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their
Gummiknueppeln
—their police sticks; they got to work. They were very thorough.” His attention became fixed on the women in the feathered hats, who had seated themselves at a table close by; they had removed their gloves and were being served coffee, with a plate of brightly iced cakes between them.
    “How long did they detain you?”
    “Just three days. But I was right to move to München, the police there are still imperfect Nazis. Sophie—my wife—took my war medals to a station and they filed a paper requesting my release.”
    “Where did the Gestapo take you? Dachau?” Phillip asked, and he grimaced.
    “Such interrogations do not take place in the
Lager
, they occur in the prisons. Look here, there is no interest in this sort of story. You are wasting your time.” He turned to Louisa. “So you are getting married,” he said.
    “Yes. When we get to California.”
    He nodded once; he did not congratulate Phillip, or wish her luck. “And are you keeping well? How is your health?”
    She was fine, she said, just fine.
    “I remember you used to have many colds when winter came.”
    “Not for years. Not since I got to England.”
    “Ah. You are someone for whom the English climate has been a curative. A medical curiosity.”
    She laughed for longer than the joke warranted. “Will you be able to practice medicine here?”
    “I’m afraid that is not possible. But your friend Rolf Furchgott hopes to obtain some work for me, proofreading for a medical journal that is published in German as well as English. I prefer it to being a butler. There are many of us, you know, many doctors, and lawyers too, who attended a school in München that taught the arts of butlery. For Jews trying to get visas. I had a friend who went to England on such a visa, he was quite comic on the subject.”
    She asked after his wife and daughter. He coughed behind his hand. “They are working already. It is easier for women, it seems, to get employment here, in domestic service. My daughter has found a job cleaning in a cafeteria. When her English has improved she will hope to find something better. My Sophie has been hired by an elderly woman who requires someone to cook and clean. It is not so bad, she says, with just one person in the household. She is only very worried about our son, he is in Czechoslovakia, he went there in ’34, but now we think he must leave. Rolf Furchgott is trying to help with the visa, but it is more difficult than we had thought.” For a moment his fingers clawed at the arms of the chair. Then, collecting himself, he stood up. “I must really be going,” he said, and as Phillip began to rise, “Please do not trouble yourself.” He turnedback to Louisa. “Remember me to your parents, yes? In happier times your father and I served on a committee together, to help the veterans. I am sorry I had no chance to say good-bye to him.”
    “Not exactly a charmer, is he?” Phillip said when he was gone. “Christ. I hope they’re not all going to be so bloody stiff-necked.”
    “You can’t expect him to be like Emil,” she protested, referring to a denizen of the café. “He’s not a bohemian.”
    “Thank you. I think I might have deduced that for myself. That doesn’t explain why he treated me like the enemy.”
    She wanted to tell him how Dr. Joseftal had sat on her bed, patting her hand; she remembered his telling her mother, when she warned Louisa not to waste the doctor’s time, that he had all the time in the world. “I should have given him something to take to his daughter.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know. Something. I bought that ribbon this morning, remember? I could have given that to her.”
    “Yes, well, you could have, but you didn’t. I don’t suppose ribbons are what the poor cow needs, anyway. Let’s go upstairs, I want to make some calls. I think this piece could turn into something quite useful, despite the good doctor’s recalcitrance.”
    But he could not get