The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal

gone out of his pleasure. He thought that by Sunday he would not really care to go and have supper with the Helblings, that he would probably ring up and make an excuse for not going.
    When he had put down the receiver he stared for a while at the telephone directory. The other two men whom he had wanted to call were doctors. One with whom he had worked in the General Hospital was now, according to the entry in the directory, Director of one of the big clinics. He decided not to ring him up. The other was a gynaecologist, although the link between him and Adler had not been medicine but music. They used to play chamber music together, and Dr Stolz had been the viola to Adler’s second violin. The first violin had emigrated and the cellist, Adler knew, had died in a concentration camp. Stolz had been the only gentile member of the quartet, but he had mixed so freely and intimately with the others that he could surely never have been anti-Semitic? But now Adler could not be sure. What if he had, after all, been a Nazi? If he had felt obliged to become a party member because he had had so many Jewish friends? Or that he needed to be one for the sake of his practice? Adler felt that he could not bear another rebuff on the telephone; for Hermann’s five-day postponement of their meeting had almost been a rebuff. He felt that his attempt to reestablish social contacts had not been a success, forgetting that out of the three calls he had intended to make, he had in fact only made one, and it had resulted in an invitation to supper!
    On the Sunday Adler decided that, having accepted the invitation, he would after all go and see his old friend. A maid in a black dress, a little white apron and a white starched cap opened the door of the flat. It struck him as strange and old-worldly that there was a maid – a kind of luxury he had forgotten – but it gave him confidence too. He exchanged a few friendly words with her as she took his coat and hat, and his voice must have been heard in the living room, for the door opened and Hermann Helbling came out to greet him.
    ‘Kuno, my old friend, how good it is to see you! Come in, come in, let’s have a look at you!’
    And for a moment the two men stood gazing at each other not knowing what to say. Helbling’s reddish beard was powdered with grey; Adler’s black hair had receded from the temples and was streaked with silver.
    ‘You have put on weight!’
    ‘You hardly look a day older!’
    ‘Oh come now, that’s not true!’
    ‘Look at him, Ilse, he has hardly changed at all!’
    Ilse Helbling had come into the room and shook hands with Adler. ‘Hermann’s right, it’s extraordinary how unchanged you are! He tells me you have left Melanie over there. And your girls? They must be quite grown up. Not married, are they?’
    ‘No, no. Not married yet, though Hilde probably will be very soon.’
    And so on, still standing in the middle of the room, speaking a little too emphatically, a little too distinctly, as if reciting a conversation out of a phrase book, until Hermann said: ‘Well, let’s sit down,’ and Ilse said: ‘It’s hardly worth it, I’m sure supper is ready – just a Sunday evening cold snack, Herr Professor, or,’ with a little laugh, ‘may I still call you Kuno? Anyway, let’s go into the dining room, Mizi will just be putting some hot soup on the table.’
    Eating and drinking, they all relaxed and became easier. There was a white cloth on the round table. A lamp with a silk shade hung low over its centre, making the silver cutlery gleam. Their faces were in shadow. Hermann and Ilse talked. They did all the talking. What dreadful years these had been. No one who had not been through them could have any idea. The first years of the war had not been too bad, although even when victories were being blared every day over the radio they had never believed the Germans would win; not after it became obvious the invasion of England had failed. They had always