She has the Southern accent that I love. And she will be able, surely, to tell me about Munich, my native city, my childhood home that I have not seen for over four years. Sometimes in dreams I wander in its streets, or float dreaming over the Marienplatz, across the old section of the town, down towards the Isar River.
But Mrs. M. and I have things to discuss; no time for emotional excursions into dream cities.
She has stayed in Germany. No reason to leave; she and her husband are both all-Aryan. Her husband a well-paid physician; they have a pleasant apartment, a decent existence.
“As a matter of fact, it’s not a decent one,” she says. “It’s degrading. But what are we to do?”
Of course, Dr. M. is a member of the Party and of the Reich Medical Association, and of the Fachschaft (the Nazi professional union) — he must be, to exist. I needn’t ask about that.
“And you? Do you belong to any of the women’s unions ( Kammeradinnenschaften)?”
“Woman’s place is in the home,” she quotes her Führer’s inspired, living phrase.
And then laughs and admits that she is a semi-official personage in Munich.
“I’m blessed not only with a perfect Nordic long-and-narrow skull,” she goes on, “but I have the precisely correct pelvic measurements too, the desired bust, and the prescribed breadth of hip. The gentlemen on the Board of Health examined and tested, felt and measured everything, and found it all just about perfect. Then they photographed me, and listed the figures on the picture; and, all year, I’ve had the honor of gracing the calendar. The perfect brood-mare, recommended by the State! It would be funny enough, if it weren’t so sad, and so disgusting,” she adds, and the officially tested-and-photographed, guaranteed-genuine Nordic mouth is smiling wryly.
“And now you want to leave? After all this time, why?”