“You looked irritated. I can easily understand why you might be, but surely you realize I don’t have anything to do with all that. I mean personally. I am not an anti-Semite.”

“And if you were?” he asked sharply. “What difference would that make?”

She shot him an angry glance. “You may be on edge,” she answered, offended, “but I have to insist…” She didn’t know how she ought to continue and was silent for a moment. Then she said, no longer angry, but with a smile that seemed oddly naive, “If I were an anti-Semite, I could make things pretty difficult for you, couldn’t I?”

“I’m not afraid,” Silbermann declared, almost scornfully. “I’m really not. I am no longer afraid!” he repeated, as if he wanted to convince himself.

“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.”