In Leni, now, nothing of her long employment shows, nothing. She is the child he looked at across park pathways, or met trudging home down the gassen in the crust-brown light, her face, rather broad then, angled down, fair eyebrows troubled, bookpack on her back, hands in apron pockets… some of the stones in the walls were white as paste… she may have seen him coming the other way, but he was older, always with friends… .

Now they all grow less raucous around them, more deferent, even shy, happy for Richard and Leni. “Better late than never!” pipes Siggi in his speeded-up midget’s voice, reaching on tiptoe to pour May wine in all their glasses. Leni goes to get her hair restyled and lightened a shade, and Rebecca comes with her. They talk, for the first time, of plans and futures. Without touching, Richard and she have fallen in love, as they should have then. It’s understood he’ll take her away with him… .

Old Gymnasium friends have been showing up in recent days, bringing exotic food and wine, new drugs, much ease and honesty in sexual matters. No one bothers to dress. They show one another their naked bodies. No one feels anxious, or threatened about the size of her breasts or his penis… . It is all beautifully relaxing for everyone. Leni practices her new name, “Leni Hirsch,” even sometimes when she’s sitting with Richard at a café table in the morning: “Leni Hirsch,” and he actually smiles, embarrassed, tries to look away but can’t escape her eyes and finally he turns full into her own look, laughs out loud, a laugh of pure joy, and reaches his hand, the palm of his dear hand, to hold her face… .

On a multi-leveled early evening of balconies, terraces, audiences grouped at the different levels, all looking downward, in toward a common center, galleries of young women with green leaves at their waists, tall evergreen trees, lawns, flowing water and national solemnity, the President, in the middle of asking the Bundestag, with his familiar clogged and nasal voice, for a giant war appropriation, breaks down suddenly: “Oh, fuck it…” Fickt es, the soon-to-be-immortal phrase, rings in the sky, rings over the land, Ja, fickt es! “I’m sending all the soldiers home. We’ll close down the weapon factories, we’ll dump all the weapons in the sea. I’m sick of war. I’m sick of waking up every morning afraid I’m going to die.” It is suddenly impossible to hate him any more: he’s as human, as mortal now, as any of the people. There will be new elections. The Left will run a woman whose name is never given, but everyone understands it is Rosa Luxemburg. The other candidates will be chosen so inept or colorless that no one will vote for them. There will be a chance for the Revolution. The President has promised.

Incredible joy at the baths, among the friends. True joy: events in a dialectical process cannot bring this explosion of the heart. Everyone is in love… .