104 THE OPPERMANNS men with large white teeth. "Keep smiling;" As soon as he had the new teeth, everything would be smooth. From the radio set came the sounds of bells, choruses, and hymns. The children sang "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht." They were singing it in almost all the Hats in the block of Friedrich Kar} Strasse. For quite a while a feeling of consecration hov- ered over the block. It was as evident in the Wolfsohns' Hat as elsewhere. Then one of the parts of the bombing plane broke off. Little Bob was scolded, howled, and was put to bed. Then a twig of the tree caught fire. EIsehen was scolded, howled, and was put to bed, While Frau Marie was busy with the children, Markus Wolfsohn sat in the black, high-backed, bargain-price wing- chair, day-dreaming and at peace. Thus many others in the block in Friedrich Karl Strasse sat: day-dreaming and con- tented. The contentment of each individual increased the gen- eral contentment. Herr Wolfsahn was one of these contented people. He wished everyone welle Except one person. He smiled broadly, with entire satisfac- tion, when violent yelling came from the next-door Hat, drown- ing the sound of the radio. Without having to strain his imagination, Herr Wolfsohn gathered that young Zarnke had broken part of his bombing plane and was getting a thrashing. Herr Zarnke indicated, during this scene, how much the bombing plane had cost hirn. He had had to fork out two marks eighty pfennigs. The news heightened Herr Wolfsohn's gratification. For he had only paid two marks fifty. In other respects, too, Christmas evening in the Zarnkes' Hat, so far as one could judge by external indications of its progress, was less peaceful than at the Wolfsohns'. Frau Zarnke had told her husband three times that a certain pair of brown leather slippers in the Tempelhof branch of Tack's Stores were extraor- dinarily cheap. Herr Zarnke had not however made her a present of those leather slippers, but himself one of the Lead-

BOOK ONE: YESTERDA Y lOS er's book, My Battlc. While professing the greatest respect for her husband's political aetivities Frau Zarnke considered this behaviour selfish, and was unable to restrain herself from ex- pressing her views in metaphorical, yet forceful language. Herr Zarnke, for his part, replied, as a German man should, without metaphors, The Ioud and long dispute augmented Herr Wolf- sohn's comfort. He sat smiling in his black wingchair, contemplating the picture of "The W aves at Play" and the stain on the wall, which had now spread to a point below the pieture, listened to the solemn melodies of the radio and to the row next door, He feIt himself at one with all the other occupants of the block in Friedrich Karl Strasse. His Christmas was a quiet, happy one.., 18 The next evening the Wolfsohns were the guests of the Moritz Ehrenreichs in Oranien Strasse in the centre of Berlin. The Wolfsohns did not often visit the Ehrenreichs. In fact, they seldom went out at all. Markus Wolfsohn felt most at his ease in his own Bat. But it was Chanukka, the Feast of Lights, the Feast was very late this year, it usually came from two to four weeks before Christmas. It had become ahabit with the Wolfsohns to visit their relatives in Oranien Strasse on this holiday. Markus Wolfsohn, still in the mood which the preceding happy Christmas evening had induced, sat at his ease in one of the two arrnchairs covered in green rep which adorned the living-room of his brother-in-law Moritz, and smoked one of the twenty cigars with which Moritz Ehrenreich had munif- icently presented hirn on the occasion of the Feast. They were