the tiny bean for eight hours and kept giving him sugar water, one drop at a time. Little fellow was in pretty good shape again by the end.”

Annegret’s eyes fell on the balled-up papers.

“Has he still not been in touch?”

Eva didn’t respond. Annegret hesitated. She pulled a pack of cards from the pocket of her dressing gown and waved them invitingly. Eva sat down across from her sister on the bed. Annegret shuffled the cards in a quick, practiced manner with her fat but supple fingers. She was wheezing slightly. Then she set the cards on the blanket between her and her sister. “Ask a question. Then draw a card.”

“Will Jürgen marry me?”

Eva concentrated and drew a card. Annegret took the stack and laid out the cards following some pattern. It was clear she knew what she was doing. Eva noticed that her sister smelled slightly of sweat. Annegret was excessively clean. Although their parents thought it a waste of water, she bathed daily. Nonetheless, she could never quite rid herself of the faintest whiff of pea stew set out in the sun. Eva was filled with affection as she watched how earnest Annegret was in laying out the cards for her. I love you, Eva wanted to say. But they didn’t say that to each other. And it would have come across as pity, condescension. She let it go. Annegret pulled another handful of pretzel sticks from the bag and crunched into them. She studied the arrangement of cards as she chewed.

“Queen of hearts, upper left. You will become a queen, the wife of a millionaire. Provided you don’t make a mess of it. Here’s the seven of spades. That means there’s still a chance of botching things.”

“That’s a real help, Annie. Where is Jürgen? What’s he thinking? Does he love me?”

Annegret gathered the cards. “Now you shuffle. Then lay out the cards. The twelfth card is Jürgen.”

Eva shuffled as though her life depended on it, and sent a few cards flying. She laughed, but Annegret remained solemn. Eva then laid out the cards and counted under her breath to twelve.

“Why are you counting in Polish?”

“Doesn’t that count?”

“Sure it does, but I think it’s odd.”

Eva paused before turning over the twelfth card. She looked at Annegret.

“Do you know what’s really odd?”

“All of life in its entirety?”

“I’ve always known my numbers in Polish. I mean, even before I began studying translation. Perhaps I was a Pole in a previous life?”

“Who cares about your previous life, little Evie-cakes? Show me your Jürgen. Come on now, show some courage!”

Eva flipped the card. It was the eight of hearts. She looked at it, blind to its significance. Annegret grinned.

“Well, my pretty little sister, be as dotty as you damn well please, because you’ll never shake this man off!”

“And why is that…?!”

“The suit is hearts, and eight is the symbol of infinity.”

“Or handcuffs,” Eva said.

Annegret nodded. “Either way, your days here are numbered.”

Annegret collected the cards with her eyes lowered. She looked like a sad lump all of a sudden. Eva stroked her cheek. “Can I have a pretzel?” Annegret looked up and gave her a crooked smile.

The sisters lay beside each other in the semidarkness a while later, chewing on the last of the pretzel sticks and watching the gently quivering Don Quixote on the ceiling.

“Do you remember seeing the film in the theater?” Eva asked. “Where that old man attacked the windmill with his lance and got it caught in the sails. He was carried off and spun ’round and ’round on the windmill, screaming. I thought it was just terrible, it made me sick to my stomach.”

“Children always find it unsettling when adults lose control.”

“Annegret, should I take it on, this job? Translate in the trial, I mean. It’s—”

“I’m aware. I wouldn’t do it. Or do you want to help spread these horrifying myths?”

“What do you mean, ‘horrifying myths’?”

At that, Annegret stiffened and fell silent, got up, and left without a word. Eva was familiar with this. Her sister would now head for the kitchen and really stuff herself. The phone rang in the hallway. Eva checked the time. Ten thirty. Her heart began to pound. She leaped from her room and reached the phone before her mother. It really was Jürgen.

“Good evening, Eva.”

Eva tried to sound nonchalant, casual. “Good evening. A little late for a phone call.” But it came out a bit hoarse.

“Are you well, Eva?”

Eva was silent.

“Please forgive me. I’m sorry. But it is for the rest of our lives.”

“I realize that.”

They were silent until Jürgen asked, “Would you like to go to the movies with me tomorrow evening?”

“I don’t have time. I have to prepare for my new job.”

“A new job? Did you get an assignment?”

“It’s a lengthier engagement. I’ve got to provide for myself, after all. I can’t live off my parents’ goodwill forever. I’ve got to earn money.”

“Eva, I will pick you up at seven tomorrow!”

He sounded stern. Eva hung up. Annegret came out of the kitchen, chewing, with a new, dark stain on her light-colored dressing gown, and looked at Eva quizzically. Eva shrugged in mock despair, but she was smiling. Annegret said, “You see? The cards don’t lie.”

The next morning—without any instructions from the prosecution, without any official permission—David Miller started driving south in a rental car that had cost him half a month’s earnings. His destination: Hemmingen, near Stuttgart. One of the main defendants, the head of the political department at the camp—the Beast—was registered there as a resident. David had read all of the interview transcripts and allegations against Defendant Number Four and prepared an analysis for the prosecution. If only a fraction of the accusations were true, this man—now employed as a commercial clerk—lacked the very capacity for human emotion. The prosecution had been trying for days to reach him by phone. In vain. And with so little time left before the trial. As he sped through wintry southern Germany, David felt justified in pursuing his suspicion that the defendant had absconded. He drove in the passing lane and far too fast. The countryside, hills, forests, and odd farm to the left and right of the autobahn hurtled by and looked like a toy landscape compared to Canada’s ancient grandeur. David fishtailed, after braking abruptly. He forced himself to slow down. Imagine the irony if I were to die here on one of Hitler’s autobahns, David thought, and smirked.

David had intended to bypass Heidelberg but found himself in the heart of the city, entangled in a network of streets. He crossed the same bridge three times, and whenever he thought he’d found the way, the towering castle would rise in front of him again, as in a bad dream. David cursed. There was no city map in his road atlas, and he was about ready to surrender. While waiting at a stoplight, however, he discovered himself behind a car with French plates. He followed the foreign vehicle, in the hope that it would guide him out of the city. His plan proved successful, and after an hour of senseless straying, David’s car was once more flanked by forests and fields.

In Hemmingen, a sleepy town, he rolled down his window and asked someone cautiously picking their way through the snow for directions. Moments later, David stopped the car on Tannenweg, in front of number twelve. The house was well tended, a typical single-family home in a working-class area; built before the war, David imagined. Like all of the houses in the neighborhood, it was simple, with white plastered walls and a dark, wraparound balcony with barren flower boxes. There was no car outside the garage. David got out, walked across the snowy yard, and rang at the front door. He couldn’t find a nameplate. He waited. Everything was quiet behind the small barred window in the door. He rang again, twice, and looked around. A few shrubs stood naked in the small front yard. Several rose bushes had been covered with old sacks and looked like bony, mummified figures. They seemed prepared to ambush him should he drop his guard for even a moment. David heard a door inside. He rang again, and this time he kept his finger on the button. The door slowly opened a crack—it was locked on the other side with a door chain. “My husband isn’t here.” David could make out the elegant features of a dark-haired woman of about sixty, who looked at him with dullish, almond-shaped eyes. A faded beauty, David thought. “Well, where is he?”

“Who are you?” The woman regarded David with suspicion.

“It’s regarding the trial. We can’t seem to reach your husband….”

“Are you a foreigner?”

David was momentarily thrown by the question. “My name is David Miller. I’m a clerk for the prosecution.”

“Then I know exactly the sort of man you are. You listen to me, Herr David,” the woman spat through the crack. “What you’re doing is utterly indecent! These outrageous lies you’re spreading about my husband. If you knew how engaged my husband has always been, the kind of person he is. He is the best father and best husband anyone could ask for. If you knew my husband…”

While the man’s wife continued to expound on her husband’s virtues, David recalled one witness’s account that had been placed on the record for the prosecution. She had had to work as the defendant’s secretary in the camp. She described a young prisoner, whom Defendant Number Four had interrogated for hours in his office in the political department. “By the time he was through, it was no longer a human being. It was just a sack. A bloody sack.”

“If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll have to inform the police. Surely, you don’t want him to be picked up by the police, like a criminal—which you’ve assured me he isn’t.”

“He’s done nothing wrong!”

“Where is he?”

The woman hesitated, then snarled, “Hunting.”

THE TWO MEN SLOWLY traverse a rugged mountain landscape on horseback. The sun glitters, waterfalls tumble, birds of prey circle overhead. Screeching. One of the men is dressed in a buckskin suit with fringes. The other wears Indian garb. It’s Old Shatterhand and his blood brother, Winnetou. They ride in silence, on guard, scouting the area. Because somewhere in those rocks up there, their enemies are on the lookout, waiting for the perfect moment to shoot them dead on the spot.

Eva and Jürgen sat in the second row of the Gloria Palast cinema, their heads tilted back. They hadn’t managed to find any other spot. Every last seat was taken. Apache Gold had just opened in theaters. More importantly, Ralf Wolter would be signing autographs after the show. He played Sam Hawkens and was everyone’s favorite. Eva’s and Jürgen’s faces reflected the colorful shadows onscreen. Another screech of the eagle. Or was it a vulture? Eva didn’t know her raptors. The first shot was fired with a loud bang. Eva jumped and mused happily, The gunshots always sound best in Winnetou films.

The music swelled, and the battle got under way…

A LITTLE LATER, after good had prevailed, Eva and Jürgen ambled around the brightly lit Christmas market. The sky was black, the air frigid. Clouds formed in front of their faces when they spoke. They felt far removed from the heat of the prairie. Eva had gone without getting Ralf Wolter’s autograph, and Jürgen would rather have seen the new Alfred Hitchcock film, anyway. The Birds. Eva had linked arms with Jürgen. She was telling him about her first time at the movies. Don Quixote. The way the old man screamed as he hung from the sails of the windmill. She had been frightened. Her father had comforted her quietly: loons like that were very rare. Eva said her father could always calm her down. Jürgen wasn’t really listening. He stopped at a booth and bought two mugs of mulled wine. As they stood facing each other, he asked to hear more about this assignment. Eva told him. She lied, though, and said she had already agreed to the job. Jürgen had read about the trial.

“Eva, this trial could stretch on for ages.”

“All the better. They pay weekly.” Eva was already a little tipsy from the half cup of mulled wine. Jürgen remained stern.

“And I do not wish for my wife to work. Our family is known in this city, and word would get out…”

Eva looked at him defiantly.

“And which wife might that be? I thought those plans had been dashed last Sunday.”

“You shouldn’t drink any more wine, Eva.”

“My family isn’t refined enough for you! Admit it!”

“Eva, please, don’t start with that again. I found your parents very likable. I am going to ask your father.”

“And besides, I’m not sure if I like that I’m not allowed to work. I’m a modern woman!”

But Jürgen was still speaking. “Under one condition: that you resign from this job.” He looked at Eva with the dark eyes she loved so much. His gaze was calm and secure. He smiled. She took his hand but couldn’t feel its warmth, because they both wore gloves.

Not far from where they stood, a brass ensemble began to play “Unto Us a Time Has Come.” Others at the market stopped to listen, the mood solemn. But the old men played so unsteadily and off-key that Eva and Jürgen couldn’t help laughing. Though they tried to stifle the urge, it was no use. With every new blunder, one of them would start again and infect the other. By the end they both had tears in their eyes, despite its being Eva’s favorite Christmas carol.

Later, on the walk home, she quietly sang it for Jürgen.

Jürgen loved the way Eva nestled up and clung to him. If someone were to ask him that very moment what he felt for her, he thought, he could say, I love her.

DAVID WAS BACK IN HIS CAR. It bounced down a forest track, wheels spinning, till one of his rear tires slid into a pothole. The Ford wouldn’t budge. David switched off the engine and climbed out. The air was still, the sky starless. A cold full moon provided the only light. David looked around and spotted a gleam in the distance. He turned up his coat collar and trudged toward it. Snow filled his oxfords and melted. His socks were soon soaked. David kept walking. He arrived at a simple cabin with shuttered windows. A little light forced its way between the cracks. He heard nothing but a gentle rustling in the treetops. He hesitated, then opened the door without knocking. Three men in hunter green were gathered around a suspended carcass. All three looked toward the door. None appeared surprised. Two of the men were drinking bottles of beer. The third—haggard, with the face of a ferret—held a long knife in his hand. David recognized his face as that of Defendant Number Four. He was gutting a deer. Or whatever it was, it hung from a hook in the ceiling. It could be a person, for all David knew. Either way, it looked like a bloody sack.

The defendant gave David a quizzical but friendly look. “How can we help you?”

“My name is David Miller. I work for the attorney general.”

The man nodded, as though he’d expected as much. One of his hunting mates, meanwhile, a red-faced man who was already drunk, advanced menacingly on David, but the defendant stopped him. “What are you doing out here, and at this hour? The trial doesn’t start till Friday.”

“We’ve been trying to reach you for days.”

“Make yourself scarce, kid!” his other crony joined in.

David trained his gaze on the defendant. “I would like you to come right now, come with me back to the city.”

“You couldn’t possibly have the authority! Or can you show me some credentials?!”

David didn’t know how to respond. The defendant set aside the knife and wiped his hands on a threadbare cloth hanging from a hook on the wall. Then he slowly approached David, who involuntarily recoiled. “I know I’ve nothing to fear. I’ll be there punctually. You have my word.” The man held out his right hand to David. David looked at it. A human hand, like any other.

A short time later, David stood outside the hut as though marooned in the moonlit forest. His feet were cold and wet. He didn’t remember where his car was. He set out, stumbled through the snow for a while, then stopped. No car. The cabin had disappeared now too. David stood under a thick cover of fir trees, in the middle of Germany somewhere. A gust of wind blew through the treetops, a quiet sigh. David looked into the canopy above him. Here and there, snow fell from the branches. He was suddenly overcome by the staggering number of crimes to be presented in three days’ time. He briefly imagined the number of people they were fighting for and for whom justice was due. As many as were he to gather all of the needles from the fir trees above him. Each stood for one of the persecuted, tortured, murdered humans. David’s legs went weak, they began to shake, then buckled. He fell to his knees, folded his hands, and held them high over his head. “God, visit your judgment on us all!”

Half an hour later, he had found his car. He maneuvered it laboriously out of the pothole. The car careened back down the forest track to the main highway, which had since been plowed. David hit the gas. He was embarrassed by his genuflection. Luckily, no one had seen him.

The new day brought with it new record low temperatures and blue skies. Eva, feeling well rested and in love, marched up the street to the newsstand. Her father needed this month’s issue of his favorite food magazine, The Pleasing Palate. The elderly Fräulein Drawitz vanished into the depths of her stand to look for it, surprised anew by the request, as she was every time. Eva’s gaze lingered on the daily papers on display. The upcoming trial was front-page news. One especially thick black headline read, “70 Percent of Germans Do Not Want Trial!” Eva felt guilty: she had never contacted the office of the prosecution. She bought the paper. Along with several others.

EVA HAD THE APARTMENT to herself. Her father was at the wholesale market, as he was every Thursday morning, her mother taking care of Christmas errands in the city, Stefan sweating it out at school, and Annegret tending to her infants at City Hospital. Eva sat down at the kitchen table, spread the papers out in front of her, and started reading. The time had come to draw a line under things, the articles argued. The twenty-one defendants were harmless family men, grandfathers, and good, hardworking citizens who had all undergone the denazification process without incident. That tax money should be invested more sensibly in programs for the future. Even the victors considered the chapter closed. “The moment one believes the grass to have grown back on a thing, along comes some stupid camel and eats it all up.” In this case, the camel had the same glasses and hairstyle as the state attorney general. Eva discovered, in a newspaper from Hamburg, that it had been the young Canadian lawyer David Miller who had managed to locate the Polish witness Josef Gabor just in time for him to testify on the first ever use of Zyklon B. That was the gas allegedly used to kill more than one million people in the camp. Eva was sure the number was a misprint. One entire back page was dedicated to photographs of the accused, several of which Eva had already seen at the law office. Now, however, she could study the men closely and right side up. She fetched the magnifying glass from her mother’s sewing box and looked at each face individually. One was fat, the next narrow, others smooth or wrinkled. One man grinned like a big friendly ferret, nearly all wore glasses, and several defendants were going bald. One was heavily built, with bat ears and a flattened nose, whereas another had very fine features. There was neither correspondence nor distinction. And the more Eva wanted to find out, the closer she leaned into the images, the more the faces dissolved into tiny squares of black, gray, and white.

The apartment door snapped shut. Eva’s mother came in with Stefan, whom she had picked up at school. He was bawling because he had fallen in the street and hurt his knee.

Edith set down her shopping basket and scolded him, “I told you to stop sliding around out there!”

Stefan sought refuge on Eva’s lap, and she inspected his knee. His checkered pants were torn, his skin beneath a little scraped up. Eva blew on the harmless wound. Stefan noticed the pictures of the defendants. “Who is that? A team?”

Their mother had come to the table too, and looked curiously for a moment at the sea of newsprint. The moment Edith realized what it was Eva found so interesting, she swept up all of the papers in a single motion. She opened the oven beside the stove and shoved in the entire armful.

“Mum! What on earth are you doing?!”

The faces caught fire, turned black, and ash fluttered through the room. Edith closed the oven door. She covered her mouth with her hand and rushed from the kitchen to the bath. Eva got up and followed. Her mother kneeled at the toilet and vomited. Eva watched, perturbed. Stefan appeared beside her in the doorway.

“Mummy, what’s wrong?”

Their mother stood up and rinsed out her mouth at the sink.

“You know that Mummy sometimes feels sick when she smells smoke,” Eva answered her brother. But that didn’t explain why Edith had burned the newspapers. Eva studied her.

Edith dried her face on a towel and said, “Let go of the past, Eva. It’s for the best, believe me.” Edith returned to the kitchen with Stefan. Eva stayed where she was, in the bathroom doorway. She looked into her own baffled face in the mirror above the sink.

That afternoon, Eva and Annegret went into the city together. Their father had slipped them an envelope containing five hundred marks, amid a flurry of enigmatic hints and indecipherable hand gestures, although their mother wasn’t even in the room, and although they had agreed weeks earlier that the sisters would purchase a washing machine for their mother, on behalf of their father. A long-coveted Christmas gift. They submitted to the presentation of one of Hertie’s new products, a top-load drum model with both prewash and normal cycles. The salesman opened the lid, closed it, pushed in the detergent drawer, and pulled it back out again. He earnestly described how much laundry could be washed per load (5.5 kilograms), how long that took (two hours), and how clean their clothing would be (like new). Annegret and Eva exchanged amused looks here and there: they both found it ridiculous how well this man knew his laundry. Regardless, they ordered the newest model from Herr Hagenkamp—as identified by his name tag—and took his word that the machine would be delivered and installed before Christmas Eve. As they left the department store, Eva realized that, during the Twelve Nights, their mother wouldn’t be doing any laundry. Annegret retorted that the tradition applied only to bed linens, because that’s what the mischievous spirits were known to steal between Christmas and Epiphany. They crossed the Christmas market. It was already getting dark. Annegret wanted to get a bratwurst. Eva was hungry too. They went to Schipper’s Sausages, although their father had forbidden them from eating at that stall: “Schipper fills his sausages with sawdust, I’m sure of it—especially for the Christmas market! How else could he afford that house in the Taunus hills?” The sisters liked Schipper’s sausages best, though. Perhaps it was their forbidden nature that made them so delectable. Eva and Annegret stood facing each other, chewing happily. Annegret mentioned that she still needed to buy her gift for Stefan, a book by Astrid Lindgren, whom Annegret adored. He was getting too old for those simple fairytales Eva always read to him. The detective at the heart of the story was a boy just a little older than Stefan. A real crime occurred. Their brother was mature enough for that now. But Eva wasn’t listening. She had noticed an older bearded man cautiously making his way across the market, as though afraid of slipping in the snow. He wore a thin coat and a tall, jet-black hat with a narrow brim. He carried a small suitcase. He approached a stall selling tropical fruits. A large banner depicting the rising sun hung on its back wall. The man said something to the woman behind the counter, but it looked like she hadn’t understood. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and showed it to her. She just shrugged her shoulders. The man persisted—he pointed again at the sheet, then at the stall. The woman raised her voice.

“I do not understand you! Get that in your head! No un-der-stand-y! Nix!”

The woman shooed him away, but the man didn’t move. The stall owner now appeared beside his wife.

“Scram, old man Israel! Go away!”

Eva wasn’t sure if “Israel” was what she had heard, but she left Annegret—who hadn’t observed the scene and now watched her in surprise—and went over to the stall.

Eva walked up beside the man in the hat. “Can I help you? Kann ich helfen?” She repeated the question in Polish as well. The man reluctantly looked at her. Eva peeked at the paper in his hand. It was a brochure for a boardinghouse called the Sun Inn. Eva noticed that its emblem was a rising sun. She addressed the stall owner. “The gentleman is looking for a place called the Sun Inn. He must have seen your sun there and thought—”

But the two behind the counter didn’t care what the man thought. The owner bristled. “Is he going to buy anything? If not, he’d better quit loitering and go back to Israel.”

Eva wanted to respond, but then shook her head and turned to the old man. “Come with me, I know where the boardinghouse is.”

The man responded in Hungarian—that much, Eva recognized. But she understood very little. Only that he had just arrived at the train station and was now looking for the inn. Eva left the man for a moment and returned to Annegret.

“I’m going to bring this gentleman to his boardinghouse.”

“Why? How is that any of your concern?”

“Annie, the man is completely helpless.”

Annegret glanced at the man and turned away. “By all means, run along and rescue some unknown tramp. I’m going to go buy the book.”

Eva went back to the bearded man, who stood waiting for her motionlessly and seemed to be holding his breath. She tried to carry his suitcase for him, but he refused to let it go. She took him by the arm and began leading him toward the inn. The man moved slowly, as though fighting some inner resistance. Eva noted that he smelled slightly of burned milk. His coat was stained, he wore thin, scuffed shoes, and he kept slipping, and Eva held him up each time.

The boardinghouse was on a side street. Eva spoke with the owner behind the small reception desk, a doughy man who had clearly just eaten dinner and was now blithely fishing bits of food from between his teeth with a toothpick. Yes, a room had been reserved for one Otto Cohn from Budapest. The innkeeper eyed the bearded man with aversion. The elderly man then opened his wallet, in which several crisp hundred-mark bills were visible, and pulled out his identification. The innkeeper tossed aside his toothpick and demanded a week’s advance pay for the room. The bearded man placed one of the bills on the counter and received the heavy key to room eight in return.

He then started in the direction the owner had indicated. He seemed to have forgotten all about Eva. She watched him stop in front of the elevator and shake his head. He’s at sixes and sevens, Eva thought. She snorted impatiently, approached the helpless man, took him again by the arm, and led him up the stairs. Eva unlocked the door to number eight. They entered a small room with a simple bed, unadorned wardrobe finished with an oak veneer, and orange curtains bright as fire. Eva stood there indecisively. The man laid his suitcase on the bed and opened it, as though Eva were no longer in the room. A black-and-white photograph, half the size of a postcard, lay on top of his things. Eva could make out the merged shadows of several people. She cleared her throat.

“Very well, then.”

The man in the hat did not respond.

“A thank you might be in order.”

Eva was about to leave when the man turned to her and said, in broken German, “I beg your pardon. I cannot say thank you to you.”

They looked at each other. In the man’s pale eyes, Eva discovered a pain more profound than any she had ever seen in a person. She suddenly felt ashamed and nodded. Then she carefully exited the room.

Otto Cohn turned back to his suitcase. He picked up the photograph and gazed at it. Then he said, in Hungarian, “I’m here now. Just as I promised you.”

EVA’S FATHER NEEDED her help in the kitchen early Friday morning. The fourth Sunday of Advent was upon them, and he expected triple the orders as usual to pass through the window that weekend. Besides, he had already taken two painkillers with breakfast, because his back was “smarting like hell.” The cold crept into his bones, and he wasn’t at the top of his form. He hadn’t even turned on the radio today. He looked pale as he dressed one goose after the other and gathered the giblets—save the liver—in a pot for the gravy. Frau Lenze, an older employee whose husband was a war cripple and who therefore had to earn a little extra, silently scrubbed vegetables for the stock. Eva shredded cabbage till her right arm ached. Her father combined the red cabbage with cloves and lard in an enormous black enamel pot that no one but he could lift. The stove was fired up. Cooking aromas filled the kitchen. Eva separated eggs and beat the whites to stiff peaks. She mixed up two types of pudding, chocolate and vanilla. These would be served with rhubarb compote her mother had made last summer. All three began to sweat as the air grew impenetrable. Then Frau Lenze cut a deep gash in her finger while dicing onions. Her face went white. The blood dripped on the tile floor, and the water she ran over it from the tap turned red. Eventually they stanched the bleeding, and as Eva put the adhesive bandage in place, she stole a glance at Frau Lenze’s watch. The trial was set to begin in three quarters of an hour. Eva took over the onions from Frau Lenze, who removed her apron contritely. Ludwig gave her a nod. “You’ll be paid through three o’clock.” Relieved, Frau Lenze went home with her throbbing forefinger.

THE AUDITORIUM IN THE MUNICIPAL BUILDING had the ambiguous character of a function hall. A light-colored veneer clad the walls, and the floors were an impervious beige linoleum. Instead of regular windows, big smooth glass panes had been installed from floor to ceiling in the outer left-hand wall. The trees in the overgrown courtyard beyond the wall were distorted into flickering spots and silhouettes, which could give one the feeling of intoxication. The auditorium was typically used for Carnival programs, sports banquets, or touring theater performances. Just last week, a troupe from Braunschweig had presented the comedy The General’s Trousers. In the play, a rather juicy case was taken to court. The audience had laughed in appreciation of all the double entendres, and the performance concluded to hearty applause. A real trial had never been held in this room, though. Since the city courthouse lacked the capacity for the trial’s many participants, this convenient space had been selected. For days, builders had been hammering, tightening screws, and doing what they could to transform the prosaic space into something approximating a hallowed court of law. The gallery had been separated from the action by a balustrade, to underscore that the trial was not intended for entertainment. What was actually the stage had been hung with thick, pale blue drapes. The long, heavy judge’s bench had been erected before this backdrop. The prosecution would sit on the right side of the hall. Three rows of individual tables and chairs had been arranged in front of the glass wall, facing the prosecution: the defendants’ spots. A solitary table waited somewhat forlornly in the open space between the prosecutors and the accused. This was where the witnesses and interpreters would sit and speak. Every last spot had been equipped with a small black microphone, and yet, half an hour before the trial was set to begin, there were still some that didn’t work. Technicians hectically tinkered with connections and taped up the last cords. Staff working for the prosecution trundled carts carrying their precious files and deposited folders on the prosecutors’ table and the bench. Two hall attendants carried in a wide, rolled-up screen and began securing it to a map stand behind the bench.

A young man with reddish hair was placing numbered cardboard signs on the defendants’ tables. It was David Miller, his expression as rapt as if he were executing a sacred rite. He was reading the seat assignments from a sheet. That chart was the product of lengthy discussion. The main defendants, who carried the most serious charges, were now seated at the front. Behind them, those accused of lesser allegations. As if you could consider them lesser. Is someone who kills ten, less harmful than one who kills fifty? David thought. He looked at the clock. It was five minutes to ten. At this very moment, eight of the defendants were being picked up by minibus from pretrial detention. Thirteen had not been detained or had been released on bail, such as the affluent main defendant, who had been the adjutant to the camp commandant. Or they’d been released from custody for health reasons, such as Defendant Number Four, who had given David his word he would be there. Meanwhile, the attendants hoisted up the map stand and unrolled the screen, which immediately filled the auditorium with the smell of fresh oil paint.

“C’mon, Officer, let us in already, will ya?!”

“We’ve been standin’ out here since eight!”

Outside the double doors to the courtroom, a throng of spectators was growing impatient, as all hoped to secure a spot in the front row. Judicial officers in dark blue uniforms prevented them from entering the hall. It was already evident that the seating in the gallery was insufficient. Hall attendants were bringing in more of the stackable chrome chairs, always in threes. Two men in black robes entered the hall through a side door. One of them was the man with light blond hair. He appeared primed for battle—the coat he wore beneath his robe was bulky and looked like armor. The second man was older and rather plump, and his robe billowed out shapelessly around his body. He was partially bald and his strikingly round, pale face provided a sharp contrast to his black horn-rimmed glasses. He stumbled over one of the cables but caught himself. He was the chief judge, the man who would lead the trial. The man who would deliver the sentences. The two men conversed quietly. The blond man explained that they were still waiting for the Polish interpreter, but that they’d received confirmation of his permission to leave the country by next week. The Czech translator could help answer questions till then, although he neither wanted nor was able to translate witness statements. They had therefore postponed the Polish witness testimonies till later in the trial. By now, David had distributed all of the cardboard signs on the tables. He made his way across the room to introduce himself to the chief judge. David was already lifting his hand, but as he drew near, the blond man turned his back on him, as though he didn’t recognize him yet again. He blocked David’s path. David let his hand fall. The blond man had stopped one of the attendants and was giving him instructions, upon which the man began dragging the witness stand away from the defendants’ tables. This pulled at the microphone cord. One of the technicians jumped in.

“Watch it!” he admonished him. “You can’t just yank it away like that. D’you’ve any idea how long I had to mess around with this?!” The technician turned on the microphone on the table and rapped against it with the knuckle of his index finger. A deafening sound popped over the speakers: everyone froze for a moment and traded looks of surprise.

“Now we’re awake!” someone called. The speaker system worked, beyond question. Then they all laughed.

At that moment, a haggard man wearing a perfectly tailored dark blue suit appeared among the swarming spectators in the doorway. He presented identification and an official letter to one of the judicial officers. The officer abruptly stood at attention and clicked his heels. David looked over and recognized the man. A feeling of triumphant hatred—if such a combination even existed—surged down his body. The man, unknown to the crowd and consequently undisturbed, entered the hall and oriented himself. He headed for the defendants’ tables and took his place. It was Defendant Number Four. The Beast. After removing several folders and notes from his briefcase and arranging them neatly on his table, he looked up. He noticed David watching him. He gave him a nod. David quickly turned away, but the blond man, who had witnessed the greeting, caught his eye and rushed over.

“Are we acquainted?” he asked quietly.

David hesitated, then admitted that he had driven to Hemmingen. “We’ve got to err on the side of caution!”

“We’ll discuss this later!” The blond man stormed over to the haggard man, who politely stood as the prosecutor told him the defendants were all first meeting with their lawyers in another room, then entering the hall together.

Defendant Number Four responded curtly, “I require no legal counsel.” Nevertheless, he gathered up his papers and followed the blond man out the side door. For a moment, David stood alone in the middle of the hall. He studied the screen that had been hung. It was a map the prosecution had commissioned from a painter. The artist had used diagrams and photographs to create a rendering that appeared spatially accurate. Even the lettering above the gate to the main camp had been perfectly replicated. The b in the word Arbeit was upside down. One of the witnesses had told them this had been a silent protest by the metalsmith who’d had to craft the sign for the SS.

In the spacious, sunny foyer—which seemed newly opened, with a light stone floor that invited rubber soles to squeak—more and more spectators were gathering and surging toward the auditorium doors. English, Hungarian, and Polish could be heard. Drinks and sandwiches were being sold at a counter. The air smelled faintly of coffee and cervelat. A clutch of reporters had formed around the gnarled figure of the state attorney general. Some extended microphones in his direction, whereas other reporters scribbled on small notepads.

“Following four years of preparation…” one young man began.

“We could easily say ten years.”

“Following ten years of preparation, and counter to public interest, you have managed to force this case to court. Sir, do you consider this a personal triumph?”

“If you take a look around, my good man, one could hardly suggest a lack of interest.”

Another reporter had turned away from the group and was speaking into a Wochenschau camera: “Twenty-one defendants, three judges, six jurors, two associate judges, and three talesmen are involved, as well as four prosecutors, attorneys representing three joint plaintiffs, and nineteen defense attorneys. The taxpayer may well ask: what is the justification for these efforts and these costs?”

IN THE KITCHEN AT GERMAN HOUSE, Eva peered at the clock again through the steam. It was ten minutes past ten. If she ran as fast as she could, and if she caught the streetcar, she could still make it. She washed the smell of onions from her hands.

“Daddy, the basics have been taken care of for now.”

Ludwig Bruhns was just patting dry the inside of the last goose with crepe paper.

“The stuffing hasn’t been made yet… someone needs to shell the chestnuts for that, Eva.”

“But I still need to… go into the city. Now.”

Ludwig Bruhns turned to face Eva.

“Where’s the fire?”

“I can’t postpone it,” Eva responded evasively. Ludwig gave his daughter a puzzled look, but she didn’t elaborate.

“Presents, right? Me and my dumb questions, huh?”

“Exactly, Daddy. It is almost Christmas.”

“Then by all means, leave your poor, old, sick father in the lurch. Heartless child!”

Eva gave her father a peck on his sweaty cheek and ran out. Ludwig was alone. The red cabbage simmered quietly. He felt queasy. Afraid. And he didn’t know why. He looked at the dead bird in his hands, which was now cleaned and dried. It must be those damned pills. They must not agree with his stomach.

Moments later, Eva stumbled out the front door of the restaurant, pulled on her plaid coat as she ran, slipped in the snow, steadied herself, and kept running. She didn’t know what was driving her. But she had to be there when they read the indictments. She owed it to someone! But who? She couldn’t think of a soul.

THE EXPANSIVE FOYER WAS NEARLY EMPTY, but for a few hall attendants. Eva came in, out of breath, her updo askew. Her chest ached. An electronic gong sounded three times. The doors to the auditorium were supposed to close at the tone, Eva could see, but several people hadn’t made it in and continued to block the opening. Two judicial officers pushed them back.

“Now, would you please be reasonable? There is no more room! Clear the doors!”

Eva joined the group, wedged herself in among the latecomers, and jostled her way to the front, something totally out of character for her. “Please, I would like to… can I please still get in?”

The officer shook his head apologetically. “I’m sorry, miss, every last seat is taken.”

“It’s important. I have to be there!”

“You and everyone else—”

“Now, just a minute, young lady! We’ve been waiting here far longer!” Accusations whirred by Eva’s head. She now stood directly in the doorway, but the officer was slowly pulling the doors shut. Then she spotted the attorney general, who was conferring with two men not far from the door. Eva waved.

“Hello! Sir… hello, you know me….” But the gnarled man didn’t hear.

“Step back, or I will close the door on you!” The officer had taken Eva by the shoulder and pushed her back. Eva ducked abruptly, dove under the officer’s arm, and slipped into the hall. She headed straight for the attorney general.

“Pardon me, but I would like to hear the opening statements. I was at your office on Sunday, for the translation….”

The attorney general eyed Eva and appeared to remember. He gave the officer at the door a signal. “It’s all right.”

The others waiting there protested in outrage.

“Why her?”

“Just ’cos she’s blond?”

“I came all the way from Hamburg!”

“And we came from West Berlin!”

The doors closed. Eva thanked the attorney general, who seemed to have forgotten about her already. An usher directed Eva to the edge of the gallery and removed a piece of paper from a vacant seat. It read “Reserved—Press.” Eva sat down, caught her breath, and looked around. She was familiar with the auditorium. She had attended many theater performances here with her mother—the most recent had been The General’s Trousers, a ridiculous play that had nonetheless made them laugh. As usual, Edith Bruhns had criticized the female players’ acting as unbelievable and stilted. Eva knew how badly her mother would have liked to be the one onstage. Eva didn’t particularly care for the theater, herself; the actors exaggerated their speech and behaviors too much for her liking, as if they wanted to tell her something with violent force. She tried to get her bearings. Where did the judge sit? And the defendants? All she could see were dark heads, gray, bald, black, bluish black, or dark blue suits, muted ties. There was whispering, coughing, noses being blown. It seemed the air in the room was already stale. It smelled vaguely of damp coats, wet leather and rubber, cold cigarette smoke, freshly shaven men, eau de cologne, and hard soap. A hint of turpentine or maybe fresh paint mingled in the mix. Eva eyed her neighbor, a nervous woman in her early sixties with a pointed face and wearing a little felted hat. The woman was kneading her brown handbag, and her gloves dropped. Eva bent down and picked them up. The woman thanked her with a stern nod, then opened her bag and stuffed in the gloves. She closed the bag with a click. At that moment, the bailiff announced the entrance of the judges. All rose noisily and watched as the three men in robes—the chief judge and his associate judges—entered the hall through the side door, with the solemnity of a priest and his acolytes. Only thing missing is the incense, Eva thought. The chief judge—his face somehow paler and rounder, the contours of his black glasses more pronounced than before—reached his spot at the middle of the bench and raised his voice, which was carried over the public address system. His voice was clearer and quieter than expected from a man of his proportions. He said, “I hereby declare proceedings in the criminal case against Mulka and others opened.”

He took a seat. There was a stir in the auditorium as everyone sat back down. It took some time for the room to quiet, for the seat shifting, rustling, and whispering to abate. The chief judge waited. Eva recognized the blond man seated alongside other men in black robes at a table to the right. The attorney general was not among them. Eva scanned the crowd for David Miller. She thought she recognized his profile at a table behind the prosecutors. The chief judge again raised his voice. “The court will now present the charges.” An associate judge beside him got to his feet. He was young, very slight under his robe, and seemed nervous. He was holding several sheets of paper, and more documents lay before him on the table. He adjusted the papers, cleared his throat thoroughly, and took a drink of water. Eva was familiar with the painful feeling that struck when someone was about to give a speech and kept fumbling with their papers: a fear took root that one might shortly die of boredom. Her fear was different this time. Eva was suddenly reminded of the fairy tale in which Brother wanted to drink from the bewitched spring. Of those who from my waters take, shall I then a wild beast make. The young judge appeared to become lost in sorting his papers. A short, derisive laugh came from the left. Were those the defendants’ tables? Were those the defendants? Those men, so clean-shaven, polished, and civilized, looked no different from the men in the gallery at first glance. Some of them did, however, don dark glasses, like those worn for winter sports. And vertical signs with clearly legible numbers had been set up on the tables before them. Then Eva recognized the partially bald man who’d held up the rabbit in his photograph. There was a fourteen on his sign. He scratched his fleshy neck and gave a quick nod to a short man wearing dark glasses in his row. Number Seventeen returned the greeting. The young judge began speaking so suddenly that Eva and other spectators jumped. He read clearly and intently from the page. His voice was carried by the small black microphone that stood before him on the table. It reverberated in every corner of the hall. Eva could hear every word perfectly. She listened. She tried to understand what the young judge was saying. Seated to the left, she learned, were an importer-exporter, head cashier of a regional savings bank, two commercial clerks, an engineer, a merchant, a farmer, a building superintendent, a stoker, a medical orderly, a laborer, a pensioner, a gynecologist, two dentists, a pharmacist, a cabinetmaker, a butcher, a cash messenger, a weaver, and a piano maker. These men were allegedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Eva folded her hands like she was in church, but immediately unfolded them. She placed them beside each other on her thighs and lowered her gaze, but that made her feel as though she’d been indicted, herself. She looked up at the ceiling, which was hung with spherical glass light fixtures. But then she might come across as inattentive. She allowed her eyes to slowly wander. The mousy-faced woman beside her sat up very straight with her handbag on her knees. She was fidgeting relentlessly with her gold wedding band, which had been worn thin from years of work. The man sitting in front of Eva had a thick neck covered in small red pustules. The woman to his left slumped in her chair, as though drained of all life. The young policeman guarding the door was breathing through his mouth—maybe he had a cold. Or polyps, like Stefan. Eva trained her gaze straight ahead at the map hung behind the bench, the chief judge’s face before it like the rising moon. It looked like a cemetery from above: a grid of grayish red tombstones laid out on a soft green lawn. Eva couldn’t make out the inscriptions from this distance. Her eyes wandered over to the left, to the wall of glass panes. A black silhouette teetered outside the building like a drunken giant, then abruptly dissipated like smoke, while the young judge’s voice continued to fill the hall with words. Eva grasped her wrists. She had to hold on to something. This can’t be true! Eva wanted to stand up and object, make a plea. Or leave—running away would be best. But she remained seated, like everyone else, and listened. The young judge was now reading the detailed allegations against Defendant Number Four. It seemed the list would never end. The commercial clerk was charged with selecting prisoners, flogging, abusing, torturing, beating them to death, shooting them, killing them with a wooden board, killing them with a rod, killing them with the butt of a rifle, battering, trampling, kicking, crushing, and gassing them. In the barracks, on the streets of the camp, at roll call, at the execution site—known as the Death Wall—in his office, and in the medical block. In the lavatory of Block Eleven, he allegedly murdered a young prisoner secretary named Lilly Toffler with two shots, after days of summoning her to mock executions; the fifth time he called, she fell to her knees and begged him to finally shoot her. Eva searched for Defendant Number Four. He reminded her of Herr Wodtke, a regular at German House, who came in with his family on Sundays and always first made sure his wife and children were happy with their orders. He always treated his well-behaved children to an ice cream for dessert and tipped well—sometimes even too well. Eva didn’t want to believe that that haggard man with the face of a ferret could have done all of those things. He listened to the accusations against him without any discernible reaction, the corners of his mouth turned up and frozen. Like the defendants before him, he looked like he was being forced to pay attention to long-winded remarks on a topic that held utterly no interest for him. Bored, impatient, and irritated, but too well bred to just stand up and leave. The litany of accusations fell on deaf ears among the defendants’ tables, Eva observed. Here and there, one of the men would cross his arms, lean back in his chair, turn to whisper something to his lawyer, or make a note in his papers. The medical orderly, Number Ten, wrote feverishly in a thick little notebook. Before starting each note, he licked his pencil with the tip of his tongue.

Two and a half hours later, the young judge reached the end of his final document. His face was white as a sheet above the jet-black robe. “The accused are sufficiently suspected of committing these offenses. Upon request by the prosecution, proceedings for the jury’s consideration of the charges against the defendants are now open.”

The young judge sat down. His voice cut out abruptly, unexpectedly, and was followed by absolute silence. No one cleared his throat, no one coughed. They all sat there, as if life might end at any moment here too. All it would take was for someone to extinguish the big light. Eva felt a drop of sweat running down the middle of her back and into the crack of her bottom. She didn’t feel she could ever speak again or draw another breath. The moment did not last long. Whispers erupted throughout the room. The chief judge leaned in to confer with one of the associate judges. The prosecutors discussed with one another in low voices. The defense lawyers quietly answered their clients’ questions. The radiators whistled and sang. In one of the front rows, a man was crying—it was inaudible, but his shoulders were trembling. From the back, he looked like the bearded Hungarian man. Only the hat was missing. But maybe it’s in his lap, Eva thought. The man then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and Eva briefly caught sight of his profile and realized it was someone else.

The chief judge now spoke into his microphone. “Defendants, you have heard the charges. How do you plead?” The spectators all leaned forward slightly. Some tilted their heads to the side, and several opened their mouths to listen. David watched as the main defendant, Defendant Number One—a highly regarded Hamburg businessman, dressed in dark gray with a tasteful tie, who was the most important man at the camp, after the commandant—slowly got to his feet. David knew that this hawk-faced man was staying at the Steigenberger Hotel. In a suite, where he had surely taken a hot bubble bath that morning. The trim defendant looked the chief judge in the eye and said, “Not guilty.” At the same moment, there came a whisper in the gallery that only Eva could hear: “Not guilty!” She turned quickly toward her neighbor. The woman in the little hat now had red blotches on her face. She had stopped spinning her ring. She smelled slightly of sweat and vaguely of roses. Out of nowhere, Eva thought, I know her. But that was impossible. Eva felt hysterical. It was no wonder after those monstrosities. After everything she had just heard. After everything those twenty-one men sitting up there with an air of detachment were said to have done. Although they now each stood and pleaded, “Not guilty.” One after the other. Defendant Number Ten, the medical orderly, the only one who—to Eva’s eye—looked like a murderer, with his flattened nose and close-set eyes, stood up and yelled toward the gallery, “I am well loved by my patients! They call me ‘Papa’! Ask anyone! These accusations are based on mistaken identity and lies!” He sat down. Several of his fellow defendants applauded him by rapping their knuckles on the table. The chief judge called sharply for order and signaled one of the hall attendants, who then scurried over to the wall of glass panes. There was a contraption that allowed some of the windows to be tipped opened a crack. The attendant operated the mechanism, and cold air crept into the room, while the defendants continued to rise, one after the other.

“Not guilty!”

“Not guilty!”

“Not guilty as charged!”

Even the youngest defendant, who—according to investigations conducted by the prosecution—had killed countless people with his bare hands, expressed his innocence. But his face turned red as he spoke. And when he sat back down, he leaned forward, as if trying to devour the microphone on his table, and softly uttered a short sentence. His words rustled over the speakers and were hard to understand.

“I’m ashamed of myself.”

Several defendants shook their heads in scorn, and the following suspect, who was second to last, stood up and droned, all the more emphatically, “I have not done anything wrong!”

At that, a woman in the gallery began sobbing loudly. She stood up, forced her way through the seated crowd, and stumbled out of the hall. Eva heard voices growing louder. It was Polish.

“Kłamiecie! Wszyscy kłamiecie!” You’re lying! You’re all lying!

“Tchórze!” Cowards!

“Oprawca!” Murderers!

The chief judge pounded on his table and cried, “Order!! Order in the court, or I will clear the gallery!”

Everyone fell silent. The final defendant, the pharmacist, now stood and turned to face the court. But before he could break the silence, suddenly a bell sounded, grating and drawn out. It came from outside. Now a jumble of excited, high-pitched voices, screams, screeches, squeals. Eva remembered that behind the municipal building was a grade school. She checked the clock: it was probably their second recess. It was children playing.

“Not guilty,” the pharmacist, in his expensive suit, echoed and sat down.

IN THE NURSES’ LOUNGE at the hospital, Annegret was taking her second coffee break of the early shift. She sat at a white Formica table and drank her coffee black as she leafed through a fashion magazine. The magazine was tattered—it had served as the nurses’ break time entertainment for more than a year now. This style has already gone out of style, Annegret mused. The closely tailored waistlines on those dresses and suit jackets would look ridiculous on her body anyway. In her free time, Annegret wore stirrup pants and long, shapeless sweaters, and that was that. At work, the blue-and-white nurse’s apron was tight around her hips, and the white cap perched on her large, round head seemed tiny. But she looked smart. While Annegret took little sips of coffee, which always tasted bitter and she never particularly enjoyed, the small portable radio atop the tin storage cupboard holding cloth diapers buzzed with the day’s news. There was a man speaking about an important day for all Germans. About a trial of the century. About a turning point. Annegret stopped listening. She turned the page and started reading the June love story, although she knew it by heart. A homely secretary with ponderous eyeglasses and ill-fitting clothing is in love with her boss, a rakish bachelor. While out one day, she bumps into an old school friend, who has always dressed to impress, and goes shopping with her, then to the beauty salon, and finally to the optician’s. The secretary transforms from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. The twist, however, is that her rakish boss doesn’t even recognize her the next day—but the messenger who delivers the office mail does. A young man with a good heart, who comforts her as she sits crying in a corner of the corridor. Annegret didn’t know whom she despised most in this story. The idiot secretary who couldn’t dress herself, the overbearing friend with the perfect hair, the rakish boss who didn’t cotton on to a damn thing, or the dopey mailman who was too afraid to speak to the woman till she was crying. Annegret thought of her sister and that filthy rich snob. She was sure the two had not yet slept together. She considered that a mistake. Everything about a person was revealed in the act. Ample and difficult though she may be, Annegret had had several sexual encounters. All of the men had been married. Nurse Heide appeared at the door, a reserved older colleague who sometimes wheeled screaming infants into the broom closet and left them there till they fell asleep from exhaustion.

“Here she is. This is our dear Nurse Annegret.”

A younger woman in a winter coat entered the nurses’ lounge alongside Nurse Heide. She was smiling from ear to ear and took a large step toward Annegret. In the hall was a dark blue baby carriage, which rocked gently and emitted happy babbling.

“I wanted to thank you!”

Now Annegret understood, and she got up.

“Bringing Christian home today?”

The young mother nodded happily and handed Annegret a flat parcel wrapped in reddish tissue paper.

“It’s nothing, I know, compared to what you’ve done.”

Probably pralines. Or brandy beans. Sometimes they gave a pound of coffee or air-dried mettwurst as a thank you for good care. Of all the nurses, Annegret received by far the most gifts. But she was also the one who truly sacrificed herself for the problem cases, the one who ignored her schedule and didn’t sleep until the infant was back on the path to recovery. In the five years Annegret had worked in the nursery, she’d had only had four children die. It had been best in those cases, too, she thought, because after an initial recovery, these patients would have led sad lives as cripples or halfwits or both.

Annegret shook the young mother’s hand. Then she stepped into the hallway, up to the stroller, and looked down at the little face that was nice and round again. “I wish you all the best, Christian.” Annegret placed her hand on his tiny chest in farewell. Christian pedaled his legs and sprayed drool out of happiness.

“I heard you stayed up with him for two nights. We will never forget that, my husband and I.”

Annegret gave a crooked but happy smile. “I was just doing my job.”

Annegret watched the young mother push the brand-new stroller down the hall and through the frosted glass doors. Doctor Küssner walked up, a tall, somber man with smooth features, early balding, and a prominent gold wedding band. He appeared deeply concerned: they had to get these E. coli cases under control! Annegret assured him that she exercised tremendous care with hygiene protocol at all times. Doctor Küssner dismissed this with a wave.

“I don’t mean you. The residents, though, they’ll use the bathroom and not wash their hands and then examine newborns. I’ll bring it up tomorrow, before the rounds.”

Annegret went into the first nursery, where fourteen infants lay in their bassinets. She checked the babies’ temperatures by placing her hand on their cheeks. Most were asleep. One little girl was awake and cooed adorably. Annegret picked her up and swayed gently from side to side, humming a song she had come up with herself. She had inherited her father’s tone deafness.

TWO HOURS LATER, Eva was on her way home. She didn’t even consider taking the streetcar, but set out on foot. She strode furiously through the slush, as though she never wanted to stand still again. Salt crystals and pebbles crunched under her heels or jumped and sprayed away. She was panting.

After the chief judge had adjourned the court until the coming Tuesday, Eva had watched incredulously as most of the defendants exited the auditorium through the main entrance, their passage unchallenged, as though it were a matter of course. Out in the foyer, her neighbor in the little hat linked arms with the main defendant, who turned his hawkish face toward her, and the two walked out onto the street like any other elegant couple. Eva then spied the light blond-haired man in one of the hallways and ran over somewhat rashly. She impolitely ignored the fact that he was in the middle of a conversation.

“Why are they free to go?!” she blurted out, as upset as a child over some injustice. But the blond man didn’t recognize her and turned away without answering. David Miller also passed by Eva without so much as a glance. The men rushed off to their important meetings. And she had been left there in the hallway, an entirely unimportant young lady alone with her questions, most of which she knew were naïve. Walking down the street now in the din of traffic, passed by countless clattering and speeding cars and trucks and mopeds, blasted and enveloped by the reek of exhaust fumes, she regretted having attended the opening at all. What did she have to do with this trial, this bygone world? She was out of place there. Miller and that other fellow had made that abundantly clear! Yet they were themselves incapable of keeping those criminals from walking the city streets!

“In our midst!” Eva exploded. She couldn’t remember ever having been so angry. Not even at Annegret, who had an unrivaled ability to infuriate Eva with her scornful obstinacy. Eva was nearly hit by a car as she unbuttoned her wool coat, and she bellowed “Idiot!” after the driver. She had never done anything like that before. Only prostitutes yelled in public. Had Jürgen heard that, he’d have had his worst fears confirmed: Berger Strasse. A barman’s daughter. Seedy home life. Something gurgled up in her like a spoiled meal that just had to be expelled and one would immediately feel much better. Eva coughed up bile but forced herself to swallow it. Unthinkable, to let herself go like this in public. She took a shortcut. Her route led through a charmingly snowy park. Upon closer inspection, however, she discovered that the snow was gray with soot. The trees stood there, bare and helpless. Eva slowed her pace and breath. A uniformed man stood on a plinth, wearing a crooked cap of snow. He gazed at Eva with what seemed like pity. A squirrel darted past and zigzagged over the path in front of her, as though playfully inviting her to follow. Lilly Toffler, Eva thought suddenly. Her name sounds so carefree. Like I’d have liked her. The squirrel scrambled up one of the tall tree trunks with astounding speed. The animal seemed to be laughing at her from up there, at how heavily and lethargically, how clumsily she walked that path, like all the others. Eva stopped. She thought back to the man whose eyes she’d felt on her as she stood all alone in the corridor outside the auditorium. It was the Hungarian man from the Sun Inn, Herr Cohn, who’d been among the spectators, after all. He had looked at her, out from under his black hat, and nodded almost imperceptibly. Or was she just hoping that? That he had recognized and greeted her? Yes. And then Eva knew what she had to do. She rushed out of the small park. But she didn’t go home. She boarded a No. 4 streetcar and took it to the office building she had entered for the first time in her life the past Sunday.

JÜRGEN LEFT THE SCHOORMANN OFFICE half an hour earlier than usual, to buy an engagement ring. He drove into the city, or rather, crept forward in an endless, fuming procession of metal. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had recently dubbed this phenomenon “rush hour,” something that had previously been known to occur only in large American cities. Frankfurt had the most cars on the road of all West German cities, that much was undeniable. Jürgen liked his Lloyd just fine, but he still found it ridiculous, all the men in their hats, stuck behind the wheel, on their way home to “Mother.” Ready for the weekend. When did spouses begin addressing each other as “Mother” and “Father”? At the very moment their erotic relationship ended. When would his erotic relationship with Eva end? Jürgen shook his head at himself. What a question, when it hadn’t even yet begun. As he pulled up to a red light, his eyes fell on Santa Claus sitting in a big armchair in a shop window. It was a life-size figure with some sort of motorized system. Santa nodded kindly and tirelessly, surrounded by piles of gifts of various sizes. A few children were gathered at the window, the little ones spellbound, the older kids smirking: “It’s all just a fake!” Jürgen couldn’t remember ever having believed in Santa Claus. His mother had only ever mentioned the Christ Child. When the winter skies turned a rosy orange at sundown, she would say, “Look, Jürgen, the Christ Child is baking cookies!” His father dismissed Christmas as folklore, despite the fact that he always made a fortune on it. As they did for every holiday, he and Brigitte would be going to their house on the northernmost island in the North Sea. Jürgen would be alone on Christmas Eve, a thought that didn’t bother him. On the contrary: he enjoyed experiencing the miracle of Christmas on his own. He would attend midnight Mass and immerse himself in the festivities. Appearances to the contrary, he could be swept up in the joy everyone always sang about. Jürgen mused that it would also be the last Christmas he’d spend alone. He would be married next year. Eva would presumably be pregnant. Jürgen pictured her with a fat belly. Her breasts would grow too. She would be a good mother. The light turned green. But Jürgen didn’t move till the cars behind him began honking impatiently. He passed through the light, pulled over to the right, and double-parked in front of Krohmer Jewelry. The other drivers, who all had to pass him, tapped their temples at him in annoyance.

EVA FELT NERVOUS ENTERING the apartment above German House late that afternoon, because she saw Jürgen’s car parked outside. She hung up her coat in the hallway and listened. Animated voices were coming from the living room, then laughter, then swearing. Eva stepped into the doorway. There were Jürgen and her father, groaning and joking as they struggled to put up the Christmas tree. They hoisted the trunk into the cast-iron tree stand that had first belonged to Ludwig’s parents. Stefan had also grabbed hold. He was wearing brown leather gloves that were far too big for him. They belonged to Jürgen, who had lent them to him, because the tree’s needles were so “pricky.” Ludwig got on his knees and tightened the screws to secure the trunk. The tree slowly leaned toward the left. Edith watched and made fun of her husband, who was so talented in the kitchen but not much use elsewhere.

“He’s all thumbs!” Stefan crowed.

“You have to unscrew it, Herr Bruhns. No, in the other direction…”

Ludwig turned the screw in the other direction and cursed.

“How do you expect the boy to turn out when he hears words like that coming from your mouth?” Edith scolded him.

“Oh, I’m a lost cause already,” Jürgen teased.

“Mummy means me. But I already know much badder words. Want to hear?”

“No!” Edith and Ludwig answered at the same time, and everyone laughed.

No one noticed Eva, who was standing in the door. Her gaze fell upon a tray with four champagne flutes and an unopened bottle of Rüdesheim sparkling wine on the table. She felt dizzy. She knew what that meant.

“Guten Tag,” she said. Everyone looked at her, and Jürgen even blushed a little. He held onto the tree and smiled.

“There you are, finally. We have something to celebrate,” her mother told her seriously. “Ludwig, the tree is fine!”

Ludwig stood up with a groan and grimaced as he straightened his back. He strode over to the table, seized the bottle of sparkling wine, and opened it swiftly, announcing, “Well, he did it. He’s asked for your hand.”

Eva had the impression he was fighting back tears. Jürgen took her hand and placed a small box in it. As Ludwig poured the wine, Stefan protested because he didn’t get a taste, then crawled huffily under the table and allied himself with Purzel, who was also excluded from celebrations. Ludwig raised his glass and seemed thoroughly exhausted.

“In which case, you can call me Ludwig.”

“Edith.”

“Jürgen.” The glasses clinked.

Under the table, Stefan griped, “Pff! That stuff is yucky, anyhow.”

Eva took a big sip, and the sparkling wine tingled sweetly in her mouth. Her mother looked over and gave her a gentle nod, as if to say, Forget that I was skeptical at first. It’ll all work out just fine! The small pendulum clock on the cupboard chimed once. Ping. Four thirty. Ludwig set down his glass.

“Unfortunately, we have to pause things here. But consider it a rain check for the engagement party.”

Edith set her glass on the tray as well, stroked Eva’s cheek, and smiled. “But by all means, you two should stay and make yourselves comfortable.”

Her parents got ready to go out, to go downstairs and open their restaurant. They were in good spirits, despite the strenuous hours that lay ahead. Eva swallowed and smiled nonsensically.

“By the way,” she said, “I went back to the prosecutor’s office.” Her parents froze in the doorway. Jürgen had been about to take another sip but paused. “I’m doing it. I mean, I told them that I’ll translate. At the trial.”

Jürgen took a big gulp of sparkling wine and swallowed, then pressed his lips together. The happiness vanished from Edith and Ludwig’s faces. Everyone was silent, waiting for Eva to say more. Waiting for an explanation. But she remained silent, herself, because she couldn’t explain it. She thought of that fellow David Miller, who had looked at her the same way: “And why now, all of a sudden, do you want to do it?” But he thought she was dim, regardless.

At that moment, Stefan squealed from under the table, “It’s falling over!!” The tree was, in fact, listing dangerously to the side. Jürgen quickly lunged. He was just able to catch the tree before it fell, but its needles stabbed his hands painfully.

A little later, Eva and Jürgen sat across from one another at the living room table. They were alone. Even Purzel had scuttled out with his tail between his legs. A storm was brewing. Jürgen’s expression was dark. He was silent. The little box from Krohmer Jewelry lay unopened between the betrothed on the Plauen lace tablecloth.

“We’d agreed to something different, Eva.”

“All you said was that you didn’t want me to do it.”

“And I expect you to respect my opinions.”

Jürgen’s voice was cold and detached.

Eva was starting to feel scared. “Jürgen, by the time we’re married, the trial will be long over.”

“That’s not the point. It’s the principle of the thing. I mean, if it’s already starting out this way—”

“Then what? What happens then?”

Jürgen stood up. “I’ve never made a secret of how I feel a marriage should work. I would like for you to quit on Monday.”

Jürgen left. He was agitated, furious, and disappointed. The decision to marry had been a sizable step for him. He had overcome his own reluctance and risked everything. And for her to stab him in the back like this! He had to be able to trust his future wife. She had to do as he said.

Eva stayed at the table. She picked up the tiny box containing her engagement ring and turned it over in her hands. Then she sprang up and ran after Jürgen, out onto the street. He was by his car, brushing freshly fallen snow from the windshield with his bare hands. Eva marched up to him and held out the box combatively.

“Didn’t you forget something?”

Jürgen took the box without hesitation and stuffed it in his coat pocket. Eva’s stomach churned. She was overcome with fear of losing Jürgen. Or had she already lost him? She took his hand and held it tightly.

“How can I explain it to you? I have to do this. And it isn’t forever!”

“Oh, yes, I think it is.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Eva tried to read Jürgen’s green eyes, but they appeared turned inward, and he avoided her gaze.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, Eva: How important to you is this job? And how important to you am I?”

Jürgen freed his hand from Eva’s grasp. Then he got into his car. He started the engine and drove off without a good-bye.

Inside the restaurant, Edith stood by the window, a tray of empty beer glasses in her hands, and looked out onto the street. From the way Eva was standing there under the streetlight, Edith could tell that her daughter was crying.

AFTER MIDNIGHT THAT EVENING, Ludwig Bruhns opened the bedroom window. He gazed into the quiet inner courtyard, at the shadow of the tall, motionless fir tree. He had taken three more painkillers that evening, one every two hours. His stomach was upset; he’d have to ask Doctor Gorf to adjust the prescription. Edith’s feet hurt more than normal too, and she massaged them with her special salve. The smell of camphor mixed with fresh night air helped cut through the kitchen odor that always clung to Ludwig, despite his lathering soap on his upper body every evening. Edith watched him look up at the stars through the window. He was wearing his tatty old pajamas—patterned with small dark blue diamonds on a light blue background—that he liked just a little too much. He simply couldn’t throw them away, even after Edith had hemmed them several times. As a result, the sleeves and pants were both too short, and his ankles were bared. There was nothing Edith could do about the threadbare spots at his elbows, knees, and bottom. The fabric would soon tear there. Ludwig had honestly suggested she sew on patches. Edith had burst into laughter. Pajamas with patches? That didn’t even exist during wartime. “At some point, they’re just going to fall off your body. Turn to dust. And you’ll be standing there like a fool,” she had said. Ludwig closed the window and climbed into bed. Edith stepped over to the vanity and wiped her hands on a small towel, then opened a jar of yellowish paste and spread a thick layer over her face. Around her mouth and eyes she already had several wrinkles, which she tried to make disappear by application of various creams. As she got into bed beside Ludwig, he commented, “If you went out on the street like that, you’d be arrested.”

“As would you, in those pajamas,” Edith responded, as usual. They turned out their lights at the same time. Then they both stared into the darkness until their eyes had adjusted and they could make out the blurred shadow thrown onto the ceiling by the cross window. They had always found it comforting, but tonight, the cross felt threatening. Edith got up one more time. She closed the curtains.

“O HOW JOYFUL, O how blessed, O how cherished Christmastime.” The organ in the Johanneskirche droned over Eva’s head. The organist, Herr Belcher—“who had no say in his name,” her father was quick to remind them—was clearly sober and playing decently well. Pastor Schrader, always rather disheveled, was in rapture over his joyful message, as he was every year on this day. Every last seat in the church was taken, despite there being so few Protestants in this neighborhood. The Bruhns family had arrived a bit late. Stefan had to dress up for the Nativity play, and he’d put up a little fight. They hadn’t managed to find a pew together and now sat scattered throughout the chapel—Annegret way up front, Eva wedged between strangers a few rows behind her parents. Still, she could see her mother, whom she knew must be grimacing with exertion. Edith teared up whenever she heard organ music, yet she was ashamed to cry in public, and, like a little girl who wants to be big and strong, she fought the tears unsuccessfully. Eva was always moved by it. It was usually contagious as a yawn, but she felt she had shed enough tears over the past few days. She’d had to listen to her mother’s rebukes, although she herself had been against Jürgen at first. And to her sister’s, who couldn’t fathom how Eva could risk her “career as a businessman’s wife” like that. All for some translation job! And from her father, who seemed to be trying to communicate, through strange looks of concern, Eva, sweetheart, you’re making a mistake. Eva didn’t consider herself especially strong-willed and self-assured, but her family’s vehemence had sparked an unsuspected resistance within her. She hadn’t contacted Jürgen. She hadn’t quit on the prosecution. And now she sat there defiantly and watched the Nativity play being performed at the altar, which Pastor Schrader had rehearsed with the schoolchildren in the parish. As on every Christmas Eve, not a word either Joseph or Mary said could be heard. Only the innkeeper, who turned away the Holy Family, was audible. “No, there’s no room for you! Move along now!” Stefan played the innkeeper. Edith had shown him how to project his voice. Although she hadn’t been allowed to study acting, she knew these things intuitively. She had dressed him in a gray smock and dug out an old beige hat. Then Ludwig got involved, because he knew a little something about innkeeping, and put his chef’s hat on Stefan’s head. Edith argued against it: “A cook isn’t necessarily the innkeeper! It will just confuse the audience. And it doesn’t say anything in the Bible about a cook!” But Stefan had agreed with his father, and the hat now towered white over the other players’ earth-toned costumes. The other mothers had sewn their children cloaks out of faded curtains or cinched belts around the fathers’ old shirts. It looked like Mary was wearing her mother’s shrunken, yellowed wedding dress. Several children’s headdresses were too big, and kept slipping over their eyes. Some were presumably meant to be sheep, and had draped lambskins over their shoulders. But isn’t that what shepherds wear? Traditionally? Eva thought. In her opinion, the Christmas story was never as confusing, long, and uninspiring as it was during the Nativity play, yet all of the threads came together at the altar by the end. The costumed children gathered in a circle around the homemade manger, knelt down on the cold church floor, and bowed deeply. Because there in the straw lay the Christ Child. A miracle.

The Bruhnses lingered outside the church for some time afterward, despite Stefan’s begging that they go home. The German House owners were well known and loved in the neighborhood. To the steady sound of church bells ringing from the white onion dome above, they exchanged Christmas greetings with friends and acquaintances. The family then walked home. There was still snow on the street and in the corners of the recessed doorways, but it had gotten warmer, and the snow no longer crunched underfoot, but splashed. They had all linked arms, so that no one fell, “or so that if one goes, we all go!” as Ludwig had laughed. Except for Stefan, who was bubbling over and describing all the disasters that had happened backstage in the vestry, no one spoke another word.

Out of consideration for Stefan, they opened presents before dinner. The living room took on a golden glow from the many candles, the tree smelled of pitch and the deep forest, the tinsel shimmered, all four candles in the Christmas pyramid had been lit, and the shepherds and Three Kings hurried like never before. As usual, the Holy Family waited in vain. Stefan, on the other hand, was showered with gifts: both cheeks crammed with chocolate, he received an air rifle from his father, the book about the Swedish child detective from Annegret, and a dark blue seaman’s sweater from his mother. “You look like Grandpa Bruhns. Like Grandpa Sea Lion.” Eva had bought Stefan a Stabil construction set, and he planned to build the Schoormann warehouse the next day after nabbing a few sparrows in the courtyard with his gun. Lastly, Stefan opened the oblong package their grandmother had sent from Hamburg. Inside was a small uniformed doll wearing a knapsack that contained a cloth parachute—a paratrooper that Stefan now eagerly launched from every chair in the house. Purzel snapped at it in flight. Annegret was delighted to receive an elegant, burgundy leather wallet. Eva unwrapped a delicate silk scarf, blue with yellow polka dots. She would wear it in spring. When the sun began to warm things up. Some Sunday, when she took a stroll through the city in bloom. Without Jürgen. Eva stood up, because the image was hard to take, and began to pick up the wrapping paper and carefully fold each piece. Ludwig used this as an opportunity to apologize to Edith, because the washing machine hadn’t been delivered on time. But it did have thirteen wash cycles. And you could set the water temperature. Edith replied that this wouldn’t have happened if they’d ordered it from Schoormann’s. “They don’t sell washing machines!” Eva said, placed the paper on the cupboard, and went to her room.

Eva turned on her reading lamp and sat down on the bed. It was the same as always, the rituals and timing, with just a few minutes’ difference here and there, like earlier, when they’d arrived late at church. Even Purzel had already vomited, after he’d used a moment of distraction to go after the colorful plates underneath the tree. Everything was as it always had been. Eva lay down and closed her eyes. A recurring dream she hadn’t had in some time began playing through her mind. She enters a long room with high ceilings, a blue floor, and light blue tiled walls. Spinning chairs are arranged along the walls, covered with a shiny, dark blue material, and hanging on the wall in front of every chair is a round mirror. There are two sinks on one of the short sides of the room. Waiting in a corner are three peculiar creatures that appear to be nodding at Eva with enormous, hollow heads. She takes a seat in one of the chairs and turns to face the mirror. But there’s no one in the mirror. And then Eva feels a searing pain on her head. She screams.

Eva opened her eyes. The strange thing about this dream was that Eva had a scar on her scalp, a three centimeter-long bald spot above her left ear. Her mother always told her she had fallen as a small child. Eva heard someone call her name. It was her mother: sausages and potato salad were served.

AT THE SCHOORMANN ESTATE, Jürgen sat by himself in an armchair in the living room. The housekeeper, Frau Treuthardt, had been off since that afternoon. He hadn’t eaten, he hadn’t drunk, he had turned out all the lights and gazed out into the shimmering evening. He simply sat there and beheld the quiet picture, which hadn’t changed in more than an hour. He looked like someone who had broken into the house, then sunk into a chair, overcome by the beauty of the garden. Jürgen’s eyes, however, were blind to the charm the view was offering him. He was deliberating how to respond to Eva’s disobedience. The Eva he had first met was much different—compliant, yielding, and prepared to accept that the man had the final word in a marriage. She was showing a whole new side of herself now, like one of those acerbic women who went to war alongside their husbands. Eva hadn’t been in touch, and it was clear that she was determined not to budge. It was equally impossible for him. He couldn’t lose face before they were even married. And while Jürgen ruminated on the traditional power dynamics in marriage, underneath it all he could sense his actual fear: he was afraid of the trial Eva was joining. He had fallen in love with Eva’s innocence, with her purity, because he lacked it himself. What would this encounter with evil do to Eva? What would it do to him?

The standing clock in the hallway struck eleven. It ran fifteen minutes slow, and Jürgen realized that if he wanted to get a seat for midnight Mass at the Liebfrauenkirche, he would have to leave this minute. But he stayed seated.

AT MIDNIGHT, ANNEGRET ENTERED the first nursery, which was dimly lit. She had volunteered for the overnight shift and left her family after their meal of sausages and potato salad. A siren howled outside—maybe a Christmas tree had caught fire. Annegret liked the sound. It meant: Help is on the way! She paced between the bassinets and checked in on each little face. Most of the infants were sleeping soundly. Annegret stopped at one of the cradles. The name Henning Bartels was on the card at the end of the bed. Frau Bartels was housed in the maternity ward downstairs, battling childbed fever. Henning, on the other hand, was already a remarkably sturdy child, despite being just days old. Annegret bumped into the bassinet, as if by accident. Henning opened his eyes a crack, shook his little fists, and yawned toothlessly. Annegret gently stroked his cheek.

“Hm, you poor little nugget.” Then she pulled something out of the pocket of her uniform: a reusable glass syringe without a needle. The barrel, which held ten milliliters, was filled with a brownish liquid. Annegret moved to the side of the bed, slipped her hand under Henning’s head, and lifted it slightly. Then she stuck the syringe between the boy’s lips, pushed it under the side of his tongue, and slowly emptied the contents into his mouth. Henning’s eyes widened a little, and he began to smack.

“Tastes good, mmm, nice and sweet, right?” Henning sucked some more and swallowed. Some of the fluid ran out the sides of his mouth. Annegret pulled a cloth from her pocket and carefully dabbed his tiny face. “There we go, now you’re all set.”

IN THE APARTMENT ABOVE GERMAN HOUSE, Edith and Ludwig sat in the living room. The candles had burned out, and the floor lamp flickered tiredly. Eva’s parents were both drunk, which they only allowed themselves on rare occasions. Midnight Mass at the Liebfrauenkirche was being broadcast on the radio. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called…” Edith listened as the organ started to play and the priest made his auspicious proclamations—the Gloria—and she finally allowed herself to cry, shamelessly and unobserved. Ludwig sighed occasionally too, although he wasn’t listening. He was reminiscing about childhood Christmases on his home island, the way Father Christmas would come riding through the darkness, over the frozen mudflats in a horse-drawn sledge. Blazing torches were affixed to the box seat, and Father Christmas heaved the bag of gifts for the Bruhnses from the sledge. One year, Ludwig jumped onto the skids in the back, held tight, and rode along to the next farm. Father Christmas discovered him there and gave him a mighty tongue-lashing. Ludwig recognized his voice as that of Ole Arndt, a hired hand at their neighbor’s farm. Then he spotted the familiar bluish nose under his fake white beard. From that point onward, Ludwig had considered himself very grown up. But the First World War didn’t start till a year later. Neither of his older brothers returned from France, and his mother died of grief. At age fourteen, Ludwig began to cook, after his father’s spirit had failed and he’d stopped opening the grocery store. He cooked for his little sister and father. That’s when he truly grew up. The doorbell rang. Edith wiped her nose and looked at Ludwig quizzically through misty eyes. He groaned as he struggled, like a beetle stuck on its back, to sit up. Not but yesterday, he’d been a young man. And now his back hurt. “It’s twelve thirty?!”

EVA HAD FALLEN ASLEEP next to Stefan. She’d carried her brother to bed an hour earlier. He clutched the little paratrooper in one hand and his air rifle in the other. Eva started reading him a story about a young Swedish boy who wants to be a detective. But Stefan wanted her to sing something instead, his favorite Christmas carol, “Come, All Ye Shepherds!” He liked it “because the music bounces so nice.” She hadn’t needed to sing long and then snuggled up to her brother’s small, comforting body.

She was now woken by the doorbell. Purzel was barking like mad. Someone was actually downstairs at the front door. Eva got up and padded into the hallway in her stockings. Her updo had come loose, and her hair fell long and disheveled down her back. She pressed the buzzer to unlock the entrance downstairs, and cracked open the door to the stairwell. Purzel slipped out and down the steps. Ludwig had also materialized in the hallway at this point. He was in his shirt and swaying a bit.

“Who the hell is it? Must be Father Christmas.”

Eva heard the front door open and someone mount the stairs in big strides, while assuring Purzel, “You’ve met me already!”

Eva recognized the voice and quickly tried to fix her hair in the mirror. No use. Jürgen appeared in the doorway to the apartment, without a hat and his coat unbuttoned, out of breath, as though he had run the entire way from the Taunus hills. Ludwig gave him a quick, hard look, at once resigned and relieved, grunted something regarding a Merry Christmas, called “Purzel, come!” and with that, father and dog disappeared into the living room. Eva and Jürgen stood in the door and looked at each other in silence. Eva tried not to look happy. Finally she gave him a little smile. Jürgen touched her messy hair.

“Merry Christmas,” he said earnestly.

At that, Eva grabbed Jürgen by the lapels and pulled him into the apartment.

“Merry Christmas.”

And then they kissed in the corner by the coat rack, long and hard and without a hint of reverence.