The phone rang at seven o’clock. Kitty elbowed Horst, but he mumbled, “They’ll call back”, and rolled over. She reached over him and grabbed the receiver. “What? Slow down, Valerie.” She crawled over Horst and slid to the floor, groping for paper and pen. “Yes, I have it. I’ll call.” “What is it?” Kitty was rifling through her drawer for clean underwear. “The Gestapo came by Klaus’ this morning. Thank God Valerie was in bed with him or they would have arrested him too.” Horst was awake now, fishing for clean clothes too. “Arrest him for what? He’s a university student who drinks and studies sometimes.” Kitty snapped their towels from a hook on the back of the closet door. “For being a homosexual. They’ve taken Max. Valerie can’t reach Peter, so...” “That’s ridiculous.” “That’s the Nuremberg Laws. Peter’s a Jew. The Nazis are rounding up homosexuals and people suspected of having Jewish and communist sympathies.” “Well, that qualifies Peter and Max.” Horst followed her to the shower. They were each allowed one a day; doubling up meant they could go to bed clean. They lathered and rinsed quickly and ran shivering down the hall, foregoing a morning screw. A half hour later they were sitting with Klaus and Valerie at Le Chat waiting on coffee and croissants. Valerie was still shaking. “Mostly they wanted to know if Max had ever attended political meetings. Of course he has. He writes for the university newspaper. And Peter? Max is right. He supports Hitler 100%.” “His father fought for the Kaiser in the Ardennes,” Klaus added. Kitty held her finger to her lips to silence them. “Let’s not talk here.” Horst laughed gently. “Can the drama, ladies. We’ll all go down to Gestapo headquarters and explain they’ve made a mistake and take Peter and Max to lunch.” Kitty shot him a warning glare, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Or not.” “Kitty’s right,” Valerie said. “The Gestapo aren’t the police. Tell them they’ve made a mistake and they’ll shoot you or send you to a camp. I’ve heard about those places.” “From whom?” Horst said. “From the families of the Jewish art students, that’s who. They say those camps are terrible.” “What do you think, Klaus?” Horst said. A black-coated man seated himself at a the table next to theirs. Klaus shifted his gaze to him and then back to Horst. “Things change when you think they’re going to take you. It was all I could do not to shit my pajamas.” Outnumbered, Horst paid the tab. For the first time in his life, he’d felt afraid to walk the streets of Berlin, but dismissed his fear as hysteria contamination when they were safely inside a university study room.
****
“This is the basement of old Love Library.” Saucy led him through the new underground Drake Library to a door marked Staff and Faculty Only. “You can’t smoke in here. The fire sensors are 20th century sensitive.” She separated one key from the five on a ring, and unlocked the door. “Not all the books were destroyed in the purge.” Paul gasped at the ceiling to floor book cases that filled the room, their shelves stuffed tight with volumes 15