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behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. The lenses were divided not into two parts like Papa’s but three parts. Three different focal lengths—one for reading close up, one for reading the blackboard, and one for distance, I imagined. Three different solutions for one problem—seeing. He blinked again, perhaps trying to fit me into a perspective, a plane. Perhaps not. I am not really that complicated. I just wanted my books back. But he said nothing as he turned and walked away.

chapter 5
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He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused.
    -Jack London, The Call of the Wild
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    R osa was waiting just outside the main school door to walk home with me. We lived near each other in Berlin in a neighborhood called the Schöneberg, also referred to as the Bavarian Quarter, or the Jewish Switzerland. I was not sure about the Switzerland part. Perhaps it was because many people who lived in our neighborhood were well off, and Switzerland was considered wealthy compared to postwar Berlin. But the Jewish part was more understandable. There were many Jews who lived in the Schöneberg. Most were associated with the University of Berlin and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. I was not Jewish and neither was Rosa. But Papa was a professor of astronomy at the university and held an office at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. Rosa’s mother, a widow, was a stenographer for the university. Her father had died when she was an infant. And ever since then her mother had worked in the classics department. This was very convenient, for Rosa got lots of help on her Latin homework from students in this department, and then I could get help from Rosa. I was not as good in Latin as I was in mathematics, but Rosa was lousy in math. It was a nice little deal Rosa and I had. She helped me in Latin and I helped her with math.
    What Rosa was very good at was fashion. Fashion and movie stars. We were both mad for movies. Our favorite actress was an American, Joan Crawford. We’d seen her in Montana Moon and Dance, Fools, Dance . They didn’t normally let children in to such movies without their parents, but Rosa’s cousin Helmut was an usher at the Gloria Palast Theater. He let us sneak in. Now I was so excited because Joan Crawford was in the movie Grand Hotel , which had just come out in America. The movie was based on the book People at a Hotel , which I had received this past Christmas. It was written by one of my favorite authors, Vicki Baum. I had read it twice already. I had heard that Joan Crawford played the secretary. I was glad that Marlene Dietrich didn’t get cast instead. Marlene was prettier in a way than Joan Crawford, but there was something a little scary about her, at least in the movie The Blue Angel when she sang that song “They call me wicked Lola.” She was very daring—sexy daring. My parents and Rosa’s mother would have died if they had known we’d seen The Blue Angel . We’d go to matinees, then yes, we would lie to our parents and say we’d been to get ice cream with friends, or we’d gone roller skating. We made sure to take our roller skates with us on the days we used that excuse. Clever liars we were.
    Ulla, my older sister, had seen The Blue Angel a few months back, and Mama nearly had a fit about that. But Papa had just said, “She’s a university student now, Elske. At eighteen she’s old enough.” Ulla got away with a lot just because she was a “university student.” One thing she was not getting away with, however, was