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this, learning how to anticipate the agitation of the bus ride and lift the nib of the pen to keep from creating a blot. She does not mention the bombing, because she knows the censors would scratch it out in any case. So all she writes is that she and his mother remain healthy and well, and that she is quite busy at the office. All is in order. What else can she say? Recapping her pen, she folds the letter away, and leans back her head, closing her eyes.
    Do you feel that?
    Yes.
    Then you know what it’s for.
    At the Ku’damm she transfers from the bus to the underground. The U1 on the B line. The U-Bahn train that traverses the city’s belly from the Uhlandstrasse, past the Schlesisches Tor and across the River Spree to the station at the Warschauer Brücke. It’s usually a quick enough ride for her, five stops to Hallesches Tor. But then, at Anhalter Bahnhof, something happens. The usual crowd pushes on from the commuter trains, and the doors have been closed to the platform, but the train does not move. Nobody talks. Why bother? Delays happen. It’s all part of the war. Then the door to the carriage is rolled open, and two men shove their way in. Snap-brim hats and long overcoats. They come to a halt in front of a woman in a threadbare outfit and a kerchief over her tousled brown hair. Her face is colorless and gaunt, she stands hanging from a handrail. “Papers,” one of the men demands. The timber of his voice cuts through dreary silence. It is an official voice. A voice of authority. “Papers. Show me your papers.”
    The woman’s posture goes rigid. She glares for a heartbeat and then spits solidly into the man’s face. “
Shit!
” he swears, smearing the spittle from his eye. “You ugly bitch!” The crack of his hand, as he slaps her face, galvanizes the attention of the carriage. A middle-aged hausfrau across the car leaps to her feet, but then she freezes.
    “Geheime Staatspolizei,” the man in the leather trench coat assures everyone, displaying his aluminum warrant disc for all to peruse. He is fat. Fatter than any Berliner living on a lawful share of war rations should be. “This creature is a Jewish parasite, and is of no concern to any good German,” the fat man declares. “She has boarded public transportation in violation of the law,
and
has appeared in public without the Judenstern
that she is legally required to wear
.” The Judenstern. A cloth badge in the shape of a yellow star with six points, and the word “Jude” machine-stitched at the center in mock Hebraic lettering.
    The carriage remains silent. The standing hausfrau suddenly looks hunted and slouches back down into her seat. Most eyes turn to the carriage floor. The fat man appears satisfied with this. He nods to his partner, who shoves the woman in the kerchief out of the car, and then rolls the door closed behind them.
    No one speaks until the train begins to lumber out of the station, when the hausfrau, now clutching her handbag, tries to redeem herself as a good German by blustering, “Dirty Jewess, delaying the train. Now we’ll
all
be late.”
    Eyes dart back and forth, but the only replies are a few loud coughs and the rattle of newspapers.
    —
    Two days after the coupling in the back row of the cinema, he took her to a room at the top of a dingy flight of steps. Inside, he dropped his trousers in front of her, while she was still only half out of her coat. She froze up at the sight, one arm out of her sleeve, her eyes dropping to his exposure.
    “Take a good look,” he instructed her, “before we go any further. You know what this means.”
    Still staring. Somehow it answered the questions that had been building. His covertness. All the hidden thought she detected behind his eyes. But all she said was, “It means you’re missing a small flap of skin.”
    “It means more than that, and you know it. This is exactly what all the race laws have been written to prevent. “
    She did not budge a muscle as she