and lice. The doctor provided a cream for the first affliction and recommended Natan shave his head for the second.
Sara and her parents took Natan home—not to his flat, which Sara and Amalie had cleared out months before, but to his childhood bedroom. Sara and her mother prepared him a simple, nourishing meal of potato soup and bread while he bathed and shaved, at first refusing his father’s help, and then admitting he required it. Afterward his cough was worse, but the medicine had eased his fever, and he looked so much better clean, freshly shaven, and even bald that tears came to Sara’s eyes. After he ate—carefully, sparingly, following the doctor’s warning—he dragged himself upstairs and collapsed into bed. He slept for eighteen hours.
When he woke, he was ravenous. Clad in warm flannel pajamas and a dressing gown, he came downstairs to the kitchen, where the cook prepared him a hot breakfast of coffee, oatmeal, and toast. He asked to read the Berliner Tageblatt while he ate. Sara brought it to him, poured herself a cup of coffee, and seated herself at the table, ready to fetch him anything else he wanted, or to talk if he felt up to it.
Instead he studied the paper with a burning intensity, nodding approval at one article, muttering disparagingly at another. “This is such ingratiating propaganda that Goebbels himself might have written it,” he grumbled once, smacking an article with the back of his fingers. His brow furrowed at the many unfamiliar bylines, and his concern deepened as he realized how many names of former colleagues were absent. Eventually he pushed the paper aside, rested his arms on the table, and regarded Sara as if he expected an argument. “I have to find work.”
“You have to regain your strength.”
“After that. I have to find work. I have to write.”
“Natan, no,” she protested, glancing over her shoulder for their parents. “You can’t. The Gestapo will be watching you. The moment you break the law again, they’ll throw you into a worse camp than Oranienburg. You won’t survive.”
“It’s not against the law for a Jew to write for Jewish newspapers. I’ll convince a Jewish newspaper to hire me, or I’ll start my own.”
“I don’t understand why you have to go looking for trouble.”
“The trouble’s already here. I’m just going to write about it.”
She decided not to tell their parents, in the hope that Natan would change his mind. Still, although she worried, she could not help admiring him for his determination, his undaunted courage. She was just a literature student, her only form of protest her participation in Mildred’s study group. Natan’s work, when he resumed it, would actually make a difference.
A few days after Natan came home, Dieter phoned to ask if he could see her, if a visit would not impose upon the family. She invited him to come for tea that afternoon, guiltily mindful of the many dates she had canceled as the family prepared for Natan’s release. In two days Dieter would be leaving for Australia on business and would not return for four months. She had to see him before he left, and this might be their only chance.
“Maybe you should go with Dieter to Australia,” said Natan, lingering in the doorway as she tidied the living room.
“He’s going on a business trip, not a vacation. Anyway, we’re not married yet. Mother and Father would never allow it.”
“I think they might. Maybe they should go too, and you all should . . . stay. Indefinitely.”
“You mean emigrate.” Shaking her head, Sara plumped a pillow vigorously and set it back down on the sofa. “How could we leave you and Amalie behind?”
“You could return when the Nazis are out of power.”
“And that would be when?”
“Or we could join you in Australia.” Natan heaved a sigh and turned away. “Just think about it.”
There was no point in thinking about it; Dieter was leaving in two days and she could never make arrangements to accompany him on such short notice. Nor would she leave the university so close to earning her degree. Natan was just being an overprotective elder brother, she told herself as the doorbell rang and she hurried off to welcome Dieter.
“Sara, darling, it’s so good to see you,” he said when she opened the door. He was bundled up in a heavy wool coat and a hat, his cheeks red from the cold, and he carried a large box she assumed held imported delicacies. “How is Natan?”