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lipstick on his flushed cheeks.
     
    Then the family gathered together coats, umbrellas, handbags. Wyatt held Porteous’s arm, not as if guiding his grandfather down the steps of the stand but as if it were natural for them to be so linked as he explained that the United States would go on to the next round tomorrow. Humphrey pounded his shoulder for a final congratulation, and then they all were gone. Wyatt trotted towards the shower-hut.
     
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    The Uruguay-Philippines game was well under way when he emerged exuding the clean smell of soap. Kathe still sat in the second row.
     
    The openness of her smile made him nervous.
    “So you stuck around,”
    he said.
     
    “Of course. I told you I would.”
     
    During the game, he explained the plays, shifting his body, moving his arms in a modified version of throwing, leaning forward at every free throw, his eyes narrowed and intent. Neither team was any good, but he rooted ardently for the Philippines, a United States protectorate. She cheered them on, too. They stayed a few points ahead. Just before the end of the first quarter, however, Uruguay managed to tie the game. As the short Filippino centre’s shot teetered on the rim of the basket then swished through, Wyatt clenched his fist, triumphantly punching air in front of him. His bicep touched Kathe’s. Through their layers of clothing he could feel the warmth and fragility of her arm. He turned. Her irises were a very clear greenish blue, the colour of a good aquamarine; the whites had a bluish cast, like a young child’s. Her lashes were thick and astonishingly dark for anyone with platinum hair.
     
    She’s wearing a Nazi uniform, you ass. And you’re a Jew by half. Shifting further from her, he asked:
    “How come you didn’t root for the Italians?”
     
    “Why would I? You’re in the American team.”
     
    “The Germans and Italians are the Axis.”
     
    She bit her lip, watching another basket scored.
    “It’s a bit like hockey,”
    she murmured.
    “Except for the hoop.”
     
    “Me, I think it’s an extension of an ancient Mayan game,”
    he said.
    “The losing side had their hearts cut out as a sacrifice to the gods. Who knows - maybe the losers were Jewish Mayans?”
     
    She was silent.
     
    “Aren’t you going to challenge me? Point out that some of your teams have Jews on them?”
     
    “They do. Rudi Ball was in the ice hockey team in the Winter Games. Helen Mayer’s going to win a medal for us in fencing …” Her soft voice almost inaudible, she mumbled an excuse about returning to Friesen-Haus in time for lunch.
     
    With her head bent she hurried along the edge of the court to the nearest exit. You’re a prick, he told himself. An unthinkable prick, taking out your confusion on her.
     
    HI
    The women’s twohundred-metre final was scheduled for 10.50 the following morning. Kathe slept very little. She kept turning the tough
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    dormitory pillow. Why couldn’t she have admitted that she despised the Nuremberg laws which humiliated Jews and cut them out of the fabric of German life? Why couldn’t she have told him that she had been best friends with Anna Elzerman, who had also lived in the Griinewald Villa Colony? Six months ago, Dr Elzerman, banned from his mostly Aryan practice, had emigrated with his wife and daughter to Mexico. Why was it so easy to talk against the Nazi regime with Sigi? And so impossible with her non-German family with her American cousin?
    Before dawn she was slipping out of Friesen-Haus, jogging on the lit paths. She cut across the Maifeld, the huge parade-ground. By the time she reached the track and field practice-area near the south gate of the Olympic Stadium, the morning mist was silver, and she could see wraith-like shadows in motion. A vaulter was examining his pole, a shot-putter limbered up with slow loose shakings of his thick arms. A long-jumper kept charging in a series of approaches at the long sandy pit: peering, she saw it was Jesse