“Oh, there have been men, all right. I’m not completely clapped out, it’s true. But it’s not like it used to be. Nothing ever is, of course. But…There was an American who worked for the U.S. State Department at HICOG, in the Headquarters Compound on Saargemünder Strasse. But he went home to his wife and children in Wichita. And there was a guy, a sergeant, who ran Club 48—that’s the U.S. Army’s NCO club. It was him who helped me to get the job at The Queen. Before he went home, too. That was six months ago. My life.” She shrugged. “It’s not exactly Effi Briest, is it. Oh, I do okay at the club. Pays well. The customers behave. Good tippers, I’ll say that for the Amis. At least they show their appreciation. Not like the British. Worst tippers in the world. Hell, even the French tip better than the British. You wouldn’t think they’d won the war, they’re so tight with their money. They say that even the mousetraps are empty in the British sector. I tell you, this fellow Nasser, I’m on his side. And when Uruguay beat England, I think I was even more happy than I was when West Germany won the actual trophy.”

“Talking of West Germany, Elisabeth, do you go there ever?”

“No. I’d have to cross the Green Border. And I don’t like to do that. I did it once. I felt like a criminal in my own country.”

“And East Berlin. Do you ever go there?”

“Sometimes. But there’s less and less cause to go. There’s not much there for those of us who live in West Berlin. Just before Jimmy—my American sergeant—went back to America, we took a trip around old Berlin. He wanted to buy a camera, and you can still get a good one for not much money in East Berlin. We got a camera, too, but not in a shop. On the black market. The only shop we visited, a department store the communists call H.O., had very little in it. And as soon as I saw it, I realized why so many East Germans turned up here last year to get a food parcel. And why quite a few of them never went back.”

“But you wouldn’t say it was dangerous.”

“For someone like me? No. You read about the odd person getting snatched by the Soviets. Injected with something and then bundled into a car. Well, I suppose if you were important, that might happen. But then, you wouldn’t go there in the first place if you were someone like that, would you? All the same, I wouldn’t have thought you would want to go across to the Russian sector. You having escaped from a POW camp and all.”