The Night Traveler: A Novel

ACT ONE

1

Berlin, March 1931

The night Lilith was born, winter storms raged in the midst of spring.

Windows closed. Curtains drawn. Ally Keller writhed in pain on the damp sheets. The midwife clutched Ally’s ankles.

This time it’s coming.

After the contraction, the very last one, her life would change. Marcus, Ally thought. She wanted to cry out his name.

Marcus couldn’t answer her. He was far away. The only contact they had now was the occasional letter. Ally had started to forget his scent. Even his face had faded into darkness for a moment. She looked down at herself on the bed as though she were some other woman, as though the body in labor wasn’t her own.

Marcus, she said aloud, her mind increasingly restless.

After everything they’d been through together, after all they’d said and shared, Marcus had become a shadow to her. Their child would grow up without a father. Perhaps her father had never really wanted her after all. Perhaps this was always meant to be her daughter’s destiny. What right did she have to interfere?

The night Lilith was born, Ally thought of her own mother. She couldn’t recall a single lullaby, an embrace, a kiss. She had spent her childhood surrounded by tutors, perfecting her handwriting and use of language, learning new vocabulary words and proper grammatical constructions. Numbers were a nightmare, science was dull, and geography left her disoriented. All she cared about was escaping into the make-believe stories that led her on journeys back in time.

Join us in the real world, would you? her mother would say. Life isn’t a fairy tale.

Her mother let her go her own way. She had sensed what Ally’s life would be, and how powerless she was to stop it. Given the direction Germany was heading, she knew that her rebellious, headstrong daughter was a lost cause. With hindsight, Ally could see her mother had been right all along.

You’re falling asleep. The midwife’s agitated voice interrupted her thoughts, her hands stained with a yellowish liquid. You need to concentrate if you want to get this over with.

The midwife was seasoned: she could boast of the requisite nine hundred hours of training, had helped deliver more than one hundred babies.

Not a single dead baby, not one. Nor a mother either, not one, she had told Ally when she took her on.

She’s one of the best, the agency had assured her.

One day we’ll enact a law to make sure that all babies born in our country are delivered by a German midwife, the woman at the agency had added, raising her voice. Purity upon purity.

Perhaps I should have found one with no experience, no idea how to bring a baby into the world, Ally thought.

Look at me! the midwife snapped. Unless you do your bit, I can’t do my job properly. You’re going to make me look bad.

Ally began to tremble. The midwife seemed to be in a hurry. Ally thought she might have another pregnant woman waiting for her. She couldn’t stop thinking that this woman’s fingers, her hands were inside her, delving around. Saving one life while destroying another.

The night Lilith was born, Ally tried to imagine herself back in the apartment on the riverbank with Marcus: the two of them, hidden in the moonlight, making plans for life as a family, as if such a thing were possible. The morning light always took them by surprise. Caught unawares, they began closing windows and drawing curtains to stay in the dark they’d made their haven.

We should run away, she once said to Marcus, while they were lying curled up in bed.

She waited for his response in silence, knowing that for Marcus there could only be one answer. Nobody could convince him otherwise.

If things are bad for us here, in America it would only be worse, he would say. Every day that goes by, more people see us as the enemy.

To Ally, Marcus’s fear was abstract. It lay in hidden forces, like a gathering wave they couldn’t see, but that would one day, apparently, drown them all. So she chose to ignore Marcus’s forebodings and those of his artist friends; she was hopeful that the storm would pass. Marcus had dreams of working in movies. He had already appeared in one film, in a minor role as a musician, and he had said she should go with him to Paris where he hoped to be cast in another. But then she became pregnant and everything changed.

Her parents were beside themselves. They sent her to live in their empty apartment in Mitte, in the center of Berlin, to hide their shame. They told her that it was the last thing they’d do for her. How she chose to live beyond that point was her problem, not theirs. In the letter her mother had written, she could hear her firm, deliberate voice, with its Bavarian lilt. Ally hadn’t heard from her since.

Ally learned of her father’s death from a notice in the newspaper. The same day, she also received a letter about a small inheritance her father had left her. She imagined that back in Munich there would have been prayers, Ave Marias, veiled windows, and stilted conversations that trailed off into murmurs. She thought of her mother shrouded in mourning, a mourning that for her began the day Ally left. Ally was convinced that when her mother died, she would leave instructions for the news of her death not to be made public, to ensure that her death would go unnoticed, so her daughter wouldn’t get the chance to weep for her. Ally didn’t deserve even that much. Her mother’s vengeance would be silence.

She recalled the feeling of being alone in the vast Mitte apartment, losing herself in its corridors, its rooms full of shadows and painted a muddy green, which she felt would consume her. It was then that the letters from Marcus began to arrive. This isn’t the country I want for my child, don’t come back to Düsseldorf, life here grows more difficult by the day. They don’t want us in America either. Nobody wants us. Sometimes they were not so much answers to her own letters but diatribes.

A cry filled the room. It had come from her chest, her choking throat, her stiffened arms. She felt torn in two. The stabbing pains in her belly spread to her whole body and she clung desperately to the bars of the bed.

Marcus! Her shout, guttural, startled the midwife.

Who’s Marcus? The father? There’s nobody here. Come on now, don’t stop, you’re nearly there. One more push and you’ve done it!

Her body stiffened and a shiver ran through her. Her lips, trembling, dry. Her belly tensed to a point and then shrank, as though the living being within her had dissolved. She had brought on a storm. She felt the gusts of wind and rain lashing down. Thunderclaps and hailstones pounded her. She was tearing apart. Her abdomen contracted. Opening her increasingly heavy legs, she let something out, a sort of mollusk. A smell of rust invaded the room’s fetid air. The tiny body had taken all the warmth of her belly with it. Her skin quivered.

A lengthy silence. Ally stretched out her legs and closed her eyes. Tears mingled with sweat. The midwife picked up the inert baby by its feet and snipped through the umbilical cord. With the other hand she tossed the placenta into a dish of bloody water, and on one corner of the bed, began to wash the newborn with tepid water.

It’s a girl. The midwife’s voice resonated in the room, which was otherwise glaringly silent.

What’s happened? Why isn’t she crying? She’s stillborn, she thought.

Her throat was still burning; her belly throbbed. She could no longer feel her legs.

At that instant, the baby let out a soft whimper like a wounded animal. Little by little, the whimper grew to a howl. Eventually, it became a wail. Ally didn’t react.

Meanwhile, the midwife began rubbing the baby, more relaxed now that she’d done her job. When she saw the bluish tinge of her clean face, her anxiety returned. A lack of oxygen, she deduced. Tentatively, she opened the baby’s mouth and inspected the purple gums. Thinking there might be a blockage in the windpipe, she poked her index finger into the newborn’s tiny throat. She looked at the baby, and at Ally, who still had her eyes closed.

The little baby wouldn’t stop crying as the midwife roughly wrapped her in a clean sheet. Only her face peeped out. The midwife pursed her lips, handing the baby over to Ally the way one transfers a foreign object.

"It’s a Rhineland bastard. You’ve brought a mischling into the world. This girl isn’t German, she’s Black."

Ally sat up and took the baby on her lap. The newborn instantly settled.

Lilith, Ally murmured. Her name means light.

2

Seven Years Later

Berlin, March 1938

Dusk.

Lilith, run! Run, and don’t look back! Ally cried, her eyes shut tight. Keep going, don’t slow down.

The streetlamps flashed silvery threads on the wooden and bronze benches in the Tiergarten. Ally twirled around with her arms outstretched, creating a whirlwind of leaves. For a moment she had made the world stand still, forming a protective cloud all around her. When she opened her eyes, it was the park that was spinning; the trees were falling in on her, and she couldn’t steady herself. She felt she might pass out.

By night, the Tiergarten, in the middle of Berlin, was like a labyrinth.

Lilith? Ally whispered.

Her daughter had played the game perfectly: she couldn’t be seen.

With the avenue in front and the trees behind her, Ally sighed. She thought she was alone, outside the halo of light from the streetlamp, but when she turned around, a group of young men was standing before her, wearing gray uniforms. She felt the prickle of fear. You might be able to hold back the tears, raise the corners of your lips, hide the shaking legs and sweating palms, but the dread would always be there, finding its way to the surface somehow and weakening you. The hunter can smell fear. But the uniformed youths smiled at her, raised their right arms in salute. She was the image of a vigorous, perfect German woman.

"Sieg heil!"

If they only knew, she thought.

A gust of wind cleared away the clouds. The moon shone down on her, on her blond hair and porcelain skin. Ally was radiant. One of the youths turned around to look at her, as though she were some kind of magical apparition in the Tiergarten, a Valkyrie on the way to meet her fate. The young men marched off. She was alone again, in the darkness.

Mommy? Lilith’s voice raised her from her stupor. Did I do well this time?

Without looking down, Ally ran her hands over her daughter’s curly, crinkly hair, as she trotted alongside her. Ally alone was bathed in light. Lilith was shadow.

Let’s go home.

But did I do well, Mommy?

Of course you did, Lilith, as you do every night. You get better each time.

In the darkness they went unnoticed. The passersby ignored them, nobody looked at them in astonishment, pursed their lips in disgust, or lowered their gaze pityingly. Nobody hurled stones or insults, and the children didn’t run after them, protected by their purity, yelling songs about the jungle or chimpanzees.

By night they felt free.

By night, we’re all the same color, Ally would murmur to her daughter when they walked, as though reciting one of her poems.

Ally was always writing, no matter where she was. She didn’t need pencil or paper; her mind worked more quickly than her hands, she used to tell Lilith. She recited poems to her, poems with a musical cadence that filled Lilith with joy.

What do you mean, Mommy?

What I mean is: the night belongs to us, to me and you. The night is ours.

It was around Lilith’s seventh birthday that Ally’s nightmares began. What sort of mother dreams about her child dying? she thought. She only had herself to blame, for having brought her into the world. For having to live in endless flight.

In their apartment building, hidden in a shady, dead-end street in Mitte, they never used the elevator, but always walked up and down the dark staircase so that they didn’t bump into any neighbors. She had heard the Strassers, who lived in the same apartment block, complaining, harping back to a triumphant past. The day she moved into the apartment, before Lilith was born, they had invited her in for coffee. The rooms were filled with trophies they had brought back from far-off lands: sphinxes, fragments of stone faces, clay and marble arms. They loved ruins. Frau Strasser went through life suffocated by a corset that left her permanently cantankerous, snubbing anyone who didn’t dress like her and her magnificent offspring. The mere act of walking left her struggling for breath, and even in winter she was plagued by beads of sweat that threatened to spoil her makeup. They had two daughters, each one as perfect as the sun. The feminine ideal, the likes of which often graced the cover of Das Deutsche Mädel, the magazine of the League of German Girls that everyone adored.

Ever since Lilith was born, they had avoided Ally. One day Herr Strasser had even dared to spit at her as they passed each other in the street outside the apartment. Ally’s bag of fruit had fallen to the ground, and the apples rolled across the pavement, gathering dark, wet dust as they went.

Those apples are cleaner than you, Herr Strasser had said after launching the ball of phlegm that landed by her feet.

Insults were no longer veiled. Ally had gone through the bronze and wooden doorway into the building that was no longer her refuge. She saw her neighbors, the Herzogs, looking frightened, walking through the threshold of apartment 1B. They had witnessed her humiliation, and probably felt sorry for her. They too had been insulted, on more than one occasion.

The Herzogs owned a small lighting store outside the S-Bahn station in the Hackescher Markt. Ally had once thought about going into the store to shelter from an icy downpour, but in the end she hadn’t: she saw the six-pointed star on the shop window, and inside it the most offensive word to describe someone at the time, Jude. She bowed her head and carried on walking, wet and trembling. The last time she got off the S-Bahn, she saw from a distance what remained of the shop. The windows had been smashed, and all the lamps destroyed. There was glass everywhere. It was impossible to avoid treading on it. She shuddered as it splintered underfoot; it was part of the symphony of the city. Each footstep reduced the fragments to dust, until they were gone. Nobody in Berlin needs light anymore, she thought, and turned in the opposite direction. I suppose we’ll all live in the shadows from now on.

Ally had lost her capacity to feel shocked; nothing offended her anymore. Words didn’t frighten her; nor did Herr Strasser’s spit, which was merely a tiresome, petty nuisance.

Fortunately, she was alone that day, as she was almost every afternoon. Lilith had stayed home with Herr Professor, her neighbor and mentor. His name was Bruno Bormann, but they both called him Opa. He hadn’t liked it at first. Am I so old that you can call me Gramps? he would say. But now he always announced his arrival in the apartment with Opa’s feeling tired, Opa’s hungry, Opa needs someone to sing to him, or Don’t you have a kiss and a cuddle for Opa?

You know, Lilith, Herr Professor told her when they read together and she asked questions about destiny, you’re older than Opa. You have an old soul.

The three of them ate dinner together almost every night, unless Herr Professor was meeting his old colleagues from the university where he had taught literature for over two decades. There weren’t many of them left. Some had died, and others had fled to America to escape the horror and shame of what was happening in their country. Herr Professor had once been revered; devoted students often quoted his literary musings. When he first became a lecturer, he imagined himself gray-haired and with a walking stick still teaching students and was determined to continue teaching until he drew his final breath. But times had changed. Fear and denunciations had set in, and he no longer trusted the professors who had chosen to stay, or the new students. These angry young people were the ones who now decided what should be taught in the sacred German academy, and what should disappear forever from the curriculum. The professors, deans, and even the university rector were as afraid of being denounced by a student as they were of being hit by a stray bullet. One morning he arrived at the university to find several empty shelves in the library; first editions scattered on the floor and trampled on.

Books are no longer seen as useful in this country, he told Ally. Who cares about reading the classics these days? How long will it go on, my dear Ally? You and I are survivors; we belong to another era. The new generation only wants to listen to the Führer’s speeches, the Führer’s tirades.

Herr Professor, with his mild manners and perfect enunciation, had a voice that resonated without being raised, so that it could be heard in every corner of the house. He was Lilith’s tutor. Thanks to him, the little girl had been able to read and write with startling fluency from the age of five. She devoured books she couldn’t fully understand, underlining words on the pages of books that she took, without asking permission, from Herr Professor’s vast library.

Ally’s and Herr Professor’s front doors, side by side, were rarely locked.

We ought to knock down the wall between our apartments. Then Opa wouldn’t have to visit you both, Herr Professor had once suggested, teasingly.

Lilith had smiled at the idea, thinking she would be able to peruse his library anytime she liked, not just at night, the only time she was permitted to step outside the apartment, taking care not to let the ghosts—their name for the neighbors—see her.

Ally knew little about Herr Professor’s life before they had met, but she considered him a key part of hers. She knew he had once, in his words, made a blunder, that is, fallen in love. She had never pressed him for details.

Mistakes like that can change the course of your life, but fortunately we don’t normally fall in love twice. Once is enough, the old man had said.

At present, Lilith was engrossed in a leather-bound book, written in an unfathomable language, entitled Eugenics, a word she didn’t dare say aloud. She pored over the illustrations of human bodies, diseases, dystrophies, perfection, and imperfection, and came to a halt on a little girl’s flawless face.

Opa, I want you to start teaching me English today, right now.

If I teach you English, it won’t be for you to read that book, but to understand the Great Poet.

Starting that night, they began reading aloud Shakespeare’s sonnets, written in old-fashioned English, without bothering to try to work out what they meant.

To learn a language, the first thing to do is capture its musicality, untangle your tongue, relax your facial muscles, Herr Professor explained. The rest will follow in due course.

Lilith lit up, thrilled by this exciting new world that had just opened up to her. Let’s find Mommy so she can listen to us!

We should leave your mother in peace. She needs to write, and write a lot. It does her good, especially when she’s weary.

It’s my fault that Mommy doesn’t sleep.

No, Lilith. It’s the Führer’s fault, the fact that he believes he’s Odin. You’ve got nothing to do with it.

Mommy doesn’t like us to mention his name…

From the moment she woke up, Lilith spent nearly all her time with Herr Professor. At lunchtime the three would eat together, and the little girl would be captivated by his stories, which ranged from the glories of ancient Babylon to Greek mythology; endless speeches about gods and demigods, or the Doric temples of the Acropolis, that might suddenly end up in the Greco-Persian Wars. Herr Professor was as happy talking about Aphrodite, Hephaestus, and Ares and their place in the Temple of the Twelve Olympian Gods, as the battles of the Nubians and the Assyrians.

One afternoon, Herr Professor found Lilith in front of the bathroom mirror, the only spot in his apartment without books. The little girl drew closer to the glass, as though trying to find an answer to her doubts, slowly stroking her hair and eyebrows. When she realized Herr Professor was watching her, she jumped, startled.

Mommy is so pretty.

And so are you.

But I don’t look like her. I want to look like her.

You have the same profile, the same lips, your eyes are the same shape.

But my skin…

Your skin is beautiful. Just look how it glows next to mine.

They stood together in front of the mirror. Lilith untied her curls. Herr Professor swept the gray hairs from his forehead and ran his hand down over his stomach.

I’m going to have to do something with this belly, it’s getting bigger every day. I may be old, but at least I still have all my hair!

They laughed. To Lilith, Herr Professor was like a friendly giant who watched over them.

Some days he climbed up the wooden stepladder next to the wardrobe in the little room beside the kitchen. Perched on the top rung, he handed down boxes lined in red velvet. That was where he kept the family photographs that his mother, a tall, robust woman, had sorted in her final years. Lilith loved going through the pictures of strangers, people from so long ago that even Herr Professor couldn’t remember their names.

Little Bruno was afraid of the dark, he once said, pointing to a photo of himself as a toddler. We’re not though, are we, Lilith?

The little girl burst into laughter at the sight of a bald, chubby baby perched on a lace cushion in one of the photographs.

You’ve had a grumpy face since you were born! That couldn’t be anyone but you.

We were all babies once, and before we die, we go back to that time when we depend on someone doing everything for us.

Don’t worry, Opa, I’ll look after you.

Late at night, after Lilith had gone to bed, Ally and Herr Professor would make a pot of tea to ward off sleep. They remained silent; they had no need of words to communicate. After a few minutes, Ally would lean her head on his lap, and he would stroke her hair, a smoky gray in the darkness.

We’ll find a way, we will, he repeated. Lilith’s a clever girl. She’s a prodigy, very special.

Opa, time’s against us. Lilith is nearly seven years old, Ally said, her breathing ragged.

We can trust Franz. Herr Professor’s hands were trembling.

Franz Bouhler was one of Herr Professor’s former students. His mother had insisted he study science so that he could go on to work in his cousin Philipp’s laboratory. Philipp had begun research that, according to Franz, was going to change the way they saw the world. His true passion though, was for literature. He wrote poetry and had enrolled in Herr Professor’s literature classes. After Herr Professor retired, Franz continued to visit him and share his writing.

Franz is a dreamer, Ally said.

We all are, Herr Professor said. "When I waked, I cried to dream again."

Since Franz began to visit them, he had become their only contact with the outside world. Lilith was growing up quickly, and every day it was more noticeable that she was a mischling child, a Rhineland bastard, who by law would have to be sterilized to survive in the new Germany. They avoided the radio news, and there were no newspapers in their homes. When they went out at night, they lowered their gaze so as not to see the avalanche of triumphalist white, red, and black posters inundating the city.

Herr Professor would sometimes edit Franz’s grandiloquent poems, which were filled with hope, in contrast to the dark, pessimistic lyricism of Ally’s own verses. It was Franz’s fresh, youthful spirit—he was four years younger than Ally—that drove her to seek shelter in him. Wednesday afternoons were their time. Ally felt safe walking around the small streets of Mitte alongside the tall man, with his strapping arms, clumsy movements, but with a sweetness that gave him an almost childlike air. He always wore gray flannel, and she a woolen trench coat in reddish tones that shifted color according to the day’s changing light.

Franz read Ally’s poems devotedly. He admired the simplicity of her verses. In his work, he was constantly looking for increasingly complex constructions to get across an idea that always ended up seeming trite within twenty-four hours. Ally tried to understand Franz’s texts, his rhetoric, but was overwhelmed by his storm of words. She put it down to his innocence.

To Lilith, Franz was something between a Greek god and a big brother. When he arrived, she ran into his arms and buried her face in his neck, as he scooped her up and held her in the air.

What do you have for me today, Little Light? Franz would say to her. Ask me anything.

They could while away hours telling each other how they had spent the day: for her, getting up, washing her face, having a drink of water, reading with Herr Professor, going to bed and smiling; for him, studying huge books about the parts of the body and writing the most beautiful poem a German had ever created, and which she would soon be able to read for herself. For Franz, this was the closest thing he had to a home. He avoided dinnertime at his house, with his mother, a widow who only gave orders. She considered it a weakness to be writing poems that wouldn’t get him anywhere and reading books that would one day end up in a bonfire.

Germany doesn’t need any more writers, his mother had said to him. What Germany needs are soldiers prepared to serve their country.

Ally’s home was the only one the young man visited that didn’t have a portrait of the Führer hanging over the mantle. And the little girl could see that when Franz was there, her mother was happy. With him, they were not afraid of ghosts, or of the Führer. Nobody could hurt them. Franz was a barricade.

Then, they began preparations for Lilith’s seventh birthday. The number kept them awake at night. There were no more smiles, they no longer recited poems in the dark. Dinnertime was a silent affair once more.

Seven, Lilith repeated, as though the number had become her prison sentence.

3

Eight Years Earlier

Düsseldorf, June 1929

If you don’t hurry up, we’ll be late," Ally shouted, already standing at the front door.

When she saw Stella come out of the bathroom, she chuckled.

Red? And with all that cleavage on display? Where do you think we’re going?

To have fun! Stella said.

Wearing red will only get you noticed by the Vampire.

The two smiled and hurried down the stairs.

It was only eight at night and the city was quiet. The days were getting longer, and the streetlamps on each corner were still unlit. They crossed empty boulevards, avoiding the puddles a tentative summer shower had left behind.

When they got to U-Bahn station, on the Altstadt line, the platform was deserted. It felt as though the plague that had ravaged the world a decade earlier had returned.

Everyone pays too much attention to the newspaper headlines, Ally said.

How scary, the Vampire of Düsseldorf is lying in wait for us, Stella mocked. Somehow I don’t think we’d be the ideal bait for him.

Ideal? I don’t think this vampire is so discerning. His victim is just the first girl he comes across.

Well, anyway, we came out to have fun.

They were the only passengers in their carriage. On one of the doors was a poster offering a reward for the capture of the Vampire: ten thousand reichsmark. The two looked at each other in surprise and traveled the rest of the journey in silence. They had never been afraid before, but now they were alarmed, although they didn’t dare admit it. In a few minutes they would reach their stop, and there were bound to be plenty of people milling around the Brauerei Schumacher. Marcus and Tom were meeting them a few blocks from there. Why would anyone want to stay in on a Saturday night in summer? They had decided that no vampire—real or imaginary—was going to stop them doing as they pleased. The attacker—who had sexually assaulted little girls, women, old ladies, and even men in the area close to the River Rhine, and then stabbed them until they bled to death—had made the front page of every German newspaper. The police, business owners, and general populace were on high alert. And so were they.

The latest victim had been found near Central Station, lying naked on a mattress in a hotel room. She had been strangled, but her body showed no other signs of violence, and there were no traces of blood. Some doubted whether it was the work of the same killer.

Since they had moved from Munich to Düsseldorf together, Ally and Stella had promised themselves they would be independent. Although their families helped them out, they both spent the afternoons working in a department store in the center of town, selling perfumes. Everyone hides beneath scents, Ally used to say. Berlin was meant to be their final destination, but they decided to stay a while in the city on the banks of the Rhine, because of the music. Stella wanted to be a dancer; Ally a writer.

Every Saturday morning, Ally wrote long poems while Stella slept. They would have liked to live closer to the center, in a two-bedroom apartment, but over time they had grown accustomed to living in such close quarters.

During the week at midday, they would try to memorize the ingredients of the perfumes, which came in little bottles made by craftsmen seemingly obsessed with eternal passion. Standing behind the counter of a perfumery that looked more like an apothecary, they spoke like experts about aniseed, Oriental teas, calamus, pomegranate, myrtle, cypress, and dried Bulgarian rose petals.

On Saturday nights, they crossed the city, all the way to the cabaret club where they met Marcus and Tom, relishing rhythms their parents would have despised.

If our parents knew we were going out with Black musicians they’d disown us, Stella said, giggling.

Marcus is German, Ally corrected her.

And Tom’s American, Stella added. But they’re both Black.

They pushed their way through the crowd, who, like them, had chosen to ignore the Vampire. The wall of the popular brewery was covered in reward posters. Ten thousand, they heard between laughter and snippets of conversation, like a litany. Everyone wanted to catch the Vampire, and kept their eyes peeled, trying to spot a culprit. Some tried to use themselves as bait. If you worked in a pair, it was said, you could catch the most feared and wanted man in Germany.

Conversations blended into noise. People shouted to one another, while Stella hurried Ally, who was bumping into passersby, thrown off balance by phrases that came at her like blows.

I bet it’s a stinking Jew. We need to do away with them once and for all.

It seems to me that it’s one of the Blacks who’ve flooded the city thanks to the Jews.

More like thanks to the French. They are the ones who filled their army with Negroes.

What would you do with ten thousand reichsmark? Ally overheard a girl ask her boyfriend.

We’d go to Berlin, he replied.

Berlin, Ally thought. Marcus and I could go to Berlin.

In the passageway under the soft light from the side door of Schall und Rauch, Ally spotted Marcus and her heart began to race. He smiled when he saw her, waving his hand to signal for her to hurry up. Ally left Stella’s side and ran over to him.

You kept me waiting for hours, he whispered in her ear.

Don’t exaggerate, she said, kissing him.

Marcus opened the door to let Stella through. He remained in the light of the doorway, Ally in his arms. Totally still and at peace.

We should go in, she said.

You’re here now. I don’t care if we’re late going on.

He took a step back and drank her in with his eyes.

You look at me as though I might evaporate any second.

He smiled at this, then he took her hand,