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box. “Ah, the good loser!” one of them said, handing Paul another swastika pin and throwing a mock punch at his jaw.
    When Paul and Rima were out of sight, he put the pin into his pocket with the other one. Now both he and Rima had pins, and if they wished to put them on they could walk in the city without being accosted for more contributions. There was no possibility of either of them wearing a swastika, but unless they did so they could not stay on the streets without being bankrupted. There would be other brown-shirts on every street corner. Without the pins, there would be questions, taunts, and worse.
    “I have an idea,” Paul said.
    The ice cream shop was just south of the zoo, near the boundary with Schöneberg, called the American quarter of Berlin though few Americans lived there or anywhere else in the city. They took a streetcar to Nollendorfplatz and paid out another mark to the brownshirts who were collecting tolls at the trolley stop. The American Church was only a few steps away, in Motzstrasse, a quiet little street. The doors were unlocked. The nave, which smelled faintly of soap and wax and dust and candle smoke, was deserted. The silence inside was so complete that it seemed that even the stones had no memory of voices or music. They were alone. They sat down together in the back pew.
    Rima pointed at the large wooden cross that was the only décor apart from the stained-glass windows.
    “What cult is this?”
    “It’s for all Protestants, I believe.”
    “You come here often?”
    “Only once when I was an infant, to be baptized. I don’t remember it.”
    “Then your parents are Protestants.”
    “They don’t practice a religion. They wanted a baptismal certificate as one more proof that I’m an American.”
    “Why?” Rima said.
    “In case they ever needed it.”
    “A lot of Americans must be nonbelievers. There’s nobody here.”
    “Vespers at five,” Paul said, reading a sign. “We have almost an hour.”
    “Then I’d better begin,” Rima said. Paul started to speak. Rima put a finger on his bruised lips. “No,” she said. “No questions now. I will speak. Then, if you wish, you will speak. Then, if we both wish, we will discuss what happens next.” Rima handed Paul her identity card. “So that you’ll know my original name,” she said. “And certain other facts.”
    Her baptismal name was Alexa Johann Maria Kaltenbach. She was born in Berlin on 21 December, 1923, so she was six months older than Paul. No J was stamped in red ink on her papers, which meant that she was not considered a Jew under the Nuremberg laws.
    Paul was surprised. She saw this. “Don’t be deceived,” she said. “I have one Jewish grandparent, my father’s father, so I’m not officially a Jew. My father, however, had three Jewish grandparents, so he’s a Jew under the law even though he’s a Lutheran and has been one all his life. Two of his three Jewish grandparents were Lutherans also. My mother is of pure Aryan blood, according to the official investigation. She lives in Argentina.”
    “Why?”
    “My father drove her to France for a vacation, gave her bank drafts for all but a few thousand of the Reichsmarks he had saved, and told her to go to Buenos Aires, put the money in a bank, and wait there until the madness was over.”
    “What about you?”
    “I am still here. Stop asking questions.”
    Dr. Johann Kaltenbach, Rima’s father, believed that the present political situation, as he called the dictatorship, would pass. In his own mind he was a German like any other. He had been born in Germany of German parents, attended German schools, loved the kaisers while they reigned. In the World War he had bled for Germany on the western front. Since childhood he had gone to church every Sunday and on all Christian holidays. He prayed as a Christian at meals and before he slept. He sang Stille Nacht on Christmas Eve. He had no consciousness whatsoever that he was Jewish because his parents