Wasserman, with gentleness, not lacking in a certain tension: “Did she discover your lie?” Neigel: “You could say so, yes.” Wasserman, like a playwright whose drama has been ruined by poor acting, burst out in anger: “You should have tried harder, Herr Neigel! I asked you distinctly to love my story and care for it as though it were your own child! Ai, Neigel, you slayed me …” He wrung his hands in despair; he rolled his eyes heavenward and pulled at his beard. He was beside himself with grief. The thread that bound him to life seemed suddenly to have snapped. He looked feeble all of a sudden, and as imaginary as his characters. Inwardly he blamed his negligible talents, but he blamed Neigel as well: he suspected him of allowing German sentimentality to “saturate every letter.” “No!” he roared suddenly, like a wounded animal, “a story like this must not become sentimental, Herr Neigel! You should have prevented that! It is a story of preposterous characters, about their agonies and their absurd and futile efforts … why oh why must you exaggerate so?” The German stared at him for a moment, then waved his hand weakly. “No, you don’t understand. I told her your story as it should be told. Exactly as it should be told.” “So? Then where did you go wrong?” “That’s where,” answered Neigel, the echo of a bitter chuckle rising to his lips. “Imagine it, Wasserman, imagine me taking the morning train from Warsaw to Berlin. A first-class carriage, me and three other SS brass hats … and two Polish government officials. We sit together for a couple of hours, smoking, talking about work, about the Führer, about the war, and here I am, talking to them, and talking to myself inside all the time. Going over what you told me: Fried, Paula, and little Kazik, and the hearts drawn on the trees, andthat raving beauty who belongs to God, exactly the way you told me [see under: PLAGIARISM]. I even came up with my own lunatic to add to the story [see under: RICHTER]. Ah, you piece of dreck, you sly piece of dreck, she left me. A terrible thing has happened. I made a mistake. But I had no choice. It just happened. There was no way to stop it. What kind of people are we, Wasserman?” Wasserman, disgusted with this whining and carrying on, cut Neigel short with cruel impatience: “Am I to understand, Herr Neigel, that you no longer require my story?” Silence. And then Neigel raised his defeated eyes and said, “You … son of a bitch. You know very well I need the story. What else have I got, tell me.” (Wasserman: “Ai! Now my cheeks burned like fire. How his compliment made me blush, the first time a German swore at me like a human being. Now I was no longer ‘dreck’ or ‘dreck Jude’ in that German tone of disgust, but a ‘son of a bitch,’ in the language of human beings! Ah, well, nu, it was as if he had pinned a medal on my chest! I was even prouder than I was the first time he called me Herr Wasserman!”) Then Neigel began to tell the story of his arrival in Berlin, where he attended a boring meeting, and from there—straight to Munich. His train pulled in at 1700, and Christina was waiting for him at the station. For the first time since the separation she had come to meet him, and she even let him kiss her. (Neigel: “A woman’s mouth, Wasserman. You know, I starved here for a year. One whole year without touching a woman, Polish, Jewish, one of ours, or otherwise. And believe me, I had plenty of opportunities, but I remained faithful to her, yes,” he screamed bitterly, and pounded his chest with a fist that could stun a bull. “Here, with you, lives a man in the shackles of a faithful husband! Faithful I tell you!”) Christina suggested that they walk home, past the Wittelsbach fountains, and Neigel agreed. They walked through the bombed streets, past the big recruiting posters of the Wehrmacht, past young invalids wandering the streets with lackluster eyes, and they talked about the almost-new dress Tina had bought at the clearance sale of a factory that went bankrupt, and about a dream Tina had dreamed, and about Marlene Dietrich, and about—Neigel: “It was strange, because we didn’t talk about the war at all. Nothing. All the ruins, and those poor invalids, it was like some strange mistake, an illusion. Everything else was a mistake, only she and I were real. We were life. And I listened to her. As always, she was talkative, and I loved to listen. And it was even nicer this time, because with her talking Iforgot everything I didn’t want to remember.” Wasserman: “Like me, Herr Neigel?” Neigel smiled crookedly again. “You won’t believe me, Wasserman, but I didn’t forget you. While Tina talked I thought to myself sometimes, This I’ll remember to tell him. So he’ll see what Tina is like. Yes. You’ve become a kind of habit with me, Wasserman, damn it.” (Wasserman: “Some friend!!”) Then, on their way past the Hof-garten (Neigel: “That’s where she and I … nu, the first time, many years ago”), they gave in to fatigue and took the #55 bus home. Neigel: “And there the children were waiting for me at the neighbor’s, and both of them climbed all over me, Liselotte saying words like ‘Pappi,’ ‘Karl,’ ‘Mutti,’ and Karl telling me about his kindergarten, and asking what I brought him,
