Benita had little interest in politics, but she had absorbed the sense of possibility the new regime offered. And Frau Gruber, after so many years of hard and unemotive realism, seemed to have found in Benita’s daydreams her own trampled capacity for yearning. She tolerated in her youngest daughter all the impractical nonsense she would have beaten out of her older children.

So it was fitting, in a sense, that Frau Gruber herself played a role in Benita’s second encounter with Connie Fledermann. It was Saturday, market day, and Benita rose from bed with a grumbling commitment to help her mother buy and carry home their food for the week. Still in a sulk, she put on an old gray skirt and blouse and barely combed her hair. Who would she see, anyway? Ulrich Heschel? Mannfred Becker? In the wake of her meeting with Connie Fledermann, the voice in her head had taken on a sarcastic ring. She trudged along beside her mother, whose stoic German peasant silence seemed to Benita a hallmark of everything dull and cold and lacking in her life.

At the market, Benita dawdled, mooning over Frau Mullman’s flowers and the artist’s stall, until Frau Gruber returned, pulled at her sleeve, and reminded her that she was there to carry the wursts and flour and side of Salzfleisch.

So when, rounding the corner of the cheese maker’s stall, Benita was suddenly confronted with the sight of Connie Fledermann, this time in full, handsome military garb, she was mortified rather than delighted. The horror of being seen so—in these awful clothes, carrying a bulging sack of smoked meats, and followed by her fruit-pinching, sniffing, hunchbacked mother!

He, however, broke into a wide smile. “Fräulein of the Anschluss!” he said loudly, causing a few of the passersby to turn and stare. Benita’s face went from cool and white to purple. “I wondered if I would see you again.”

Then he turned with an air of great respect and formality to Frau Gruber. “May I introduce myself? Staff Officer Martin Constantine Fledermann. I met your daughter here the other day and we discussed the recent event of the Anschluss.”

Frau Gruber bobbed her head repeatedly, like a deaf-mute.

Benita, still distracted by the bulging sack in her arms and the particularly ugly shape of her blouse, slowly registered the presence of two other men, both of whom appeared small and dull beside Staff Officer Martin Constantine Fledermann. In the focused light of his attention, all else seemed obscured in shadow. But she thought she caught them rolling their eyes.

“This evening perhaps? Can I take you to dinner?”

Benita stared.

“No?” His eyes twinkled.

“Yes,” Benita said.

“Yes?” he said, turning to Frau Gruber.

“Yah, sicher. Yes, of course,” Frau Gruber said when she finally found her tongue, and her response was so unquestioning—so utterly lacking in parental restraint—that something in Benita snapped to. From that moment on, a subtle but profound shift occurred in her relationship with this man who was to become her husband. In the face of her mother’s mute, girlish awe, Benita realized she would have to act as her own parental figure—creating the barriers and slips that made the game of courtship alluring. It was something she had never even thought of with the various boys of Frühlinghausen who had made their interest known: there had been no game with them, no need for a game, she had taken none of them seriously, had no interest in more than the affirmation their interest provided.