The meal drags on; more wine is brought. The Kecskeméter picks his teeth as his appraising eyes pass over the baroque treasures of the dining room. And needless to say, the general conversation soon swings back to current events. The focus is no longer the persecution of Jews but rather the figure of the archvillain and quintessential enemy of mankind: Adolf Hitler. One of the Berliners, dispossessed of his huge department store on the west side of Berlin (“I managed to scram in the nick of time—and now they’ve caught up with me here”), draws a disastrous picture of the German economy, a catastrophic situation that he blames solely on the stupid, obstinate, amateurish interference of the Führer (he calls him “Gröfaz,” a traditionally Jewish-sounding portmanteau of “Größter Führer aller Zeiten”): “Let’s not kid ourselves: German thrift, German industry, German organization would make the economy work even with this top-heavy rearmament, if that swollen-headed Austrian peasant didn’t stick his nose into everything . . .” Then comes example upon example.

Similarly, the foreign-policy problems of the Third Reich are harshly criticized. No one makes any illusions whatsoever that the peace just saved by the Munich Agreement is anything but a delay of the moment when the “Gröfaz” will feel like starting his war. And finally, they get down to the personal and the private. They cite psychological data about the character of Adolf Hitler, speculate about his relationship to his parents and about his abnormal sex life. The woman who kissed the Kecskeméter claims that the Führer is a sadomasochist: he gets his satisfaction by finding some pure, blond female, scantily clad in velvety deerskin, and forcing her to confess that she wants to sleep with him; he then insults her in the most disgusting way and drives her out.

The hostess cannot refrain from saying, with an uneasy sigh, “What a dreadful man!” And oddly enough, it is this relatively tame comment that sends the host into an unbridled rage. Beside himself, trembling and foaming as if in an epileptic fit, banging his fists on the table, making the glasses and plates jump, he screams in a hoarse, breaking voice, “I won’t tolerate this any longer! I won’t allow such remarks made about this man in my home! This man is loved and honored by millions of people! He has restored human dignity to millions of people!” He shakes his fist at his wife. “To me this man is a saint, do you hear me? A saint! . . .”

Bessarabia, winter 1940.

This is an early winter of the Ice Age, which began one day in March 1938 and will last in two phases for the next ten years to come, until summer 1948.

The world is still full of beauty, albeit frozen. A blue-white-and-gold world. The deep-blue Romanian sky is as spotless as the snowy land beneath. There must be a powerfully shining sun, but I cannot place it in my memory. Its light is everywhere, dazzling from the great white waves of the swaying fields and from the twist in the river valley, from the furry hoar on twigs and boughs and on the crooked snowed-in fences of the village, where the house walls of old, weathered wood glow like gray silk under the snowy burden of the roofs—a light like molten brass and so cold as to be brittle and seem fragile.