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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - Noveot up in the ht the children home from Sunday school Eric was three and Heike o, and they looked so sweet in their best clothes that Maud thought her heart would burst with love

She had never known an emotion like this Even herThe children also made her feel desperately anxious Would she be able to feed them and keep them warm, and protect theave thean to prepare for the evening She and Walter were throwing a shth birthday of Walter&039;s cousin Robert von Ulrich

Robert had not been killed in the war, contrary to Walter&039;s parents&039; fears-or were they hopes? Either way, Walter had not become the Graf von Ulrich Robert had been held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia When the Bolsheviks had , had set out to walk, hitchhike, and ride freight trains home It had taken them a year, but they had made it, and when they returned Walter had found them an apartment in Berlin

Maud put on her apron In the tiny kitchen of her little house she e, stale bread, and turnips She also baked a sredients with more turnips

She had learned to cook and hbor, an older woht her how to make a bed, iron a shirt, and clean a bathtub It had all co of a shock

They lived in a middle-class town house They had not been able to spend any money on it, nor could they afford the servants Maud had always been used to, and they had a lot of secondhand furniture that Maud secretly thought was dreadfully suburban

They had looked forward to better tiot worse: Walter&039;s career in the foreign lishwo else, but in the economic chaos he was lucky to have any job at all And Maud&039;s early dissatisfactions seemed petty now, four years of poverty later There was patched upholstery where the children had torn it, broken s covered with cardboard, and paintwork peeling everywhere

But Maud had no regrets Any tiue into his mouth, unbutton his trousers, and lie with him on the bed or the couch or even the floor, and thatelse

Walter&039;s parents ca half a ham and two bottles of wine Otto had lost his fas had been reduced to nothing by inflation However, the large garden of his Berlin house produced potatoes, and he still had a lot of preine

"How did you s could norht only with American dollars

"I traded it for a bottle of vintage charandparents put the children to bed Otto told them a folktale From what Maud could hear, it was about a queen who had her brother beheaded She shuddered, but did not interfere Afterward Susanne sang lullabies in a reedy voice and the children went to sleep, apparently none the worse for their grandfather&039;s bloodthirsty story

Robert and Jorg arrived, wearing identical red ties Otto greeted them warmly He seemed to have no idea of their relationship, apparently accepting that Jorg was simply Robert&039;s flatmate Indeed, that was how the ht that Susanne probably guessed the truth Wo

Robert and Jorg could be very different in liberal company At parties in their own home they made no secret of their romantic love Many of their friends were the same Maud had been startled at first: she had never seenlike schoolgirls But such behavior was no longer taboo, at least in Berlin And Maud had read Proust&039;s Sodoest that this kind of thing had always gone on

Tonight, however, Robert and Jorg were on their best behavior Over dinner everyone talked about as happening in Bavaria On Thursday an association of pararoups called the Kampf bund had declared a national revolution in a beer hall in Munich

Maud could hardly bear to read the news these days Workers went on strike, so right-wing bullyboys beat up the strikers Housewives e of provisions, and their protests turned into food riots Everyone in Gerry about the Versailles Treaty, yet the Social Deovernment had accepted it in full People believed reparations were crippling the econoh Germany had paid only a fraction of the a to clear the total

The Munich beer hall putsch had everyone worked up The war hero Erich Ludendorff was its most prominent supporter So-called storm troopers in their brown shirts and students from the Officers Infantry School had seized control of key buildings City councilors had been taken hostage and proovernment had counterattacked Four policemen and sixteen parae, from the news that had reached Berlin so far, whether the insurrection was over or not If the extremists took control of Bavaria, would the whole country fall to thery "We have a deovernet on with the job?"

"Our government has betrayed us," said his father

"In your opinion So what? In America, when the Republicans won the last election, the Democrats didn&039;t riot!"

"The United States is not being subverted by Bolsheviks and Jews"

"If you&039;re worried about the Bolsheviks, tell people not to vote for them And what is this obsession with Jews?"

"They are a pernicious influence"

"There are Jews in Britain Father, don&039;t you remember how Lord Rothschild in London tried his best to prevent the war? There are Jews in France, in Russia, in Aovernments What makes you think ours are peculiarly evil? Most of theh to feed their families and send their children to school-just the same as everyone else"

Robert surprised Maud by speaking up "I agree with Uncle Otto," he said "De and I have joined the National Socialists"

"Oh, Robert, for God&039;s sake!" said Walter disgustedly "How could you?"

Maud stood up "Would anyone like a piece of birthday cake?" she said brightly

{II}

Maud left the party at nine to go to work "Where&039;s your uniforht Maud was a night nurse for a wealthy old gentlee when I arrive," Maud said In fact she played the piano in a nightclub called Nachtleben However, it was true that she kept her uniform at work