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California.' He laughed and Erna laughed too, without conviction, and Heinrich looked at them, solemn and not understanding.
    'I am going to write a history of the Postal System,' Heinrich said. 'It is very interesting. There is, naturally, Diocletian and his system of messengers, but it was not until the twelfth century that a true commercial postal system was established by the Hanseatic towns of northern Germany. I shall include the postal system of the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, but that was limited. I shall carry the history to modern times, to the organization of the Universal Postal System in 1878 at Berne. It is very interesting. Also there is nothing so beautiful as stamps.'
    'Oh,' Luther said, and Erna sighed. 'Well,' Luther said, 'I don't hardly think that'll be a best-seller.'
    They sat in silence, and Heinrich looked at his salad plate and felt hurried, hurried. What were they rushing ahead to? There were years for talk and thoughts and work and plans. Why were they so crowded in here together and so full of anxiety to be getting things done?
    'Well,' Luther said again, 'we better figure out about how you're going to live and everything, Heinrich.'
    'But I am going to live here,' Heinrich said, 'and do my work and we shall all be very well together, and there is nothing to worry about.'
    Erna looked at Luther. She started to say something and stopped. Luther was smiling, had been smiling all along: the smiles of a salesman, who is trained not to offend the customers.
    'Heinrich, you see, the thing is money. We'll have to figure out some way for you to earn money, I guess. And so you can have a place of your own and everything.'
    Heinrich had not heard the last sentence. 'I do not need money,' he said with dignity. 'Four hundred dollars remains.'
    'Four hundred dollars won't get you very far.' Luther's smile was giving out.
    'It will last for more than a year,' Heinrich said. He was beginning to resent this meddling in his business. 'It lasts longer than that in Tübingen, and there also I had rent to pay.'
    'You'll have to earn money,' Erna said, and hit the table so that the glasses jumped. Heinrich looked at her, disapprovingly.
    'We'll talk about it tomorrow,' Luther said. 'Tell us about the Nazis. Did they beat you up much?'
    'Beat me up?'
    'Hit you, take a whip to you, or anything ...?'
    'But no, surely not.'
    Luther looked at Erna accusingly, remembering, after Heinrich's letter came, how Erna had said: 'He was afraid to write anything, I bet; I bet those awful Nazis have been beating him up or something.'
    'I have gone away from my country,' Heinrich said, 'because there is no truth left in it. The Nazis are making everything, even history, into lies. And because of Heine.' He was silent. He found he could not speak of it now. Far away. Tübingen itself had grown into a dream, a town lying in the sun. A quiet town, left behind him in space and time, something to remember with love as the years went by and he could forget a little about Heine.
    'Heine,' Luther said, thinking: Ah, that was a friend of his, and the Nazis beat him up or killed him, and old Heinrich got scared.
    'Heine was a great man,' Heinrich said, talking to himself. 'He was a great man, and he understood how beautiful German is to write with, and he understood how beautiful the world is, all the world, and flowers and women. People will know about Germany always because there were men like Heine born there. But the Nazis say he is a Jew, so he is not a poet.' Heinrich's voice was trembling now, and Erna twisted her napkin, embarrassed, thinking to herself that a man who cried was the worst thing there was, and crying for no reason anyhow.
    'Let's go to bed,' Erna said. 'Oh, for God's sake, let's go to bed.'
    She folded her napkin and got up and began to take dishes from the dinette to the kitchenette.
    In the daytime Heinrich sat about the house and mourned his books - which were in the cellar in the unopened trunks -