It was very expensive; he spent a whole week’s earnings on it. I was so proud to be a mother. The bracelet didn’t mean anything to me. Now Eva has three girls herself; Harriet is nine already. I wonder how often she thinks of me, over in Ilford. But whatever she does think, she won’t imagine her mother sitting here, in some dead girl’s room at Judge Fromm’s, who only obeys Justice. And all alone…

She laid down the bracelet and picked up a ring. She sat the whole day over her things, muttering to herself, clinging to her past. She didn’t want to think of herself as she was today.

In between came outbursts of wild panic. Once, she got as far as the door, and said to herself, If I could only be sure they wouldn’t torture me, that it would be swift and painless, then I would give myself up to them. I can’t stand this waiting any more, and in all probability it is futile. Sooner or later, they’ll catch me. Why does each individual survivor matter so much, myself most of all? The children will think about me less and less, the grandchildren not at all, Siegfried will die soon in Moabit. I don’t understand what the judge meant, so I had better ask him about it tonight. Probably he will just smile and say something I won’t understand, because I am just a woman of flesh and blood, a Sara grown old.

She propped herself on her elbow on the dressing table, and gloomily studied her face with its network of creases. Creases drawn by anxiety, fear, hatred, love. Then she went back to the table, to her jewels. Just to pass the time, she counted through her money again and again. Later on, she tried ordering the notes by serial numbers. From time to time she wrote down a sentence in the letter to her husband. But it wasn’t really a letter, just a series of questions. What was the accommodation like, what did they give him to eat, couldn’t she help with the laundry? Small, banal questions. And: She was fine. She was safe.

No, it wasn’t a letter, it was silly, useless chatter, and not even true at that. She wasn’t safe at all. Never in the last ghastly months had she felt herself in such danger as in this quiet room. She knew she would have to change here, she wouldn’t be able to escape herself. And she was afraid of who she might turn into. Perhaps she would have to endure even more terrible things to come, she, who had already changed from a Lore to a Sara.

Later on, she did lie down on the bed after all, and when her host knocked on the door at ten, she was so fast asleep that she didn’t hear him. He opened the door quietly with a key that turned back the bolt, and when he saw her asleep, he nodded and smiled.