Two weeks later on May 25th, little more than a month before the assassination of German Chancellor Hitler, above the Prinzregentstrasse the enclosed gardens of Albert Entrater were thriving. Trees in full flower, some already dropping their clusters, had gone fully into green leaf. Tulip and daffodil stems crowded the banks of well‑tended earth around the trees. Roses were also in full bud by this early Friday evening, but it was the pachysandra that was white with flower. The mix of floral perfumes rose into the wide window of the dining room and onto the apartment’s main floor, a large, mode rn‑arch itec ted space used for entertaining. This floor showed a marked difference from the studio‑salon and bedrooms upstairs, for the public Albert Entrater was a man of the modern world of art and ideas. The private man, the part‑Jew (Mischlinge), the artist‑‑ this man lived and worked in a museum of memories. There was a striking contrast as well between the setting in which he worked and the paintings he produced, some of which hung on the enormous white walls of the main floor.

These large, boldly colored abstracts and surreal scenes, and one of the many gilt‑framed triptychs by which he was often characterized, were completely upstaged this evening by the colors of the forbidden German flag, worn by every guest to a most unusual party. Everyone, including the band, was wearing black, red, and fold to protest the book burnings of 1933, when gangs of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers had conducted the announced and carefully planned fiery purge of non‑Aryan intellectual imperfection.

The men this evening were more likely to be wearing red and yellow ties and black slacks, and the women, more flamboyantly, wore flowing scarves and painted shoes‑‑ many were artists like the men. The musicians had been provided with the tricolor at the door, handkerchiefs knotted together now stuck in their black jacket breast pockets; in fact, a flash of gold‑red‑black usually meant that one of the trumpet players had found a rest in which to mop his brow with his festive handkerchief.

The bass player, when the spirit moved him, sang lyrics of the songs he played. The guests closest to the,band listened appreciatively, but the busy waiters, under the watchful eye of housekeeper Lotte, ignored the paintings on the walls, the flag‑costumed guests, and focused their eyes on the silver salvers of hors doeurvres and cocktails. Liquor threatened to run over the crystal cups of the guests as they listened and swayed to the slapping jazz drums, the muted and then wailing trumpets, the bass’s throb as its player sang a currently popular tune from America. “There may be trouble ahead/ But while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance/ Let’s face the music and dance…”

The bassist looked up, his white face and hungry eyes surprised and pleased at the attention he was getting. A woman leaned her cocktail glass to his lips, and he sipped. Then she, along with several others, sang with the bassist, “Soon/We’ll be without the moon/ Humming a different tune/ And then…”

All the voices joined in for the end of the song, as people at the edge of the group danced a few ballroom steps and the song became contagious throughout the room, rippling over it like rising water. “There may be teardrops to shed, so while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance/ Let’s face the music and dance!” There was a burst of applause and laughter that ebbed slowly.

Ruprecht watched the lively scene disperse as he stood beside his host, who was, he noted, characteristically somber. Indeed, in the last several weeks, the last two in particular, Albert had felt himself becoming steadily unsettled. His involvement on behalf of this girl he barely knew, and also now in the last two weeks Konrad’s sudden disappearances, each of these contributed to a growing state of unease. Particularly, there was the girl, he thought; about her there was something truly unnerving. His brow was wrinkled and his eyes darted around the room. Stefan had not yet arrived, and Konrad had been inexplicably “tied up” at the last moment.

“Are you still tired from the trip to the boonies?” the Czech asked. He referred to the journey Albert had made with Lisel to her family home to the south.

“I don’t dream of returning to Buttelstadt in this lifetime, if that’s what you mean,” Albert answered, intending to brighten.

“Did you leave her there?”

“Yes.”

The band was playing a melancholy cabaret tune.

“Perhaps Stefan’s idea for this party played better over the wine and wurst,” Ruprecht said after a pause.

“Where is he, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Hungarians are always an unpredictable lot‑‑ maybe he’ll show up later with the new girlfriend.”

Across the room, a little bald‑headed man was denouncing Stormtroop leader Ernst Roehm. He punctuated his presentation with obscenities and facial contortions, particularly of his mouth and tongue, which was red and darted forth like an adder’s.

“Stefan doesn’t like to go out at night anymore, I think,” Albert said.

“Of course, it can be dangerous,” Ruprecht replied.

The denouncer had mounted a table and was now reeling off a full list of Nazi villains, for each of which he provided a disparaging epigram that produced howls of appreciative laughter. Albert was clearly ill‑at‑ease with the performance, and his nervousness annoyed Ruprecht who was enjoying the show.

“Relax, Albert,” he chided. “The Nazi’s can’t afford your neighborhood, and even if they could, we might all say were celebrating book‑burning rather than repudiating it.”

“No doubt,” the host said without the slightest conviction, then looked away in the direction of the foyer, out of his view, where there was a table piled high with the kind of books the Nazis had chosen for burning the year before. Aside from the center‑ring performance, guests all around the large room were exchanging and discussing these and other books with great eschatological energy. Of course, Ruprecht was right, Albert thought, there was no clear and present cause for his anxiety. Inside him nonetheless the uneasy feeling had taken root, and its leaves rustled with the faintest breeze. The little bald man finished his presentation. with a comical goosestep that was extremely funny, even Albert admitted, and he marched off to the dinnertable with a number of chattering friends.

“Did you get the Murder in Three Acts I sent?” Ruprecht asked.

“Yes.” Albert nodded and smiled. It pleased Ruprecht. “I love it. Mrs. Christie is extraordinarily clever in this one.”

“Excellent.”

Franz walked across the floor. His scattered jittery walk went well with the now raucously welcomed jazz again being played. He joined his friends with a stein of beer filled to overflowing in his hand. As Ruprecht and Albert continued to talk about the Agatha Christie novel, Franz drank deeply from the beer, emerging from each swallow with a new foamy moustache he licked away with appreciative tongue, like a ship in heavy seas plunging into and out of great foamy waves. What brew didn’t reach his mouth fell in great splashes onto the shiny wooden floor. He was soon standing in his own small pool of beer.

“And let me also thank you for that Niebuhr book you managed for me,” Ruprecht said.

“But is the man a theologian?” Albert replied, and Ruprecht laughed heartily at the imitation of Konrad’s irritation.

“Where is Konrad, by the way?”

“Nowadays, I don’t know.”

“Words, words!” Franz gestured wildly, nearly overturning a silver tray a waiter was carrying by.

“Give me brushes and paint and someone who’ll buy Jew art!”

“Did you see Freddy? I think he’s crazy!” Ruprecht referred to the bald headed performer.

“Ha! Half the stuff he stole from me!” Franz said.

“Sure, sure!”

“No. I mean it, that remark about little Adolf, for instance‑‑ I said that to him last month in this very room. You remember that, Albert.”

“I think I do.”

“The remark about the boots.”

“Yes. I seem to recall.”

“That remark about the boots was entirely of my own invention. And the remark about Granniger, the Nazis’ pimp.”

“Why is it I never hear these comical,remarks from you?”

“I am not disposed to be comical in your presence, Ruprecht.”

“I see.”

“Czechs are not known for the appreciation of the comical side of life.”

“But I’ve appreciated you for ten years!”

“There! That is Czech humor at its wittiest.”

“And Austrian humor, your own?”

“The grandest joke of all is Austrian, my friend. Currently he resides at the Chancellery!” Franz triumphed.

A woman walking near them held a thick book against her chest with or.‑‑ arm; in her other hand she held a thick cigarette from which she inhaled for emphasis.

“Barbarians!” she announced to the trio, too loudly. “Barbarians worship fire! First the Reichstag fire, now‑‑ ! First, the laws, then the books, the literature of the civilized world!” She paused for breath, coughed, inhaled from her cigarette deeply, and exhaled clouds of smoke through her nose and mouth that created a ring of cloud about Albert, Ruprecht and Franz. Franz blew the smoke out of his face back at her. Glaring at the shaking man, she quoted Goebbels with great irony, “Oh century, it is a joy to live!” Franz coughed in response. She nodded to Ruprecht, looked about as if for an ashtray, and apparently locating one, vanished as quickly as she appeared.

“Do you know her?” Franz asked.

“If her husband was the literary critic at the paper. Up until they fired all of us. The only thing she read till then was tea leaves. Now she’s a defender of literary art!”

There was a general deflation at Ruprecht’s allusion to the Nazi ‘purchase’ in April of Germany’s most respected newspaper, Vossische Zeitung. Ruprecht had been an editor there until the previous October when an edict ordered that all editors must be Aryan.

Without being noticed, the servants had turned lights on in the wide, white room, as night overtook twilight. Those standing, talking by the windows, would, if inclined to look out, have seen the streetlamps assume their electric imitation glow of gaslamps of an earlier era. In Berlin’s many parks, fireflies twinkled in the dark grass like stars more easily viewed away from city lights. If observers had looked at the southeastern sky, beyond the brightness of Jupiter, they would have also seen Mars closest to Saturn. The ironic conjunction of these plants echoed the band’s disharmonious playing; for here was Saturn, his reign considered a Golden Age, celebrated around what is in the modern age Christmastime, next to Mars, the Roman god of war. In late May, the one planet is paradoxically poised close to the other, though in Konrad’s absence there was no one besides Albert to notice such celestial commentary.

Ruprecht showed a bluebound playscript to his friends. “I saw this in Paris last month. I’m writing about it now. It’s Cocteau’s version of Oedipus and funny, considering it is French, and he has our Adolf on his mind, too.”

“He is not my Adolf,” Franz grumbled.

Ruprecht shook his head. “In any case,” he looked at Albert, “in Oedipus we have the original motherfucker, yes!” Albert smiled. Franz let it sink in slowly like salve, then laughed.

“Is this Cocteau’s view or yours?”

Ruprecht was delighted. “Well, you know the French. They are in reality no better than cowardly Germans! Here, listen to this, you’ll get the idea.” Ruprecht had found the place he looked for in the script.

“Yes. A mother is talking about her sons who are always fighting. She says that they cannot live together under the same roof. Now the one who’s sixteen is only interested in politics. He says the Sphinx is a hoax. There might have been a Sphinx at one time according to him, but now this Sphinx is now dead, so the priests use it as a bogey to scare the people, and the police use it as a cover‑up for their inefficiency and corruption. In Thebes, there is starvation, rising prices, bandits infesting the countryside, no government to speak of, one bankruptcy after another‑‑ why? The Sphinx! The temples are crammed with holy offerings, while mothers with families haven’t a loaf of bread to call their own. Wealthy tourists are leaving the city‑‑ ”

“And the Jews!” Franz contributed.

“‘And why?… Ruprecht continued with a nod to Franz, “It is because of The Sphinx. And then the mother says, Ruprecht read, gesturing, “ ‘He gets up on the table, this sixteen year old boy, shouting and waving and stamping, denouncing the authorities, preaching revolution and praising the anarchists. What we need,’ says his mother, ‘what we need is a man, an iron fist, a dictator!’” Ruprecht looked up, his pale face flushed, his eyes bright.

“It’s a healthy thing for Cocteau he’s in Paris,” Albert said. He took the playscript from Ruprecht’s hand. He leafed through it, expertly cradling in his right arm, not reading, merely turning pages.

“But we never do get it right, do we?” he added. “I wonder where we get the demon to keep trying. Perhaps,” he mused, waving the script to imply the roomful of guest, “the same place they get the nerve to come here for a party like this.”

“They? You invited everyone,” Franz said.

“Oh, no. I am only the occasion of sin, as Konrad would say. You have all exercised free will in coming here.”

Ruprecht looked at Albert oddly. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what? ”

“Disengage yourself.”

“He was born to it,” Franz said. “Look about you, see? This is Albert’s domain. As the world crumbles around him, he paints on a three‑dimensional canvas, and you and 1, Ruprecht, and all the rest are mere daubs of oil paint.”

“Your logic eludes me, Franz,” Albert said.

“As ever!”

“Franz.” Ruprecht said.

But Franz found himself by the end of this last remark so aggrieved that he turned away and walked, stumbled to the dinnertable. Ruprecht stayed silently beside Albert for a while, then took the script gently back from his hand, lightly touched Albert’s right forearm, and led him over to join in the dinner. Well into the night, the guests talked about the many books that across the city fueled a mounting blaze. Stefan was never seen again, and it was the last party Albert was to give in Berlin.

Hours later, after all the revelers had departed, Albert sat with Konrad who had arrived only in time for port and cigars. Konrad had a plate of dinner and a bottle of wine beside him on the table by his chair. He had his feet up on a soft ottoman. He ate with a hunger slowed by obvious fatigue.

“Was it such a disagreeable party, then?” he asked.

The night air moved like a ghost around the two men.

I irritate Franz. Frankly, he irritates me.”

Konrad watched Albert as he sank back into his club chair, thumb tip in his mouth. He was biting with some concentration.

“He is frightened.”

“He is diagnosed as having Parkinsons‑‑ a disease of the nerves.”

“I see.”

Konrad found another slice of meat. “Franz is our homeland in miniature.”

“Everyone confides in you.”

“I am a priest,” he smiled. He sipped his wine.

“We missed you tonight.”

“I am sorry. I was obliged to be elsewhere.”

“Yes.” Albert waited, but nothing was added. He filled his glass with wine. “My brother has written me. He is also afraid. He analyzes our situation at length.”

“Dear Artur. How is he?”

“He is well.”

“Living in New York?”

“Yes.”

Konrad refilled his own glass.

“His letter has made me think. We don’t belong to the West, despite our pretenses; we don’t have the spirit for democracy like the English . . . In fact, I think more and more as Joseph Conrad said, we have at best the spirit of cynicism.”

“I believe Conrad was referring to the Russians when he wrote that,” Konrad observed.

“It applies as well to us.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“The point is,” he paused, “The point is . . . this cannot be stopped, can it?

“This, the paperhanger?”

“Yes.”

Konrad shook his head. “We are even afraid to use his name now. He has become such a god his name is forbidden to our mouths. The facts in the case are unique. There are two‑and‑a‑half million of Roehm’s Stormtroopers like the scum who attacked the girl, and there is also the paperhanger. So we have a scorpion with two stingers, a freak of nature. Can it be stopped? ‑‑Notice also: we use the passive voice, ‘Can it be stopped?’ Can it be stopped by whom?”

Albert rose and turned. “I was out there, outside the ‘walls’ of Berlin… In the country it is different.”

“In Buttelstadt?”

“Yes.”

“Albert?” said the priest quietly.

“Permit me. . .I ramble, I know, but permit me. First, there is Einstein. Yes? And Bruno Walter. And Mann on the boat to New York this very moment. And Toscanini. And Klemperer beaten. Just like the girl.”

Konrad looked down at his folded hands. The sound of the confessional voice was familiar to him, although unique from his boyhood friend.

“And then there are people‑- in Buttelstadt‑‑ people whose faces are empty, faceless–” Albert stopped, squinted, seeing something in memory. “On the road there was a sign: ‘Dangerous Curve! Slow Down! Jews Excepted!’”

The air in the large room was still.

“My money,” he began again, “was out of the country before the ‘31 tax law, but for how long can any come back in? And my God, shouldn’t the fascists be more friendly to capitalists than communists? Why is my hand always in my pockets for the wrong side?” His voice settled to a conclusion. “I have observed something: cities are not countries. Whoever got people to think of themselves as countrymen?. . We are just Berliners, you and I. We are not Germans, none of us!”

“Albert,” Konrad said calmly.

“Do I make sense?”

The priest sighed. “Yes,” he nodded. He was familiar with his friend’s excess of emotion, especially his sudden dark certainties. “Yes, you make sense.” He smiled. “Generally speaking, you always make sense.”

“Thank you.”

“Generally speaking.” He winked.

“But? ”

“But matters are no worse than they were last week.”

An intuition whispered in the priest’s ear and he spoke softly.

“So tell me what happened to you in Buttelstadt.”

“Why?”

“Tell me.”

Albert twisted under the question. I took her to her mother . . . I walked around the town.

I went to the church.”

“The girl?”

“Yes.”

“And?

He paused. “And she ’sees’ things. Like looking through walls. ‑‑I had to argue with her mother, a witch, to keep her there.”

“And so she scared you, the girl?”

He nodded.

“You believe she can see the future?”

“I don’t know. . You heard her in the hospital. She looks like she’s been hit by a. gust of wind. When she calms, she sorts it out, but there’s no time to it, no limit of distance.”

Konrad nodded. “It’s fascinating, if true.”

“I saw her. I heard.”

“And what did she see?”

“She saw me.”

“How?

“She saw me dead … in a charnel house.”

Konrad, distracted, finished his drink. “All right, old friend, now listen to me.”

“Konrad,” Albert interrupted and spoke quickly. “Don’t get your fingers caught in the machinery of state, or you will never‑–“

“Never what?”

He paused. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“Are you also hearing voices?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Has this girl had a vision?”

“I don’t know.” Albert shook his head. “I feel uneasy . . . I am so very deeply uneasy.”

Konrad rose from the soft chair. He spoke quietly. “The girl is charis matic‑‑ ”

“Kon‑–“

“But clairvoyant, that’s another matter–”

“Where have you been going?”

Another pause.

“I have been meeting with colleagues.”

“What colleagues?”

Konrad went to the open window. He breathed in the night air. He looked up and saw south of the Dipper, Saturn, and Mars brighter than Spica and Virgo.

“I will tell you something, Albert,” he said, still looking out. “There is a thesis I am coming to grasp. A group of us have become intrigued by the problem. The implications are enormous.” He turned.

“What is this thesis?”

The look of distress that flashed across Albert’s face was signal enough; the priest knew his old friend had neither the training nor the temperament to hear the confession he had almost begun. The Devil’s death would remain a matter of his own concern.

The Devil’s dark face fluttered before him now, as it had since the visits to the white room in the hospital just two weeks (was it a lifetime?) ago. In the distance, the voice of his old companion rose and fell. He listened and made replies.

“A group of colleagues like myself. Oddballs, actually…”

How many futures are there, he thought. How many versions of the Plot? What had the girl seen? What did the girl know…?