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themselves with Hitler so they could be free to attack Ethiopia.
    And then my father died.
    It was June 1936. He stopped at the doorway to the restaurant at the Hotel Bristol, looked around to make sure everything was perfect—the tables spotless, the waiters standing at attention—and fell down dead.
    The news came to us with such force and suddenness that we were helpless to respond. Our pillar, our rock, had crashed.
    Mama sat in our parlor, her eyes vacant, her hair unkempt, her face blurred behind a veil of tears. Mimi sat silent and devastated, holding the hand of her boyfriend, a fellow student and friend of mine named Milo Grenzbauer. Our darling little Hansi couldn’t stop crying.
    I went back and forth from the kitchen, serving coffee to the visitors who came to pay their condolences. Our concierge, FrauFalat, was there. My cousin Jultschi came with her fiancé, an arrogant, handsome Czech tailor named Otto Ondrej. Jultschi hung on him, clutching his hand, wiping her eyes with his handkerchief.
    Pepi came with his mother. She sat next to Mama, talking about how hard it was to be a woman alone, and meanwhile not very discreetly inquiring of the other guests about how much money my father had left.
    In the kitchen, Pepi stroked my hair and told me that everything would be all right.
    I didn’t believe him. I felt suddenly much more vulnerable to politics than ever before. How could we withstand these tumultuous times without our father to protect us? At the Munich Olympics that summer, the German athletes saluted their ugly little Führer and every victory of theirs felt to me like a personal attack against the Hahns of Vienna.
    To support our family, Mama decided to open her own dressmaking business. She would cut out pictures of elegant suits and make them up for her customers to order, in the fabrics they wanted and with the trimmings they requested. According to a custom of the time, she was obligated to ask all the other dressmakers in the neighborhood whether it was all right with them for her to set up shop. Without exception, they said “yes.” Given such a vote of confidence, how could Mama doubt that she was held in high esteem by our neighbors?
    My contribution to my family’s support was to take on as much tutoring work as I could manage and to study without ceasing for my final state exam. Once I had become a doctor of law and could make a good living, I thought, our political problems might solve themselves.
    But it was hard to concentrate. I went to my classes in a fog of despair and grief. I would sit in the library with a book open andunread, my mind at a standstill. One day Anton Rieder, my old crush from high school, sat down next to me. He had been fatherless since we were kids. He knew the feeling—the loss of direction, the insecurity, the premature aging.
    “You are still beautiful,” he said.
    “And you were always gallant.”
    “I’ve enrolled at the Consular Academy. I’m going there not because I am so eager to be a diplomat, but because they have given me a scholarship.”
    “But it will be wonderful for you, Anton. You will be able to travel, maybe even go to England or America.”
    “Come with me.”
    “What?”
    “I know you go with Pepi Rosenfeld, but believe me, he’s too smart for his own good—his brains will always get in the way of his conscience. He’s not fine enough for you. I have always been in love with you; you know that. Leave him and come with me. I have nothing. Now your father is dead, and you have nothing. We’ll be perfect together.”
    He reached across the library table and took my hand. He was so handsome, so earnest. For a moment, I thought: “Maybe. Why not?” And then of course all the reasons why not spilled onto the long oak table, and Anton could not fail to see them there; and like a wise young diplomat, he rose and kissed my hand and took his leave.
     
    W E HAD A visit from a new neighbor—an engineer named Denner, a nice-looking,