Domagk smiled. 'Wuppertal cannot offer a great deal of amusement for a young man. It's hardly Paris, _nicht water?_ There's the cinema. And I expect you enjoy the company of Frдulein Dieffenbach.'
Professor Hцrlein shook hands. 'I expect we shall see each other again.'
But we did not, until he was on trial for his life at Nьrnberg.
3
'Well, what do you expect?' Frдulein Dieffenbach used an unnaturally sharp voice for arguments, or when she was embarrassed or chiding me about the puddles I left on the bathroom floor. 'We supposed everything would be settled in accordance with the famous Fourteen Points, because after all, President Wilson was a lawyer, so he could produce a just agreement in an intelligent way, without emotion or malice.'
'Whoever heard of a lawyer stopping a battle?' I asked-in German, because she spoke hardly any English.
'The Americans, obviously,' she replied primly.
'The Americans think you can fix anything if you hire a smart enough attorney.'
'That's exactly the remark I should have expected from you, Herr Elgar.' She was a schoolmistress, and she reproved me in her best schoolmistress manner, which sat on her as grotesquely as the broad-brimmed flat black hat she was in the act of unpinning. Her hair was so blonde it suggested an albino, and she wore it coiled in plaits over her ears, resembling a telephone girl's headphones. 'Like any educated young man who can't take things seriously, you imagine that you are a…a Rochefoucauld,' she said flatteringly, not being able to think of anyone else. 'President Wilson was a great idealist.'
'On the contrary, he was only a great optimist.'
'Well, what's wrong with that? Relying on the best in people?'