Free In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge

kind standing in three rows, one behind another, so grainy that you could hardly tell the many Chinese from the Germans in the picture. A perfectly normal, typical, stupid ND picture, but particularly stupid in view of the fact that people were actually running away from the VIPs (a fact that filled Irina, unlike Kurt, with wicked glee rather than concern).
    “It’s a warning,” Kurt informed her. “A warning to the people. It means: if there are demonstrations of any kind here we’ll do the same as the Chinese in the Square of Heavenly Peace. Good God—oh, really, concrete!” said Kurt. “Heads full of solid concrete!”
    He took a white roll out of the breadbasket and began spreading it with butter.
    The picture conjured up in Irina’s mind by the words “Square of Heavenly Peace” was of a thin student in a white shirt, bringing a column of four or five tanks to a halt. She remembered holding her breath in front of the TV set as the first tank, emitting clouds of fumes and rocking alarmingly, tried to maneuver its way past that small figure. She knew how you felt, up so close to a tank. She had been around them in the last two years of the war, if only as a paramedic. She knew a T-34 tank by the sound it made as it lumbered up.
    “You’d better have a word with Sasha,” said Irina. “Tell him not to do anything silly.”
    Kurt dismissed this idea. “As if Sasha would listen to me!”
    “All the same, you must speak to him.”
    “What do you want me to say? Here, look at this garbage”—Kurt tapped the ND with his finger so hard that it hurt Irina to watch—“lies and garbage, all of it!”
    “Try telling that to your mother this afternoon.”
    Irina fished a cigarette out of her pack. Kurt grabbed her hand. “Come on, Irina, have something to eat first.”
    The clock in the living room began its nine o’clock whirring. For a couple of moments, as if by previous agreement, they both paused. You had to listen very hard if you wanted to tell the time by that toneless whirr. Then Kurt said, “Very well, I’ll speak to Sasha.”
    He began eating his egg, stopped again, and added, “But after breakfast we’ll go for a little walk.”
    Irina also took a roll from the breadbasket, spread it with butter and cheese, worked out how long she would have left for a walk if she didn’t go to the Russian Store. On the other hand, she didn’t want to go for a walk, certainly not with Kurt, who always strode on ahead. And she didn’t have any suitable shoes.
    “Why don’t I call Vera?” asked Kurt. “Maybe she’d like to come with us.”
    “Oh, I see,” said Irina. “So that’s what it’s all about!”
    “What? What what’s all about?”
    “You’re keen to see Vera, are you?”
    “Vera is your friend,” said Kurt. “I thought you’d be bored with just me for company.”
    “Vera was never any friend of mine,” said Irina.
    “Wonderful,” said Kurt. “Then the two of us will go on our own.” Irina pushed the roll away and lit her cigarette.
    “Ira, what’s the matter?”
    “Nothing,” said Irina. “Go ahead, you can go for a walk with Vera.”
    “I don’t want to go for a walk with Vera,” said Kurt.
    “Excuse me,” said Irina, “you said just now you did want to go for a walk with Vera.”
    For a moment all was still. Then a door creaked, and Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s shuffle was heard in the corridor, coming closer, hesitating ... Irina flung the door right open and held the plate with the cheese roll on it out to her mother.
    “Here, eat that,” she commanded.
    “What is it?” asked Nadyeshda Ivanovna, without taking the plate. “For God’s sake, it’s a roll! A cheese roll! Do you think I’m trying to poison you?”
    “Cheese doesn’t agree with me,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna.
    Irina stood up, went into her mother’s room, and slammed the plate down on the table.
    Only when she was back in the living room did the nature of the smell in Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s room