"No, thank you. Please excuse me, but I'd better not." Frau Breisach shook her head. She was a plump, reasonably pretty blond a few years younger than Sarah's mother. Now she thrust an envelope into Sarah's hand. "This was addressed to us, but I think it may be for you." She didn't wait for any answer from Sarah, but scurried away as if hoping no one had seen her come. She probably was hoping exactly that, too.

"Thank you," Sarah said, but she was talking to Frau Breisach's back.

She closed the door, scratching her head. "What was that all about?" her father asked.

"I don't know." Then Sarah looked down at the envelope, and she did. Ice and fire rippled through her, fractions of a heartbeat apart. She recognized the handwriting on the address. "I think maybe you'd better have a look at this. Mother, you, too."

Samuel and Hanna Goldman came out to see why she was fussing. Without a word, she handed her father the envelope. Behind his glasses, his eyes widened. So did those of Sarah's mother. Neither of them said much. They didn't know the Gestapo had put microphones in their house, but they also didn't know it hadn't. In Adolf Hitler's Germany in 1939, they didn't want to take any foolish chances.

Sarah's father took the letter out of the envelope. Sarah and her mother crowded close to read it with him. Hello, Uncle, Aunt, and Cousin Elisabeth, it said. Just a note to let you know basic training is going well. Don't listen to the rubbish you hear from some people. We get plenty to eat. The work is hard and we are often tired, but this is no Strength through Joy cruise. We are getting ready for war. I may end up in panzers. The drill sergeants say I have the knack for them. I hope so. They hurt the Reich's enemies more than anything else does, I think. I must go now-more drills. Stay well. Heil Hitler! The scrawled signature was Adalbert.

Sarah and her father and mother all eyed one another. That was Saul's handwriting. "How in the world did he-?" Sarah began, and left it right there.

"He must have got some identity papers," Samuel Goldman whispered. "And when he did…" The professor's chuckle was most unprofessorial. "Well, who would guess to look for him there?"

When Sarah thought of it like that, she started to laugh. The Nazis wouldn't believe Saul had joined the Wehrmacht, even if he and Father both tried to do it right after the war broke out. To the thugs who ruled Germany, Jews were nothing but a pack of cowards. And so, chances were, they'd go on combing through the sad, shabby civilian world, simply because they couldn't imagine a Jew would deliberately expose himself to danger.

Mother plucked the letter and the envelope from Father's fingers. She carried the papers off to the fireplace in the front room. No matter what the Gestapo said, they weren't going to report this. No, indeed! Jews got only cheap, smoky brown coal for their heating and cooking needs, and precious little of that. The fire on the grate was more a token gesture than anything else. Even so, the envelope and letter flamed for a moment, then curled to gray ash.

"There." Mother sounded pleased with herself. "That's taken care of, anyhow."

"So it is." Father nodded. "I wonder how he managed to…" His voice trailed away again.

Several pictures formed in Sarah's mind. Maybe one of the fellows on Saul's football club had connections and got him papers. Maybe, after he fled Munster, he went drinking with somebody named Adalbert and stole the identity documents he needed. Or maybe he ran into this Adalbert walking along a country road and knocked him over the head.

That would make Saul a real criminal, not just somebody who'd snapped because a gang boss wouldn't treat him like a human being. The thought should have horrified Sarah. Somehow, it didn't. Her brother never would have done anything like that if the Nazis hadn't pushed him over the line. Never.

"I hope he'll be all right," Mother said worriedly. "You can tell he's not an ordinary German, after all."

Father followed that faster than Sarah did. "Jews aren't the only ones who get circumcised," he said. "Sometimes it's medically necessary. What I wonder is how Frau Breisach knew that letter was really for us."

"Somebody must have recognized the handwriting." Sarah had no trouble figuring that out. "Saul used to go over there all the time to help the Breisach kids with their homework-back when you could without getting into too much trouble, I mean. I think he was sweet on Hildegarde Breisach for a while, but…" She didn't go on.

"Yes. But," her father said heavily. "I wouldn't have minded intermarriage very much. The all-wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful State"-you could hear the stress he gave the word-"is a different story. And Hildegarde would have been insane to take the chance."

"If the State really were all-wise and all-powerful, Frau Breisach would have taken Saul's letter straight to the Gestapo," Mother said. "Some people still remember what human decency means."

"Never mind human decency. The Breisachs know us," Father said. "That counts for more, I'd say. I wouldn't bet a pfenning that they'd help some strange Jew. But we've lived across the street from them since the last war. We aren't strangers-we're neighbors. People first, Jews second, you might say. All over Germany, gentiles are probably going, 'Well, I don't have a good word to say about most Jews, but Abraham down the street? He's all right.'"

"I wonder how much good it will do," Sarah said.

"Some, anyhow." Father nodded toward the now anonymous ashes in the fireplace. "And I'm jealous of your brother."

"For heaven's sake, why?" Mother got that out before Sarah could.

"He made it into the Wehrmacht," Father answered. "I fought for Germany before. I would have done it again. I am a German, dammit, whether the Nazis want to let me be one or not."

"Isn't getting shot once enough for Germany?" Mother asked pointedly.

"If I hadn't, the goons would have treated us even worse than they did," Father said. "Hitler says Jews haven't got any guts-but he can't say that about front-line soldiers from the last war. So we have it better than most Jews-not good, but better."

"Oh, joy," Sarah said in a hollow voice. "If this is better, I don't want worse."

Father nodded solemnly. "You'd better not. The difference between bad and worse is much bigger than the difference between good and better. So when you think about the difference between better and worse…"

He sounded like someone who knew what he was talking about. Chances were he did. What had life in the trenches been like? Sarah had read All Quiet on the Western Front-who hadn't? She'd seen the movie, too. But her father had really gone through all those things, and maybe more besides. It was probably like the difference between reading about kissing and kissing, only more so.

Mother started to laugh. "What's funny?" Sarah asked. She sure didn't see anything.

Still in a low voice to foil the microphones that might not be there at all, her mother answered, "Our only son's just gone into the Wehrmacht. And I'm happy! Happy! He has a better chance of staying safe there than he would if he were still running around the countryside somewhere."

Sarah laughed, too. When you put it that way, it was funny. Her father put things in perspective, the way he usually did: "If you have to go that far for a laugh, you've got more tsuris than you need."

He hardly ever dropped a Yiddish word into his German. It would have made him seem less German, more openly Jewish. It might even have made him seem that way to himself. Sarah stared at him now. She understood tsuris, of course-understood what the word meant and, these days, also understood the thing.

"We do have more tsuris than we need," Mother said. Neither Sarah nor Samuel Goldman tried to tell her she was wrong.