orld, he would hear the voice of the radio, announcing, admonishing, clearing its gravelly throat. Or Ingeborg would arrive to complete the sense of what he had suspected. Because, as the chain of events was forged, it became possible to foresee the links. So, Ingeborg only confirmed. One evening Stauffer returned, and Himmelfarb realized that his friend was also his contemporary, if anything older by a couple of years. For that youthful, sensual, forgivably superficial man had suddenly aged, just as his wife's body could no longer conceal its physical shabbiness, which a superficial shabbiness of clothes had hitherto only hinted at. Stauffer announced that the British had declared war on Germany. "Then we are, at last, thank God, wholly committed," he remarked, more to relieve his own feelings. After that, Himmelfarb did not see his friend again, and Ingeborg confirmed his impression that her husband was no longer at Herrenwaldau. "Yes," she repeated with noticeable intensity, "it was best that he should go. And even if he is gone longer than usual, one grows accustomed to being alone; one can make it a habit like anything else." Like the removal of her guest's tray, for instance, an act she had learnt to perform with an obliviousness, a simplicity which moved him every time he watched it happen. "All this that you do for me!" He was forced to try to convey his feelings on one of the occasions when she had poured the steaming water from the waist-high can into the antiquated hip-bath. "Oh," she exclaimed, quickly, still panting from her struggle up the flights of stairs, "don't you understand? We do it also on account of ourselves. It is most, most necessary. For more than ourselves. For all of us." And went away at once, biting her lip, and frowning at her shame. Several times Himmelfarb was tempted to touch on the subject of her husband's employment, but she was gone before he was able to commit any such indelicacy, and afterwards, he was glad. Only, once, she did remark, "You know Konrad will never do anything that _you__ would condemn." She became increasingly, no doubt wilfully, detached. On the night they heard, from their different parts of the house, the hysterical protests of the ground defences, and the cough and groan, the upheaval of prehistoric foundations when the British aeroplanes first dropped their bombs on a neighbouring target, Ingeborg did not appear. But, on the morning after, he noticed she had gathered back her hair so tight, her normally exposed face was even nakeder. Yet, it did not reveal. As she held his empty cup at an angle, and contemplated the grey dregs of ersatz coffee, she announced, "My lovely drake is dead. My big Muscovy. How he would hiss at times, and behave as unpleasantly as any man. But such a strong, splendid bird." Himmelfarb felt he should ask how the drake had died. "Who will ever know?" she answered softly. It was not important, of course, beside the fact of death. There was the night the bombs were dropped so close, the rooms changed shape for a second at Herrenwaldau. The Jew rocked in his attic, but knew himself at that moment to be closer than ever to his God, as his thoughts clung to that with which he was most familiar. As the moonlight filled with the black shadows of wings, and all the evil in the world was aimed at the fragile, lichened roof, he was miraculously transported. Afterwards when he had returned from this most ineffable experience, and the lower house no longer strained or tinkled, and only a recessive throbbing and whirring could be heard, the narrow stairway began to fill with the sound of footsteps, and he saw that Ingeborg Stauffer had come to his room, shielding a little lamp with her long, trembling hand, against what had once been her assured and elegant breast. "I was so terribly afraid," she confessed. "We were their target," he realized, "for some reason only they can know." "So very, very afraid," Ingeborg Stauffer was repeating, and trembling. Fear, he could see, had made her once more human, and for the first time old. She was crying now. So he comforted her, by putting his arms round her almost naked body-she had been preparing herself for bed; he soothed, and caressed, and strengthened. So that she was soon made warm and young again. And some of his own youth and physical strength returned. In the short distance from the spirit to the flesh, he knew he would have been capable of the greatest dishonesty while disguising it as need. Then, by the light of the subdued lamp, he saw their faces in the glass. He saw the expression of Ingeborg Stauffer. Who had woken first. Whose disgust was not less obvious for being expertly concealed. As for his own face, it was that of an old, inept man. Or Jew. "We must try to sleep now," she said. She had never sounded kinder, gentler, than in leaving him. Quite early, it seemed, the following morning, Himmelfarb recognized sounds of approach in the outside world. By climbing on the table, and opening a little bull's-eye, he had found that, after craning out, and peering through a balustrade, he could distinguish below the empty sky a fragment of garden, trees, and gravel drive. Now, on the morning after the misguided raid, a truck drew up in his precious, because so limited, field of vision, and several men-or one of them, perhaps, a sergeant-began to get down. Much later than usual, Frau Stauffer appeared briefly with his coffee, and announced that the Army was in residence. To examine damage and dispose of bombs. Naturally, she would come to him now only when absolutely necessary. That morning the coffee had been almost cold, he realized after drinking it. At the same time, his room became particularly fragile, even, he felt, superfluous. Was he preparing to break his shell? Indeed, the stillness could have been an egg, inside which he had been allowed to grow in strength, until now reminded, by instinct, by men's voices, by the contact of steel with steel, of some unspecified duty to be performed in an outside world. Now, it seemed, the stillness could give him nothing more. So he was walking up and down, restlessly, although, from habit, very softly. And hardly noticed when, after days, his guardian's footsteps again sounded normal on the stairs. "They have gone," she said, but with an imitation of relief. For, in fact, they had not. They would never go now, so her face told, although she had watched, and he had heard them, disappearing down the drive. Himmelfarb sensed that the inmates of Herrenwaldau had merely entered on a fresh phase of spiritual occupation. And soon after, Ingeborg Stauffer came to him to say, "I know now that Konrad will never return." It appeared so obvious when spoken, only it was a conviction that, until then, they had not dared share. "But have you received news?" Himmelfarb was foolish enough to ask. "Not news." She shrugged. "I shall never, never receive news. I shall only ever know that I shall not see Konrad alive." Himmelfarb suspected she would not allow herself to say, _my husband__-it had come so glibly, so extravagantly from her in the past-but now she was not strong enough. In his pity he longed to touch her. Her face had opened a little. She said, "It is less dreadful when one had always known. He himself expected. Oh, I know that Konrad, in spite of his success, was an insubstantial man. We both accepted it. He had very few illusions. 'My books will survive,' he used to say, 'just about as long as I.' " There was an organization, of a secret, an illegal nature, of which she could not tell, of which, in fact, she knew very little. To this, Himmelfarb gathered, Stauffer had belonged. But his actual missions would remain undisclosed. "You understand, in any case," she said, repeating a remark she had made once before, "he will have done nothing that _you__ would ever condemn." Up to this she had been giving information, but now she gathered her elbows. She said, "I loved him! I loved him!" Her ordinarily marble face was mumbling and grunting, like that of some bereaved woman. "_My dearest husband__!" she confided. And went away. Less than ever now Himmelfarb belonged to Herren-waldau. The boards ticked during darkness. In the hours of darkness the dark-red heart swelled enormously beneath the rafters. His iron bed was straiter, crueller to his sides. Then his own wife came and took his hand, and together they stood looking down into the pit of darkness, at the bottom of which was the very faintest phosphorescence of faces. He longed-oh, most intolerably-to look once more at the face of Reha Himmelfarb, but it was as though she were directing his vision towards the other, unknown faces, and might even have become unrecognizable herself. The tears were flowing faster, from the unseen eyes. Of blood, he saw, on the back of his hand. The voices of darkness ever swelling. So that the quicklime of compassion, mounting from the great pit, consumed him where he stood. Quite alone now. For Reha Himmelfarb had withdrawn; she already knew the meaning of what they had just experienced together. Himmelfarb climbed up out of his dream into the morning. It was already quite light, though early. For some reason, he saw, he had lain down without undressing, no doubt to be prepared, and now, as if in answer to his foresight, the outside world had begun again to impinge on Herrenwaldau. From his table, through the bull's-eye, between the stone balusters of the parapet, he observed this time a car, followed by a truck, jerking to a stop on the weed-sown gravel. This time an officer trod down. His splendour was unmistakable, and as if in answer to it, Ingeborg Stauffer had already come out to do the honours. She was wearing a simple costume of still fabulous cut, but on which Himmelfarb had more than once observed a crust of pollard along a lapel. Now she stood there, waiting, in the old gum-boots she wore in winter when going out to feed her ducks. It was very quickly revealed to the observer, even at that distance, that he was present on an occasion, certainly not of high history, of vindication, rather, of the individual spirit. The faces of several private soldiers were aware. An NCO had forgotten to give orders. The officer, of course, obeyed all the etiquette of gallantry in carrying out his peculiar duty. Nor did Frau Stauffer forget what she had learnt. Her voice, always lighter when fulfilling its social functions, was carried upward on the frosty air. Naturally, the listener could not hear more than the upward scale of formal laughter. Frau Stauffer was even wearing the bracelet of large golden links, and lumps of unpolished, semi-precious stones, which always conflicted in motion, and would threaten to break up any serious conversation. So she had known, and was prepared. Certainly there was one moment of intense silence in which Himmelfarb could have sworn he heard a sound of most unearthly breaking, so high, so clear, so agonizing in its swift dwindling. Then Frau Stauffer bowed her head, in agreement, it appeared. She got into the car, holding one hand to her breast, not to protect it from the inevitable, but to decorate that inevitable with its measure of grace. When the car was turned round, so sharply, convulsively, that the wheels left their furrows in the drive, Himmelfarb did catch a brief glimpse of Ingeborg Stauffer's face as it looked out at the wilderness of her neglected garden. She, too, no longer in any way belonged, it seemed, to the framework of actuality. So there was no reason why she should protest at being forced so abruptly out of it. As she was driven away, her face was of that perfect emptiness which precedes fulfilment. At the same time, the detachment of soldiers, under orders from its NCO, had begun to billet itself on Herrenwaldau. Voices were burring. Equipment clattered. Himmelfarb, who had got down again inside his room, was resigned enough on finding that his own turn had come. He did not hurry. When he had prayed, and brushed his overcoat a little with his hand, and packed into the suitcase the meagre sum of his possessions, he descended into the body of the house. Although it was now filled with sounds of what might be considered as activity, boots bludgeoning frail boards, voices flouting the damp silence of antiquity, those of the rooms which he entered or passed remained gently aloof from their fate. Intending to surrender himself to the first person who questioned his presence there, Himmelfarb wound farther down. Several objects that he touched were sadly reminiscent. Yet, it was a distant ceiling encrusted with faded blazonry which made him wonder whether it might be possible to take one more look at the town in which he had been born. In the long saloon which the owners had used as a living room, and which was not yet empty of their presence, a heap of cats snoozed on a patch of winter sunshine. A radio was shouting of war. Outside, on the terrace, a stocky youth, of country tints, stood holding a gun, and picking his nose. Himmelfarb wondered for a moment whether to address the soldier boy. But smiled instead. The soldier himself wondered whether to challenge the elderly gentleman, so evidently discreet, so obviously stepped out of the life of kindliness which he understood. In the circumstances, his own always dubious authority dwindled. The gun wobbled. He gave a kind of country nod. Himmelfarb walked slowly on. He sensed how horribly the boy's heart must have been beating for the mildness in himself which he had not learnt to overcome. But the strange morning was already unfolding, in which any individual might have become exposed to contingency. The evader walked with care, under the naked, cawing elms. It seemed as though he had abandoned the self he had grown to accept in his familiar room. It seemed, also, fitting that it should again be winter when he took the long, undeviating road along which friends had brought him-how long ago, months or years? — to experience silence and waiting. The winter air cleared his head wonderfully, with the result that he found himself observing, and becoming engrossed by the least grain of roadside sand. There were occasions when he nodded at some peasant or child, too involved in the living of their daily lives to think of obstructing the stranger. From time to time, he rested, because his legs were proving humanly weak. It took the Jew the best part of the day to cover the miles to Holunderthal. The winter evening was drawing in as he approached the darker masses of the town, which had begun already to receive its nightly visitation. The knots and loops, the little, exquisite puffs of white hung on the deepening distances of the sky, all the way to its orange rim. The riot of fireworks was on. Ordinarily solid, black buildings were shown to have other, more transcendental qualities, in that they would open up, disclosing fountains of hidden fire. Much was inverted, that hitherto had been accepted as sound and immutable. Two silver fish were flaming downward, out of their cobalt sea, into the land. As Himmelfarb entered the town, he concluded the industrial suburb of Scheidnig was the target for the night. There the panache was gayest, the involvement deepest, although, occasionally, a bomb would fall wide and casual into the deathly streets through which he walked. There was a sighing of old bricks subsiding, the sound of stone coughing up its guts, and once he himself was flung to the ground, in what could have been a splitting open of the earth, if the paving had not remained, and the hollow clatter of his suitcase spoilt the effects of doom. As he walked deeper into the town, a wind got up, tossing the flaps of his coat, twitching at the brim of his hat. In the streets, the vagaries of human behaviour had been almost entirely replaced by an apparent organization of mechanical means: engines roared, bells rang, flak reacted, the hard confetti of shrapnel never ceased to fall, innocent and invisible. Through which the Jew walked. It did not occur to him to feel afraid. His mechanism could have been responding to control. Once, certainly, compassion flooded his metal limbs, and he stooped to close the eyes of a man who had been rejected by his grave of rubble. Then wheels were arriving. Of ambulance? Or fire-engine? The Jew walked on, by supernatural contrivance. For now the wheels were grazing the black shell of the town. The horses were neighing and screaming, as they dared the acid of the green sky. The horses extended their webbing necks, and their nostrils glinted brass in the fiery light. While the amazed Jew walked unharmed beneath the chariot wheels. Originally it had been his intention to revisit the house on the Holzgraben, but suddenl