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World War II it seemed to him that his parents went to a funeral every other week, though it was surely much less than that. He had not thought to ask Sieglinde about her childhood. He supposed it was misplaced tact that caused his reticence, and they had known each other only one week. Now he knew her memories were not happy, her father dead, her mother absent, a diminished life in a defeated nation. She seemed to be on the run from all that. Sieglinde had not thought to ask him either, so she was spared descriptions of Connecticut, the clapboard houses and their swimming pools, the cocktail hour, the yellow hills rolling off to the mysterious interior. Political talk at table on Sundays, a self-conscious yet sincere effort to be engaged in the affairs of the nation, civic responsibility. Would these memories, his and hers, speak to each other? They would not. A German childhood of the twentieth century would be a grueling experience, most strenuous, one could say a burden or nemesis—both justice and retribution, the irreconcilable tension between remembering and forgetting. Certainly there would have been good times in the early days following 1932, things returning to normal, patriotism rekindled, community gatherings around towering bonfires with inspiring speeches and song, the nation rising once again, fresh confidence, industrial production up, inflation in check, an audacious ambition that resulted in peaceful coexistence at last with the ominous Soviet Union, a miracle of diplomacy worthy of the Iron Chancellor himself. In less than a decade, all of it in ruins.
    Sieglinde had not mentioned her childhood until this evening, her wordy coda to five hours of more or less constant lovemaking. It had been a while for him and, he suspected (probably the better word was hoped), for her, too. The silk-string hammock took some getting used to, so for a while they were a kind of ménage à trois, afloat and then not afloat. The hours became minutes and the minutes seconds, until they were both outside of time altogether, slick and overheated; and when they gave themselves over to it, he found another, happier self, an assured self, one he had not known existed. Her eyes were closed, her face rosy, and she was smiling. This went on and on in a circle of abandon, time expanding, time diminishing, time uncrowded, and in a moment of drowsy delight he proposed that they remain in the hammock forever, or anyway until they were too old for lovemaking, and even then there were ways and means, and if the ways and means failed they had memories enough from just this one flawless night—and what did she think of that idea? Her answer was another arpeggio on his thigh. He dozed, half asleep and half not, conjuring a meeting between her memories and his, not only this night but from their childhoods, a sort of symposium without a moderator. Her father was in a dark corner of the room drinking schnapps. His father was explaining Marsden Hartley to her mother, a startlingly pretty woman who wore thick glasses and a white silk ascot. Then his mother interrupted to mention the Regency table, unsuitable for informal gatherings, which this certainly was. She abruptly switched to German but the effort was unsuccessful, and Mrs. Hechler nodded in agreement and asked if there was anything to eat. General Marshall was gazing out the window, distraught at the number of Germans in the room. Who brought them? Why were they here? Congresswoman Finch asked the general for a light and he lit a match, his fingers trembling slightly. He said softly, I don’t understand a word of their damned language. Mrs. Finch smiled grimly and said, I know. Sieglinde offered to translate but the offer was not taken up. From the dark corner, Corporal Hechler was polishing the buckle on his infantryman’s belt and humming the overture to
Tannhäuser.
Finally, at a loss, everyone fell silent. Harry slept.
    A little later, Harry extracted himself from