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come back, that we’ll be sure to catch them! And you expect a sensible person to believe that?”
    “Selma!” Involuntarily, Neubauer cast a glance at the picture of the Führer. Then he leapt to the door and banged it shut. “Damn it, pull yourself together!” he hissed. “D’you want to get us all into trouble? Have you gone crazy to yell so loud?”
    He stood right in front of her. Above her fat shoulders the Führer continued to gaze steadfastly into the landscape of Berchtesgaden. For a moment Neubauer nearly believed he had been listening to everything.
    Selma didn’t see the Führer. “Crazy!” she screamed. “Who’s crazy? Not I! Before the war we had a wonderful life—and now? Now? I’d like to know who’s crazy here?”
    Neubauer seized her arms with both hands and shook her so that her head wobbled to and fro and she had to stop screaming. Her hair came loose, a few combs fell out, she swallowed the wrong way and coughed. He let her go. She fell like a sack onto the couch. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked his daughter.
    “Nothing much. Mother is very excited.”
    “Why? Nothing’s happened.”
    “Nothing happened?” the woman began again. “Not to you up there, of course! But what about us alone down here—”
    “Quiet! Damn it, not so loud! Have I been slaving fifteen years for you to ruin everything overnight with your yelling? Do you think there aren’t already enough men waiting to snap up my job?”
    “It was the first bombardment, Father,” said Freya Neubauer calmly. “After all, up to now we’ve only had alarms. Mother’ll get used to it in time.”
    “The first one? Of course the first one! We ought to be glad that so far nothing’s happened, instead of yelling that nonsense.”
    “Mother’s nervous. She’ll get used to it.”
    “Nervous!” Neubauer was irritated by his daughter’s calm.
    “Who’s not nervous? D’you think I’m not nervous? We’ve got to control ourselves. What would happen if we didn’t?”
    “The same!” His wife laughed. She lay on the couch, her plump legs sprawling. Her feet were in pink silk slippers. She considered pink and silk to be very elegant. “Nervous! Get used to it! Easy for you to talk!”
    “I? Why?”
    “Nothing happens to you.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing happens to you. But we’re sitting here in a trap.”
    “That’s blooming nonsense! The one’s the same as the other. What d’you mean, nothing can happen to me?”
    “You’re safe, up there in your camp!”
    “What?” Neubauer flung his cigar on the floor and trampled on it. “We’ve no cellar like you have here.” It was a lie.
    “Because you don’t need one. You’re outside the town.”
    “As if that made any difference! Where a bomb falls, there it falls.”
    “The camp won’t be bombed.”
    “Really? That’s a new one. How d’you know that? Have the Americans dropped a message about it? Or given you special information by radio?”
    Neubauer glanced at his daughter. He expected approval of this joke. But Freya plucked at the fringes of a plush cloth which was spread over the table next to the couch. Instead, his wife answered. “They won’t bomb their own people.”
    “Nonsense! We haven’t any Americans there. No English, either. Only Russians, Poles, Balkan riffraff. And German enemies of the Fatherland—Jews, traitors and criminals.”
    “They won’t bomb any Russians and Poles and Jews,” explained Selma with blunt obstinacy.
    Neubauer turned sharply round. “You seem to know a greatdeal,” he said angrily under his breath. “But now I want to tell you something. They haven’t the remotest idea what kind of camp that is up there, understand? All they can see is barracks. They can easily be taken for military barracks. They see buildings. These are our SS quarters. They see buildings with people working in them. For them they are factories and targets. Up there it’s a hundred times more dangerous than here. That’s why I