In the Garden of Beasts

him only lightly,” Martha wrote, in an unpublished account; “I tried to treat him as casually as I did other friends. I forced myself to be indifferent to him one week; then the next, I became stupidly jealous. I was forgetful of him, then absorbed in him. It was an unbearable contradiction, grievous and frustrating to us both.”
    Martha was still committed to seeing the best in the Nazi revolution, but Boris had no illusions about what was occurring around them. To Martha’s irritation, he was always looking for the underlying motives that governed the actions of Nazi leaders and the various figures who visited the U.S. embassy.
    “You always see the bad things,” she said angrily. “You should try to see the positive things in Germany, and in our visitors, not always suspect them of ulterior motives.”
    She suggested that at times he too was guilty of hiding his motives—“I think you’re jealous of Armand,” she said, “or anyone else who takes me out.”
    The next day, she received a package from Boris. Inside she found three ceramic monkeys and a card that read, “See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil.” Boris closed the note: “I love you.”
    Martha laughed. In return, she sent him a small carved-wood figure of a nun, along with a note that assured him she was following the monkeys’ orders.
    Behind it all was that looming question: where could their relationship possibly go? “I could not bear to think of the future, either with or without him,” she wrote. “I loved my family, my country, and did not want to face the possibility of separation from either.”
    This tension led to misunderstandings and grief. Boris suffered.
    “Martha!” he wrote in one pain-flushed letter. “I am so sad that I cannot find the right words for everything that happened. Forgive me if I have done something mean or bad to you. I did not mean or wish to do so. I understand you, but not completely, and I do not know what I ought to do. What shall I do?
    “Farewell, Martha, be happy without me, and do not think bad about me.”
    Always they came back together. Each separation seemed to intensify their attraction all the more but also amplified the moments of misunderstanding and anger—until one Sunday afternoon in late November their relationship underwent a material change. She recalled it all in fine-grained detail.
    A bleak day, the sky like smudged charcoal, the air cold, but not so cold as to prompt Boris to raise the top on his Ford. They set out for a cozy restaurant they both loved that was housed in a boathouse on pilings over a lake in the Wannsee district. A fragrant pine forest walled the shoreline.
    They found the restaurant to be almost empty but still charming. Wood tables surrounded a small dance floor. When the jukebox wasn’t playing, the sound of water gently smacking the pilings outside was clearly audible.
    Martha ordered onion soup, salad, and beer; Boris chose vodka, shashlik, and herring immersed in sour cream and onions. And more vodka. Boris loved food, Martha noted, but never seemed to gain
ein Pfund
.
    After lunch they danced. Boris was improving but still tended to treat dancing and walking as interchangeable phenomena. At one point as their bodies came together, both became very still, Martha recalled; she felt suddenly radiant with heat.
    Boris pulled away abruptly. He took her arm and led her outside onto a wooden deck that jutted over the water. She looked at him and saw pain—eyebrows drawn together, lips compressed. He seemed agitated. They stood together at the rail watching a squadron of white swans.
    He turned to her, his expression almost somber. “Martha,” he said, “I love you.” He confessed now that he had felt that way ever since the first time he had seen her at Sigrid Schultz’s apartment. He held her before him, his hands firmly vised around her elbows. The mad-cap gaiety was gone.
    He stepped back and looked at her. “Don’t play with me, darling,” he said.
“Du hast viele Bewerber.”
You have a lot of suitors. “You should not decide yet. But don’t treat me lightly. I could not bear it.”
    She looked away. “I love you, Boris. You know it. And you know how hard I try not to.”
    Boris turned to watch the water. “Yes, I know it,” he said with sorrow. “It is not easy for me either.”
    Boris could never be subdued for long, however. His smile reappeared—that explosive smile. “But,” he said, “your country and mine are now