She introduced Russell to Annaliese Huiskes, who offered him a drink.
He declined, admitting he'd already had enough for one evening.
They chatted for a few minutes, until Annaliese was called away. 'Take her home,' the nurse told Russell. 'She's had a bad evening.'
'It wasn't any worse than it usually is,' Effi told him as they walked to the tram stop. 'I've usually managed to let it all go by the time I get home. There's just so much of it, so many stories, so much anguish. One boy tonight, he kept on and on about this friend who'd been killed, and how it had been his fault. I told him I couldn't see why he should blame himself, and he just lost his temper - I thought he was going to hit me. He really needed it to be his fault, and I just hadn't realised...'
They had reached the tram stop, and Effi burrowed into Russell's arms, her shoulders shaking with grief. He stroked her hair, and thanked the blackout for their near-invisibility. In a very similar situation before the war, two middle-aged women had practically demanded her autograph.
She wiped her eyes and kissed him. 'Just another day at the office.'
The tram, when it finally arrived, was less crowded than usual. An elderly gentleman offered his seat to Effi, but she refused it with a smile. There were several middle-aged men in Arbeitsfront uniforms - shop stewards in the Nazi-controlled unions - standing close to the doors and talking with what seemed drunken abandon. Men to avoid, Russell thought, just as he caught sight of the two young women huddled in a dark corner, wearing yellow stars. It was only a few minutes from their curfew, and judging by the frequency with which the older one consulted her watch she was aware of that fact.
One last look, a word in her younger friend's ear, and the two of them sidled toward the doors as the tram approached the stop outside the closed Ka-de-We department store. The younger girl, Russell noticed, was carrying something rolled up in a piece of cloth. As she neared the door one of the uniformed men - a stereotypical Party man if Russell ever saw one, with his red piggish face and overflowing stomach - deliberately bumped her with an ample hip, causing her to stumble. A raw egg fell out of the cloth and broke on the floor.
The girl stared at the mess, resisting the tug of her older companion, heartbreak written all over her face. The man responsible yanked off her headscarf and thrust it at her: 'Now clear it up, you Jew bitch.'
'Where did a Jew get hold of an egg?' someone else asked indignantly. The doors had now closed, and the tram was in motion.
So was Effi, pushing her way past other passengers to place herself between the Jewish girls and their tormentor. 'You made her drop it, you clean it up,' she told him in cold, calm voice. 'People like you make me ashamed to be a German,' she heard herself add.
His contorted face looked almost fiendish in the dim yellow light. 'Mind your own fucking business,' he shouted. 'Who the fuck do you think you are? You look like a fucking Jew yourself.' He flicked out a hand, making contact with her left breast. 'Where's your fucking badge?'
'Back off, you bastard,' Russell said, giving the man a solid shove in the chest. He had no doubt that he could knock this one down, but the other three might prove more of a problem. 'What's the matter with you? Is this your idea of a good time - bullying women?'
'They're Jews, for fuck's sake,' the man shouted, as if that rendered all other considerations null and void.
'So fucking what?' Russell shouted back.
Effi had rarely seen him so angry. The tram, she noticed, had almost come to a halt. 'Go,' she told the Jewish girls, and they needed no second bidding. The elder one pulled the doors open, and they both tumbled down to the street and out into the darkness.
Russell and the Arbeitsfront official were still eyeball to eyeball, glued in place by their mutual loathing. 'John, let's go,' Effi said peremptorily, holding the door with one hand and tugging at his sleeve with the other.
It broke the spell. Russell beamed at the still-raging face in front of him, and turned to follow her. Stepping off, he heard a woman's voice inside the tram say, 'I'm sure that was Effi Koenen.'
Improvisations
Russell told Thomas the story at lunch next day, although not before checking the underside of their tables and chairs for listening devices. The ceilings in the Russischer Hof dining rooms were exceptionally high, so the chandeliers at least were free of bugs.
'I'm amazed that I didn't slug him,' he told Thomas. 'I don't know what stopped me. When he punched Effi in the breast... But I'm glad that I didn't, because God knows what would have happened. I'd have been flattened by his friends, and Effi would have joined in and probably been flattened too. And the two Jewish girls might have been caught and arrested and put on the next train out.'
'You said it was Effi who blew up first.'
'Yes, but I'm usually there to calm things down, not make them worse.'
'That would seem to work better than the two of you egging each other on,' Thomas said with a wry smile. 'Still, it doesn't look like you'll be around for much longer.'
'What have you heard?'
'Oh, nothing specific. Only the usual sources,' he added, meaning the BBC. 'It just looks like things are coming to a head.'
'Hitler might distance himself from a Japanese attack. After all, what would he gain from joining them? There's no way he could help them fight the Americans, but if he keeps out of it, the Americans might reward him by moving most of their forces from the Atlantic to the Pacific.'
'That makes perfect sense,' Thomas agreed, 'but does it sound like our Fuhrer?'
'Perhaps not,' Russell admitted. 'I've been doing a lot of straw-clutching lately.'
'Who isn't?'
His friend was looking noticeably older, Russell thought. The wrinkles around his eyes and the grey in his hair were both spreading. The strain of having a son at the front must be bad enough, without the need to fight an endless rearguard action against the Gestapo in defence of his Jewish workers. 'No word from Joachim?' he asked.
'Oh yes, I meant to tell you. There was a letter yesterday. Just a few words - no specific news. But he's all right. Or at least he was a few days ago.'
'Hanna must be relieved. '
'Yes, of course. Though it gives her more space to worry about Lotte. Our daughter has suddenly decided, for reasons that neither of us can even begin to fathom, to become an exemplary - and I do mean exemplary - member of the Bund Deutscher Madel. Three weeks ago she was a normal healthy sixteen-year-old, interested in boys and clothes and film stars. Now she has his picture over her bed. I mean, I suppose it's harmless enough, at least for a while; but why, for God's sake? It's as if some malign spirit has taken over the poor girl's brain.'
'At least the Gestapo won't be coming for her,' Russell said.
Thomas laughed. 'There is that.'
'And did you sort out Monday's difficulty?'
'Yes, but they'll be back. It's like building sandcastles - sooner or later the tide rolls over them. Unless there's some basic change of heart, my Jews will be sent away to whatever horrors are waiting for them. And what could provoke one? I sometimes wonder which would be better for the Jews - a quick victory in the East or a bloody stalemate that lasts for years. Victory might endow our leaders with a little magnanimity, whereas defeat would probably make them even nastier. So here I am,' he concluded, raising his glass in mock salute, 'longing for total victory.'