I will knock on your door at ten o’clock this evening. Good night!”

He left. In the doorway he stopped and turned to her once more. “Over the next few days, you will be very much alone with yourself and your thoughts, Frau Rosenthal. Try to accustom yourself to it. Solitude can be a very good thing. And don’t forget: every single survivor is important, including you, you most of all! Now—bolt the door!”

He went out so softly, shutting the door so gently, that she only realized later that she had neither thanked him nor said good night. She walked quickly to the door, but stopped and reconsidered. Then she turned the bolt and dropped onto the nearest chair. Her legs were trembling. In the mirror of the dressing table, she saw a pallid face, swollen with crying and sleepless nights. Slowly, sadly, she nodded at her face in the mirror.

That’s you, Sara, she said to herself. Lore, now called Sara.* You were a good businesswoman, always working hard. You brought five children into the world, and one of them is in Denmark, one in England, two in the U.S.A., and one is lying in the Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee. It doesn’t make me angry when they call you Sara; it’s not what they meant to do, but they made me a daughter of my nation. He is a good and kind old gentleman, but so distant… I could never talk to him properly, the way I talked to Siegfried. I think he is cold. For all his goodness, he is cold. His goodness itself is cold. That’s on account of the law he serves, the law of justice. I have followed only one law, which is to love my husband and children and help them in their lives. And now I’m sitting here with this old man, and everything I am has fallen from me. That’s the solitude he mentioned. It’s not quite half past six in the morning, and I won’t see him again until ten at night. Fifteen and a half hours by myself—what will I discover about myself that I never knew? I’m afraid, I’m so afraid! I think I’m going to scream, I’m going to scream in my sleep! Fifteen and a half hours. He could have spent at least the half hour sitting with me. But he wanted to get on with his old book. For all his goodness, human beings don’t mean anything to him, the only thing that has meaning for him is his justice. He does it for that, not for me. It would only matter to me if he did it for my sake!

Slowly she nods at the suffering face of Sara in the mirror.