Despite Alice’s entreaties, Marianne has not changed her clothes. She wears her beige cardigan and pleated khakis, a pair of horrible, comfortable walking shoes. It doesn’t matter. Of this much she is certain, at least.

When she enters the room, she is startled to see so many people. There must be two hundred in attendance, fellows, academics from Humboldt and the Free University, contacts of Claire’s and the director’s, and then—dear God, she has almost forgotten—those she invited herself: old Eberhard von Strallen and his middle-aged daughter, Irmgard Teitelman, Mamie Kaltenbrunner, Peter Weber—they have come all the way from Hamburg!—old, long-lost friends. And is that one of the von Oberst children, now a middle-aged man? She recognizes the distinctive forward-jutting chin.

“There you are!” Martin says, appearing beside her to take her elbow and steer her toward her seat. He does not seem fazed by her appearance. His aura may resemble his mother’s, but his manners and charm are all Connie Fledermann. Marianne reaches up and pats his hand.

When she is settled, the director rises and moves to the podium. “I am so proud to be here, to be part of this celebration of an important book by a past fellow of the Falkenberg Institute. A book that examines the very essence of resistance and moral clarity. What does it take for a person to be able to recognize evil as it unfolds? To see with foresight and acuity . . .”

Marianne listens uncomfortably.

When he finishes, Claire rises and takes the stage. She looks more serious today, in a black dress and funny, dark-rimmed glasses, a string of bright red Chinese beads around her neck.

“It has been my great good fortune to be a transcriber to this marvelous and heroic woman—a woman whose courage and moral backbone stayed stick straight in a time when most others bent, a woman in a world whose intellectual and political circles were dominated by men . . .”

The words make Marianne squirm. She thinks of all those in the audience, whom she has known in so many different places and at so many different crossroads of her life. Certainly she has not always been so infallible.

“I would like to invite Marianne forward to offer a few words,” Claire says. For a long moment, and with a sense of growing panic, Marianne remains frozen in her seat.

But then Martin is standing before her, offering his arm. He has come all the way from America to Burg Lingenfels at her request. She allows him to lead her up to the podium.

The audience looks at her expectantly.

And as Marianne stares back, more faces become clear: a von Kreisberg cousin whose name she can’t remember, but whose mother hosted her and the children on their flight from Weisslau, and there, beside him, the kind librarian from the Document Center, and standing against the wall, two childhood girlfriends of Elisabeth’s.

“When will she talk?” Nicola’s four-year-old voice says from the back of the room, where Fritz holds her in his arms. A few audience members laugh.