Noreen didn’t look like she was listening. And I was more than a little horrified to see that she was heading toward a large group of SA and SS men standing around a man and woman dressed in civilian clothes. The woman was blond and in her twenties; the man was older and Jewish. I knew he was Jewish, because, like her, he had a placard around his neck. The man’s placard read: “I’m a dirty Jew who takes German girls to his room.” The girl’s placard read: “I go to this dirty swine’s place to sleep with a Jew!” Before I could do anything to stop her, Noreen threw away her cigarette, produced her Baby Brownie from her capacious leather handbag, and, looking down through the little viewfinder, took a photograph of the somber couple and the grinning Nazis.

I caught up with her and tried to take her by the arm. She pulled it away angrily.

“This is not a good idea,” I said.

“Nonsense. They wouldn’t have put those placards around their necks unless they wanted people to pay attention to them. And that’s just what I’m doing.” She wound her film and once again lined up the group.

One of the SS shouted at me, “Hey, Bubi. Leave her alone. She’s right, your girlfriend. There’s no point in making an example of bastards like these unless people see it and take note.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” said Noreen. “Taking note.”

I waited patiently until Noreen had finished. Until now she’d photographed only anti-Semitic signs in the parks and some Nazi flags on Unter den Linden, and I hoped this rather more candid kind of photography wasn’t about to become a habit with her. I doubt my nerves could have taken it.

We walked back to the car in silence, abandoning the miscegenating couple to their public disgrace and humiliation.

“If you’d ever seen them beat someone up,” I said, “then you’d be more careful about doing something like that. You want to photograph something interesting, I’ll run you over to the Bismarck Monument or the Charlottenburg Palace.”

Noreen dropped the camera back in her bag. “Don’t treat me like some goddamn tourist,” she said. “I didn’t take that picture for my album. I took it for the fucking newspaper. Don’t you get it? A picture like that makes an absolute mockery of Avery Brundage’s claims that Berlin is a proper place to hold an Olympic Games.”

“Brundage?”

“Yes, Avery Brundage. Weren’t you listening? I told you before. He’s the president of the American Olympic Committee.”

I nodded. “What else do you know about him?”

“Almost nothing beyond the fact that he must be a real asshole.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that he’s in correspondence with your old friend Max Reles? And that he owns a construction company in Chicago?”