But over the past few years, she had gotten steadily weaker, particularly since the two of them had gone off to the war.

Well, the war should never have come about; if the Führer really was all he was cracked up to be, then it should have been avoided. Danzig and that little corridor outside it made a reason to put millions of people in daily fear of their lives—that really wasn’t so very statesmanlike!

But then they claimed he was illegitimate or all but. That he’d never had a mother to look after him properly. And so he didn’t understand how mothers felt in the course of this never-ending fear. After each letter from the front you felt better for a day or two, then you counted back how many days had passed since it was sent, and then your fear began again.

She has let the stocking fall from her grip, and has been sitting in a dream. Now she stands up quite mechanically, moves the soup from the stronger hotplate to the weaker one, and puts the potatoes on the better one. While she is doing that, the bell rings. She stands there, frozen. Enno! she thinks, Enno!

She puts the saucepan down and creeps silently in her felt slippers to the door. Her heart calms down: at the door, a little to the side so that she can be seen more easily, stands her neighbor, Frau Gesch. Surely she’s come to borrow something again, a little fat or flour, that she always forgets to return later. But Eva Kluge nevertheless remains suspicious. She tries to scan the landing as far as the peephole will allow, and she listens for every sound. But everything is as it should be: there is only Frau Gesch occasionally scraping her feet in impatience or looking into the peephole.

Frau Kluge makes up her mind. She opens the door, though only as wide as the chain will permit, and she asks, “What can I do for you, Frau Gesch?”

Straightaway, Frau Gesch, a wizened old woman worked half to death, whose daughters are living very nicely thank you off their mother, launches into a flood of complaints about the unending washing, always having to be doing things for other people, and never getting enough to eat, and Emmi and Lilli doing nothing at all. After supper they just walk out of the house and leave their mother with the washing-up. “Yes, and Frau Kluge, what I came for, I think I’ve got a boil on my back. We only have the one mirror, and my eyes are bad. I wonder if you’d have a look at it for me—you can’t go to the doctor for something like that, and when do I have time to go to a doctor? You might pop it for me too, if you wouldn’t mind, though I know some people just are squeamish about that sort of thing…”

While Frau Gesch goes on and on with her lamentations, Eva Kluge quite mechanically undoes the chain, and the woman comes into her kitchen. Eva Kluge is about to shut the door, but a foot has slid in the way, and Enno Kluge is in her flat. His face is as expressionless as ever; a degree of excitement is betrayed by the trembling of his almost lashless eyelids.

Eva Kluge stands there with her arms hanging down, her knees shaking so hard she can barely stay on her feet. Frau Gesch’s speech has suddenly dried up, and she looks silently into their two faces. It’s perfectly still in the kitchen, only the saucepan goes on bubbling away gently.

Finally Frau Gesch says, “Well, Herr Kluge, I’ve done as you asked. But I tell you: this once and never again. And if you don’t keep your promise, and you start the laziness and the pub-crawling and the gambling again…” She breaks off after looking at Frau Kluge’s face, and says, “If I’ve done something stupid, then I’ll help you throw him out right away, Frau Kluge. The two of us together can do it easy!”

Eva Kluge gestures dismissively. “Ah, never mind, Frau Gesch, it’s all right!”

Slowly and cautiously she goes over to the cane chair and slumps into it. She keeps picking up the darning and looking at it vaguely, as if she didn’t know what it was.

Frau Gesch says, a little offended, “Well then, good evening or Heil Hitler, whichever you prefer!”

Hurriedly Enno Kluge says, “Heil Hitler!”

And slowly, as though waking from a dream, Eva Kluge responds, “Goodnight, Frau Gesch.” She pauses. “And if you’ve got something with your back…”

“No, no,” Frau Gesch says hastily, from the doorway. “There’s nothing the matter with my back, it was just something I said.