I could read this lapse in the eyes of the constant, ant-like trickle of her innumerable close and more distant relatives and friends—friends of her parents, friends of her youth, bosom buddies, friends of her friends—who came to see us in Witte’s half-destroyed villa on the Elbchaussee. Hamburg is still a refugee center and transit camp for nobility from east of the Elbe who’ve once again managed to more or less survive or make a precautionary getaway; even today I still have occasion to read in the eyes of the Junkers my existential error. Most of the young gentlemen are somewhat injured—but I’m used to that from Nagel. He left an arm of his own in Russia, and I don’t have to feel guilty for every amputee. Of course, the whole lot of them (like Nagel) are dripping with medals; all sorts of Knights’ Crosses with and without oak-leaf clusters, all sorts of Iron Crosses and German Crosses in Gold, Close Combat Clasps, and Lord knows what else—but that’s not all they have over me: I’m a Homo novus among them. Not just a nonparticipant in the war, but of dubious type and background. They quiz me accordingly. Christa doesn’t come to my defense, quite the opposite in fact. She listens in malicious expectation. Regularly, a meaningful exchange of glances occurs between her and my interrogators, and from it I can deduce why most of her kind, including her, see me as “out of line.” Whatever it is about my exotic appearance that they consider deceitful, or about what I say that sounds suspicious, is a downright provocation for Christa’s social equals. They are tempted to dismiss it as a bald-faced lie probably in the service of some sort of swindle, a clumsy attempt to associate myself with an even higher caste, and moreover at precisely the historic moment when their caste is about to drown in current events—typical for some nameless, rootless sort without traditions, the opposite of fair play and never kicking a person when they’re down. But who would expect fair play from someone like me? That was only to be found among their social equals. At any rate, no one knows me or anything about me, but they discover that one of their kind has married me in an unguarded moment and thus I’ve invaded the citadel of what used to be the Junker class, settled in without being able to show any document that would give me that right. Accordingly, suspected from the get-go of being a fortune hunter if not worse.

“As a Romanian you must have been in Stalingrad. You were our comrades-in-arms, right?”

“At the time of Stalingrad I wasn’t a Romanian anymore.”

“No? What were you?”

“You could call me a Russian, if you like.” (Quick exchange of glances between the questioner and Christa.)

“A Russian? How so?”

“I come from Bessarabia and it became part of Russia in 1940.” (Pact between your friends Ribbentrop and Molotov.)

“But you were living in Bucharest, right?”