“Really?” she asked, and her smile didn’t strike him as completely harmless.

“Are you trying to make me afraid?” he asked, also smiling.

“No,” she said quietly. Her glistening eyes seemed almost moist.

“It doesn’t take much these days,” he added ironically, “to play the beast of prey when it comes to Jews.”

Beast of prey? He had the feeling she was trying to appear harmless in the most dangerous way she was capable of.

“I see I have to apologize once again,” he said, while at the same time thinking: and yet you’re actually feeling somewhat flattered.

“But no—why? How come? Was your remark meant for me?”

He shook his head.

“It would never occur to me!” he assured her. “That is to say, the beauty of the predator, the dangerous elegance, which…” He sighed. “I can’t even make a proper compliment anymore!” he said, and he sounded so pathetic she couldn’t help laughing.

“But tell me, why do the Jews put up with all of this?” she asked in earnest. “I mean, why don’t they defend themselves? Why don’t they do something other than run away?”

“If we were such romantics,” he answered, proud of his reasoning, “we would have hardly survived the last two thousand years.”

“Is survival so important?”

“Absolutely! To survive is to overcome. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to fall into the first crevasse, but it takes quite a bit to cross the mountains. It takes courage to live. For suicide all that’s needed is despair.” He paused and looked for other analogies. “It’s a lot harder to push the cart than simply leave it sitting there,” he then finished.

“And should one only live to push some cart? Isn’t that a little too little? I for one am far more impressed by people who make their lives a shooting match. Who do what they feel like, and not what other people expect of them.”

He laughed in a tone that was both condescending and benign. “Charming,” he said, “that’s absolutely charming! What would you do if you were in my place? Imagine you were Jewish, and that you still had a bit of wealth, but were trying to escape. What would you do?”

“Honestly I would enjoy myself enormously,” she asserted, beaming. “I would simply start living as though each day were my last, and I would get more out of a single day than everyone else gets out of a whole year. I would—but you’re laughing at me. Why are you laughing?” She wrinkled her brow, annoyed.

“How do you picture that exactly?” he asked, once again serious. “Do you think you could enjoy yourself if they’d stormed into your apartment three days earlier? If you knew where your relatives were staying but couldn’t visit them? If you had to be afraid of every SA man because he could arrest you on a whim?”

“Are you married?” she asked, without countering his objections.