She stopped talking and lit a cigarette. Her hand was steady, her face cold and controlled. Kate, deprived of her touch, felt chilled. She asked, "What happened?"

"We waited. We stayed in the house and waited. Food was hard to get even for Party members, you had to have a food card and then there were shortages. It was 1944, we were an occupied country— I don't know if you can understand how it was. Someone said there were potatoes at the food depot. A neighbor. I took all the family ration cards and went. We had kept my father's and my uncle's cards because that was what people did when someone died, they had to or starve. In fact there were places where you could buy false cards or have the names changed. It was a black market."

Kate shivered. "Weren't you afraid?"

"We were hungry." Erika took a long drag at her cigarette. "My aunt and my mother felt the cold. And my brother coughed a lot. I suppose he had TB by that time, many children in Austria had it. So I went."

"And then?"

"There were potatoes all right. Not very good ones, they were soft and had sprouts, but I took them. When I came back—" she stopped and looked at Kate. "The soldiers had been there. They had called all the people outside so the furniture wouldn't be spoiled. It was a nice building, what you might call upper middle class, not rich but for professional people. Mainly a Jewish neighborhood."

"You mean they made the people go outside and then—?"

"I suppose they looted too. I didn't stay to see." Erika stared past the ice cream stand.

"My mother and my brother and aunt and all the neighbors were lying on the sidewalk in front of our home. They had all been shot. It was a cold day and they were frozen on the sidewalk in their own blood, it was frozen and they were stuck there."

"My God!"

Erika laughed harshly. "It's an old story and it happened to a lot of people. Nobody wants to hear about it. It's all over and you Americans are liking the Germans again because they will be on your side when you fight the Russians. But they killed all those people. My mother and father and my brother and six million others."

Kate stood up. She was chilled through, whether by the rising wind or by the story she didn't quite know. Erika rose too. "You're cold. I should have made you stay in bed."

Kate stood still. "Then what happened?"

Erika took her elbow as though she were the one in need of comfort. "Then the soldiers came and took me to a camp. I was there a long time. I don't want to talk about it now."

They walked back to the rooming house in silence. The Osgood boy passed them on the stairs, turning back at the landing to look at them. They ignored him. At the top of the stairs Kate began to search through her pockets for her key. Erika found it, unlocked the door and went in with her. "My family was very lucky," she said suddenly. "They were not beaten to death with a rubber hose or tortured with burning splinters under their fingernails or operated on without ether. They were not even sent to the gas chamber. It's good to die quickly."