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would never come back again, all this for the first time clearly brought the war before my eyes. It seemed that up to this moment I had lived in a kind of fog. I wept further in my wicker chest, and the tears dripped on my knees.
    â€œI’m crying over the war,” I answered my mother as she leaned over me in the darkness, lifted me up, and locked me in her arms. “Now that the Americans are fighting against us the war will end soon,” she said.
    â€œWhen they fight, must we pray for them?”
    She deposited me gently on the floor. “Do that, if you wish.” She stretched out her hand. “And what if you dried your tears now?” In the dark I couldn’t see her face too well, but her voice betrayed to me that she was smiling.
II
    The mailman brought us small packages from the front.
    â€œThe war is taking a bad turn for us,” wrote cousin Hans. “The men in the trenches on the other side obviously pity us. At night when the guns are silent, they throw cans of food over here.”Their corned beef had a heavenly taste, which is engraved on our memory forever. It was reassuring news, proof that people, whatever the risk, were still thinking for themselves even if in opposition to the politics and the masses of their countries. A further hero was added to my secret love for France—the American soldier. I prayed for all the American soldiers who had come from so far to put an end to the war.
    I had already prayed for a long time. I didn’t believe, admittedly, that God heard me or that He wanted to hear me, for even more strongly than before, I was convinced that He really wasn’t at all interested in humans. But it made me unhappy not to be able to confide to anyone my anxieties and cares that concerned the entire world. Would God, since His wrath may have subsided again, perhaps grant me some attention? No wrath lasts eternally, I thought, so I would try my luck and since the things for which I prayed were important, God will have nothing to object to if he hears me. In the morning I prayed for the Americans, and in the afternoon I thanked the Americans instead of thanking God knowing, as God also would know, that I meant the corned beef, and that if He had not commanded them to send it to us, they must have arrived at this decision exclusively on their own. Therefore, one also had to thank them for it. But my sympathy didn’t rest on the fact that the Americans had come to the help of the French. I should have been grateful to them for that, but this wasn’t reason enough. I thought it over and came to the conclusion that Italy had done the same. It had, however, earned only contempt because betrayal was a sin. Even when the breach of faith helped my beloved France.
    One of my favorite pieces on the violin was the “Serenade” of Giuseppe Torelli. I played it before and after my lessons, it was a lullaby. Each time I played it, my mother would stand at the open door, sometimes she would also come into the room, sit down at the piano, and accompany me. So before all else I was punishing myself when I decided no longer to play this piece for as long as the war lasted. Gounod’s “Berceuse” served me as a substitute. The lovelier the melody the better it pleased me. Because my violin teacher loathed lovely melodies, I procured them myself, andsince I never listened to her anyway, I would play them in my own way and give them a cloying melancholy. It was said that I had an extraordinary aptitude for the violin. That made my mother very happy, and she congratulated me for each success, no matter how slight, in this area. I loved the tender, plaintive tone of the strings, but I didn’t like the boring etudes, the only pieces I was allowed to play. It was different at the piano. My piano teacher raved about Chopin, Brahms, and the melodies of the great—and less great—Romantic composers. Yet the greatest among them fully sufficed to