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drop!’ Papa,” she goes on, clasping his hand firmly in hers, “Papa, do you think you can carry on living as before, now that they’ve shot your Otto?”
    She looks at him piercingly, and once again he tries to fight off the alien influence. “It was the French,” he mumbles.
    “The French!” she shouts indignantly. “What sort of excuse is that? Who invaded France? Come on, Papa!”
    “But what can we do?” Otto Quangel says, unnerved by this onslaught. “There are so few of us, and all those millions for him, and now, after the victory against France, there will be even more. We can do nothing!”
    “We can do plenty!” she whispers. “We can vandalize the machines, we can work badly, work slowly, we can tear down their posters and put up others where we tell people the truth about how they are being cheated and lied to.” She drops her voice further: “But the main thing is that we remain different from them, that we never allow ourselves to be made into them, or start thinking as they do. Even if they conquer the whole world, we must refuse to become Nazis.”
    “And what will that accomplish, Trudel?” asks Otto Quangel softly. “I don’t see the point.”
    “Papa,” she replies, “when it began, I didn’t understand that either, and I’m not sure I fully understand it now. But, you know, we’ve formed a secret resistance cell in the factory, very small for now, three men and me. A man came to us, and tried to explain it to me. He said we are like good seeds in a field of weeds. If it wasn’t for the good seeds, the whole field would be nothing but weeds. And the good seeds can spread their influence…”
    She breaks off, deeply shocked about something.
    “What is it, Trudel?” he asks. “That thing with the good seeds makes sense. I will think about it. I have such a lot to be thinking about now.”
    But she says, full of shame and guilt, “I’ve gone and blabbed about the cell, and I swore I wouldn’t tell a soul about it!”
    “Don’t worry, Trudel,” says Otto Quangel, and his calm is such as to immediately help to settle her agitation.” “You know, with Otto Quangel a thing goes in one ear and out the other. I can’t remember what you told me a moment ago.” With grim resolve he gazes at the poster. “I don’t care if the whole Gestapo turns up, I don’t know anything. And,” he adds, “if you want, and if it makes you feel more secure, then from this moment forth, we simply won’t know each other anymore. You don’t need to come tonight to see Anna, I’ll cook up some story for her.”
    “No,” she replies, her confidence restored. “No. I’ll go and see Mother tonight. But I’ll have to tell the others that I blabbed, and maybe someone will come and see you, to see if you can be trusted.”
    “Let them come,” says Otto Quangel menacingly. “I don’t know anything. Bye, Trudel. I probably won’t see you tonight. You know I’m rarely back before midnight.”
    She shakes hands with him and heads off down the passage, back to her work. She is no longer so full of exuberant life, but she still radiates strength. Good girl! thinks Quangel. Brave woman!
    Then Quangel is all alone in the corridor lined with posters gently flapping in the draft. He gets ready to go. But first, he does something that surprises himself: he nods meaningly at the poster in front of which Trudel was weeping—with a grim determination.
    The next moment, he is ashamed of himself. How theatrical! And now, he has to hurry home. He is so pressed for time, he takes a streetcar, which, given his parsimony that borders sometimes on meanness, is something he hates to do.

Chapter 5
    ENNO KLUGE’S HOMECOMING
    Eva Kluge finished her delivery round at two o’clock. She then worked till four totting up newspaper rates and surcharges: if she was very tired, she got her numbers muddled up and she would have to start again. Finally, with sore feet and a painful vacancy in her brain, she set off