"Couldn't have that," Heinrich said gravely. "But she'll be nervous for a while now, and she's so young…" He shook his head. "Strange how the worst danger comes from making sure we go on. No one would ever suspect you or me-"

"Why else buy pork?" Lise broke in. "Why else have a Bible with the New Testament in it, too? Because we'd have to want to commit suicide if we used one that didn't, that's why."

"I know." Heinrich knew more intimately than that: he still had his foreskin. He took off his glasses, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and set the spectacles back on his nose. "We do everything we can to seem like perfect Germans. I can quote from Mein Kampf more easily than from Scripture. But it's not so easy for a child. I remember."

Lise nodded. "So do I."

"And we still have two more to go." Heinrich let out yet another sigh. He hugged her again. "I'm so tired."

"I know," she said. "It must be easier for me, staying home with the Kinder like a proper Hausfrau. But you have to wear the mask at the office every day."

"Either I pretend to others I'm not a Jew or I pack it in and pretend the same thing to myself. I can't do that, dammit. I know too much." He thought again of the hidden, yellowing black-and-white photographs from the east, and of the color prints from North America. "Wewill go on, in spite of everything."

His wife yawned. "Right now, I'm going on to bed."

"I'm right behind you. Oh-speaking of the office, on the way home today Willi said he admired how content I was here and now."

"Did he? Good," Lise said at once. "If you must wear the mask, wear it well."

"I suppose so. He also asked if we were busy tonight. I said yes, since we were, but we'll be going over there one evening soon."