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you too. Yes, with you it stayed words—you don’t need to explainthe difference between talking and shooting. But would it have stayed words if you’d grown up without a mother? If you had the same problems dealing with people as Jörg does? If you didn’t have the gift of seizing life so resolutely and effectively?”
    “The terrorists as our confused brothers and sisters?” Ulrich shook his head and made a face not only of rejection, but of revulsion. “Do you believe that too?” He looked around the group.
    Ilse broke the silence. “I didn’t talk of struggles in those days. I didn’t talk at all. I brewed coffee with the girls and made stencils and printed up pamphlets. You didn’t, Karin, and neither did you, Christiane—I admired and envied you for it. Jörg and the others who fought were the ones I admired. Yes, the struggle was nonsense. But everything was nonsense in those days. The Cold War and the secret services and the arms race and the real wars in Asia and Africa—when I think back to that, it strikes me as insane.” She laughed. “Not that it’s any better these days. The attacks and uprisings and wars since then—I can only think that the people who do that must be crazy. Jörg has put it behind him. Isn’t that what matters?”
    “Karin, I know you mean well. But it isn’t true that Jörg wasn’t loved when he was …”
    Christiane stopped talking and listened. Footsteps came across the gravel, someone opened the front door, walked down the hall and opened the door to the drawing room. “I saw the light under the door and thought … I’m Marko.”
    Christiane got to her feet and greeted him, introducedhim to the friends and the friends to him and disappeared into the kitchen to cook up some sausages for him. She did everything quickly, in a detached and businesslike way. The friends, who knew the name Marko Hahn after they had been introduced but didn’t know who he was or what connected him and Jörg, were slightly irritated; at the same time they were glad of the interruption. They stood up, opened the door and windows to the garden, cleared up, emptied the ashtrays, fetched new water and wineglasses, replaced the candles. “There’s a gale a-brewin’,” said Karin’s husband, and Margarete stepped into the doorway and, after glancing at the sky and the wind-tossed treetops, predicted a storm. Ilse came and stood next to her and put her arm around her, she herself didn’t know why. Margarete laughed a warm laugh, put her arm around Ilse and drew her to her.
    Suddenly it occurred to Andreas who Marko was. “You’ve done enough harm. If word reaches the press about our days here, you’ll get a writ from me, one from which you will never recover.” He had talked himself into action, left Marko, who was about to answer, standing where he was and turned to the startled Henner. “I know you can do something. But as far as these days here are concerned, the same goes for you: not a word in the press. If you write anything about Jörg’s first days in freedom and what he does and says, I’ll tear you apart in public.”
    “You’re right,” said Eberhard to Margarete. “The weather’s turning.”
    Marko grabbed Andreas by the arm. “We won’t letyou and his sister lock him up. He didn’t get out of prison for that. He didn’t tough it out for that. The struggle goes on, and Jörg will take the place that suits him. We’ve waited for him long enough.”
    “Don’t touch me!” When Andreas said it again, he was shouting. “Don’t touch me!”
    “Will you help me bring in the garden furniture before it starts raining?” Again Karin tried to make peace. But although the two men went outside together, folded the table and chairs and carried them into the house, they still stuck to their guns. Andreas talked about the pardon and its conditions and the threat of probation, Marko of the struggle that had to be fought and won, the struggle that was Jörg’s life.