It cropped up ominously, every time he opened his 
mouth, and to be mentioned by the Führer, even in 
passing,  meant  that  a subject had to be viewed 
with as much apprehension as an invitation  to  a 
drink with the Borgias. Now Hitler had pulled an-
other ace from his pack  -  an agreement with his 
most implacable enemy, Russia.
   There was no end to the somersaults  this  man 
could turn. He mesmerized everyone and they could 
only stare, stupified,  as he somersaulted nearer 
and nearer, each somersault higher than the last,  
until he landed perfectly upright on his two feet 
in front of them and with his hands clamped firm-
ly around their throats.
   There was no mistaking it.  Poland was for the 
chop and, this time,  Britain  and  France  would 
fight.  About that there was no doubt in anyone's 
mind, except, curiously enough, the Führer's.  He 
firmly believed they wouldn't. His intuition told 
him so.
   Still, this only added to Schulz's anxiety for 
if the collection of lethal lunatics now  running 
the  country  actually  thought  the  democracies 
would  fight, it might have given them pause.  As 
it was, the war was now certain and Schulz's des-
peration increased with each passing day.  Final-
ly, two days before the Führer ordered his troops
to march, a small buff  envelope  landed  on  the 
clean woolly mat  in  Frau  Nusbaum's  hall.  She 
brought it up in a state of some excitement.
   'Is it your calling-up papers, I wonder?'  she 
asked.
   Schulz's heart missed a beat. It was more than 
possible.  He tore open the envelope with shaking 
hands and read the letter inside.  It  was  short 
and to the point.  He  was to call at the address 
given above at 10.30 the  following  morning  and 
bring all relevant documentation with him. He was 
to ask for a Herr Ditzer.  The  signature  under-
neath was undecipherable.
   'They want to see me in connection with a  job 
in the postal service,' he said.
   'Why, Herr Schulz, surely a man of your stand-
ing wouldn't become a postman?'
   'It has nothing to do with  delivering  mail,' 
Schulz answered testily.  'It's in postal censor-
ship.'
   'But doing what?'
   'That I am not at liberty to say,'  Schulz re-
plied with a touch  of  importance.  'Censorship, 
after all, must begin at home.'

with offices on each floor leading off the  stone  
staircase and a rickety old lift that trundled up  
and down  in its own good time or not at all,  as 
the fancy took it.
   Schulz  opened  the first door he found on the 
ground floor corridor and went inside. There were 
row after row of desks, one behind the other. Be-
hind each sat a man, pen in hand,  head bent over 
forms of buff and pink and  white,  some bound in 
ledgers, other lying loosely on the desk.  As  he 
entered they all stopped working and looked up at 
him,  pens held posed as if ready to resume writ-
ing the instant he  turned  round  and  went  out 
again.  No one spoke.  No  one got up to come and 
see him.
   He cleared his throat and said,  'I'm  looking 
for Herr Ditzer.'
   No one moved.  There was an air of sullen sur-
prise that he should have spoken at all.
   'Do you know where I can find Herr Ditzer?' he 
repeated, but the question  trailed  off  into  a 
thick tangle of silence, followed by the resumpt-
ion of nib-scratching as the eyes lost all inter-
est in him and returned to  their  desks.  Schulz 
flushed.
   'I would like to see Herr Ditzer,'  he shouted 
sharply.  'Is  there no one here with any manners 
at all?'
   Once more the pens stopped scratching and  the 
eyes fixed themselves on him. In the new silence, 
a grey-haired man rose from his desk at the  rear 
of the large room and came slowly towards him,  a 
look of reproof on his face.
   'There is no Herr Ditzer here,' he said.
   'Then you might have said so  before,'  Schulz 
replied. 'Do you imagine people ask these  quest-
ions because they've nothing better to do?'
   'You didn't address yourself to anyone in par-
ticular,'  the  man  replied, 'and it seems to me 
very bad manners to enter a room and  address  us 
all as if we had no individuality.'
   'I'm not here to be lectured on manners,' said 
Schulz, shifting his  case   of  samples  to  the 
other hand.  'I'm here to see Herr Ditzer and I'm 
a busy man. Please tell me where I can find him.'
   'I have no idea where you can find  him,'  the 
man explained patiently, 'since I do not know the 
gentleman.  For all I know  he  may  be  in South 
America.'
   'This is the post office,  I suppose?'  Schulz 
asked with a touch of acidity.
   'No, this is Main Drainage,' the man  replied. 
'The post office is next  door.  You have come in 
at the wrong entrance.'

a simple human  error,  had  been  compounded  by 
their wooden indifference.
   What is it about our  national  character,  he 
reflected as he left the building and  found  his 
way to  the  next, that  elevates  precision  and 
attention to detail to the level  of  a  national 
obsession?  We lack balance, he added to himself, 
as he pushed open the door of the  first  office, 
we definitely lack balance.
   The chief clerk,  or so Schulz presumed him to 
be,  came  out of a smaller office into the large 
one and took the letter.  He  studied  it  for so 
long that Schulz began to get nervous once again.
   'This is the post office?'  he  asked  with  a 
short laugh. 'I went next door by mistake.'
   'Yes, yes,'  the  man  answered a touch impat-
iently,  'this  is the post office.'  He  studied 
Schulz for a while, thoughtfully.  Then he seemed 
to make up his mind. 'Wait here,'  he  said  and, 
taking the letter with him,  he  went out through 
the door Schulz had come in by.
   Schulz remained standing  there.  The  minutes 
dragged by.  He  looked round the room which held
nothing of interest for him.  A  few  clerks went 
about their business, paying him  no  regard.  He 
wondered if he should sit down but since  no  one 
asked  him he  decided  against  it.  Finally,  a 
phone rang on one of the  desks and a clerk pick-
ed it up.  He  listened for a while and then hung 
up.  He looked at Schulz.
   'Please go to room 403,' he said. 'It's on the 
fourth floor.  Take  the  lift but do remember to 
shut the gate after you.'
   Up on the fourth floor,  Schulz knocked on the 
door of room 403 and heard  a  voice  say,  'Come 
in.' Inside, the room was  bare.  There  were  no 
cupboards or shelves or carpet.  Only a desk with 
a chair behind it in which sat the  man  who  had 
taken his letter downstairs.
   'I don't understand,' Schulz  said.  'Are  you 
Herr Ditzer, then?'
   'That's no concern of yours,'  the man answer-
ed. 'You're not here to ask questions.'
   'But why was Herr Ditzer mentioned in the let-
ter?' asked Schulz.
   'I'll say only this,' the  man  replied,  'and 
then there will be no need to refer to it  again.  
You may look upon "Herr Ditzer" as a  code  which 
is meaningful to me but not to you. It's a matter  
of security. These are grave times and  we  can't 
be too careful. It wouldn't do for anyone to walk 
in here and know instantly who he was talking to. 
I'm sure you will appreciate that. I may be  Herr 
Ditzer or I may not be.  Herr Ditzer may exist or 
he may not. It's of no consequence.'
   Schulz said nothing. If this was to be the way 
things were to be carried out in  the  future  it 
was not for him to criticize them.  Not openly at 
any rate.  It  all  seemed  rather foolish but he 
also realized that,  in time of war,  precautions 
had to be taken.
   'So you want to be in postal censorship?'  the 
man asked rather gravely, studying Schulz's appl-
ication as if Schulz  had applied to enter a mon-
astery and had not fully considered all the impl-
ications. 'Is there any reason for this?'
   'Well,' said Schulz, 'I want to serve my coun-
try in the best way I can.  I speak several lang-
ages fluently.  It  seemed to me I could be very 
useful here.'
   The man nodded, pulling at his lower lip for a 
moment,  a movement Schulz decided was unsympath-
etic.
   'Well,  of course,  we shall need all the help 
we can get from our citizens,' he replied. 'I see 
you speak Serbo-Croat.  That  could be a distinct 
advantage.' He didn't say why.
   There was a short silence while he again stud-
ied Schulz's application.
   'I see you are thirty?'
   Schulz nodded.
   'You look older. Perhaps that is the result of 
your prison sentence.'
   Schulz blinked. It seemed that a prison record 
was not necessarily a  disadvantage  in  the  new 
Reich.
   'I've always been  mature-looking,'  he  said, 
'even as a child.'
   'Are you a member of the Party?'
   'No,' said Schulz.
   'Have you ever applied?'
   'No.'
   'That in itself is  no  bar.' He shrugged. 'It 
may even, at this stage,  be construed by some as 
an advantage.  Too many people of doubtful  char-
acter have jumped on the bandwagon these last few 
years.  I remember when times were hard,  when to 
be a member of the Party was to  invite  contempt 
and derision.  Now, of course,  everyone wants to 
belong.  But everyone can't  belong!'  He brought 
the flat of his hand down  sharply  on  the  desk 
with a sound like a pistol crack.
   There  was  a  further  silence.  Schulz  felt 
slightly uncomfortable. He had expected a differ-
ent sort of interview and wasn't sure how to deal 
with this.  Something,  however, in his letter of 
application was absorbing his  interviewer's  at-
tention.  He picked it up, holding it at the side 
between thumb and forefinger and brought his grey 
bullet head closer to it, as if he were trying to 
smell it.  Perhaps this was the first time he had  
seen the letter,  for  there was no evidence that  
this man was the author of the illegible  signat-
ure on the letter Schulz had received.
   'I see you are a traveller in  ladies'  under-
wear?' he said, slowly raising his eyes to Schulz 
who felt the usual twitch in his stomach when the 
subject of his profession came up.
   He swallowed hard and nodded.
   'Ladies?'  the  man  asked,  giving the word a 
slight emphasis as if to make sure there could be 
no misunderstanding.
   Schulz nodded again.
   The man stared at him and Schulz laughed nerv-
ously, and was about to make his usual joke about 
travelling in ladies' underwear but said  nothing 
instead.
   'What sort of underwear?'  the man asked, gaz-
ing at him intently.
   'What sort?' Schulz repeated.
   'Yes.  Describe it.'
   Schulz  laughed  again. 'Well,' he said, 'it's 
woollen mainly, but some silk.'
   'Woollen mainly but some silk,'  the  man  re-
peated slowly, giving the words a  soft  emphasis 
as if quite taken with the description and  about 
to note it down carefully.  'I suppose you supply 
all kinds?'
   Oh Christ, thought Schulz,  he's looking for a 
handout for his wife. People always seem to think 
they're entitled to them.  Well, I've got a case-
ful and if it oils the wheels a little, why not? 
   He smiled brightly at the man and nodded. 'Oh, 
yes, all kinds,'  he replied. 'Slips and panties,  
brassières and negligées and such like.'  He only 
just managed to suppress a wink.  This  at  least 
would put them on more equal  terms.  'We  import 
the silk ones from France.'
   'And lace, I suppose, on the edges?'
   'Lace trimmings, of course,'  Schulz  laughed.
'What would these  things  be  without  the  lace 
trimmings?'
   The man stared at him for a while, then took a 
handkerchief, cleanly laundered and folded, which 
he flipped open from a corner,  put  his hand be-
neath the centre, lifted to  his  nose  and  blew 
loudly, his eyes all  the  while  on  Schulz.  He 
carefully folded the handkerchief and put it away 
again.
   'Tell me, Herr Schulz,' he said, leaning  for-
ward, 'why do you think it is that women's under-
wear is made of such softer material than  men's. 
I'm thinking of the silk, especially, though even 
in the case of wool, a woman's ... panties - yes, 
I won't flinch from using that word  -  a woman's 
panties are  softer  and  more  pleasant  to  the 
touch. I am wearing  silk  underwear  myself,  at 
this very moment, but there is no comparison with 
the things they produce for  women.  Why  is  it, 
Herr Schulz? You're in the trade - a  profession-
al, one might say - and must have given this some 
thought?'
   Schulz stared at him, dumbfounded. He had nev-
er given it any thought.
   'Is it,' the man went on,  'that they consider 
men  to  be  insensitive,  coarse  creatures  who 
wouldn't know the difference?  I  assure you that 
would be a very wrong assumption. Yet it's a very 
depressing experience for a man to go out looking 
for underwear that he would be proud and  excited 
to present next to his  naked body in the privacy 
of his bedroom.'
   Schulz nodded and coughed sympathetically.
   'I don't want you to get the impression,  Herr 
Schulz,  that I am one of those people who derive 
a curious and unhealthy pleasure from putting  on 
women's clothes.  I have nothing but contempt for 
such people. If the truth were known,  there  are 
far too many of them in our Party  -  I  tell you 
this in the strictest of confidence, of course  - 
and at the highest levels too.'
   There was a long silence.  Schulz  cleared his 
throat  and  started  to say, 'Well,  now ...', a 
sound that startled him so much that he failed to 
proceed with it,  though  he was relieved to find 
he still had his voice.  Meanwhile  the  man  had 
ceased to lean forward and was now leaning  back,  
gazing at Schulz anxiously as if waiting for some 
kind of oracle from the horse's mouth.
   Finally the man stood up,  walked  slowly over 
to the window and stood gazing out.
   'Is  there  anything  you'd  like  to ask me?' 
Schulz enquired hesitantly.
   The man turned and allowed his  gaze  to  rest 
lightly on him for a moment and then turned away.
   'There's nothing I can think of,' he answered.  
'You must take a form and fill  it  out  -  three 
forms to be exact.'
   'Of course,' Schulz murmured.  He hesitated  a 
moment,  then went on:  'Do you think it might be 
successful?'
   'Oh yes, I hope so, yes. I'm sure it will - in 
some form or another  -  yes.'  There was another 
silence,  then he said,  'I would deem it a great 
personal favour if you would allow me to  examine 
your merchandise.'
   Schulz sighed.  He  got up and lifted his case 
on to the desk.  He  snapped the locks open,  but
paused  as  he was about to lift the lid when the
man intervened by raising a hand  slightly  in  a 
restraining gesture.
   'Would you consider it a grave impertinence if 
I examined them in private?'
   Schulz thought for a moment. 'Would  you  like
to keep them,' he said.
   'Ah, that's too kind, I never thought - I nev-
er expected ...' He seemed slightly overcome.  He 
took his  handkerchief  out  and  blew  his  nose 
again.  'I shall keep them in a night safe at the 
bank.  They will be safer there than at home ...'  
He trailed  off,  clearly  feeling he need say no 
more.
   Schulz  removed  the samples from the case and 
placed them on the desk, closing the  lid  again.
He looked at the man and wondered  if  he  should 
sit down, but the man had turned away  once  more
towards the window and stood  gazing  out  as  if 
Schulz's presence and even the memory of  it  had 
already faded from his mind. There seemed no fur-
ther point in staying.  What  would happen to his 
application Schulz had no idea.  Perhaps it would 
go through normal  channels.  Perhaps  his  tacit 
collusion in the fantasies of  a  silk  fetishist 
would help.  Perhaps not.
   He picked up the three forms the man had push-
ed towards him, and left the office,  closing the 
door, but catching, before he did so, a momentary 
glimpse of his interrogator  moving  towards  the 
object of his affection,  his  hands outstretched 
in greedy anticipation as  if,  when  he  reached 
them, he might plunge whole, parched  being  into 
their cool reviving waters.

But the more he tried to grasp it  the  more  the 
experience slipped away.  He had no calls to make 
that day outside the office and therefore attend-
ed to an accumulation of paperwork.
   He had not mentioned to his employer  that  he 
had applied for another post, and he wasn't look-
ing forward to doing so.  Herr  Krauss was in one 
of his familiar rages and this time it was  fort-
unately turned against Herr Sturmer, the man from 
the  Ministry of Supply. There was nothing of the  
bureaucrat  about  Sturmer.  If 'Herr Ditzer' had 
given Schulz a foretaste of the  more introspect-
ive government official, Sturmer was, in complete 
contrast, a man who would  have  looked  more  at 
home on a racecourse.
   'Eighty marks a gross for underpants? What are 
you trying to  do, ruin me?' Krauss  was  scream-
ing.  His  eyes were pale blue and sad, as though  
he had already been ruined by the ladies'  under-
garment trade.  Now there was a pink flush to his 
fat little cheeks.
   'Herr Krauss, there's a war on,' said Sturmer. 
He was sweating profusely as though he were wond-
ering if he'd backed the wrong horse.
   'Am I supposed to pay for it on my own? You've 
taken half my staff for the army. Don't you think 
I know there's a war on?' 
   See here, Herr  Krauss,'  said  Sturmer,  'the 
Ministry has calculated that the  price  gives  a 
reasonable profit. The Ministry is very  sympath-
etic to the problems of the manusfacturing indus-
try.'
   'Eighty marks a gross is not  sympathetic!  At
eighty marks a gross I'd be  better  off  in  the 
army!  In fact I've a good mind to join the army!  
Let somebody provide me with underpants at eighty 
marks a gross!'
   Sturmer was busy gathering his  papers.  'I'll 
talk to my superiors,' he said.
   Krauss wouldn't let it go.  He  was  concerned 
about quality.  'In  a  week  they'd  be  full of 
holes, Herr Sturmer,' he said.  His  lenses  were 
quite steamed up by this time.
   Sturmer stopped at  the  office  door.  'If  I 
could get eighty-one and a half,  would  that  be 
acceptable?'
   Krauss,  thinking that he'd driven a patriotic 
wedge into his bargaining  position,  decided  to 
make an appeal on behalf of the war  effort.
   'What impression would the British get if they 
take our boys prisoners wearing  underpants  full 
of holes? Have you thought of that?'
   Sturmer started to walk out.
   'Eighty-one and a half would  be  acceptable,'
said Krauss,  accompanying  him  to  the  outside 
door.
   'Leave it to me, Herr Krauss,'  said  Sturmer. 
'I hope to get back to you in a  few  days.  They
say the war will be over by Christmas ...'
   His  parting  remark  had  failed  to convince 
Schulz.  Intermittently  through  the rest of the 
day he examined the situations column.

she hurried along the hall towards him. It arriv-
ed only half an hour earlier or she would  surely 
have telephoned him at the office.  What could it 
be? A telegram was so unusual. Herr Schulz had no 
relatives who might be ill or dying  so  she  was 
quite sure it had to be something important.  Her 
state of excitement was such that he wondered how  
she had restrained herself from opening it.
   The telegram was terse.  It merely ordered him 
to report to the Brandenburg Barracks in Duisberg 
not later than four o'clock on the  afternoon  of 
31 August. It was signed - Ditzer.
   Schulz stared at the telegram.  Could  they be
short of staff? Had he made such a vivid impress-
ion that they wanted to grab him before some oth-
er department did?  Duisberg! thought Schulz.  It 
was miles away. Today was 31 August.
   He sat down and calculated. He wasn't mentally 
prepared for such an upheaval but  the  important 
thing was that he  had achieved the first  object 
of his programme for surviving the  holocaust  to 
come. Somewhere in Duisberg,  a small  niche  was 
waiting for him where he   might  sleep  out  the 
chilly winter of war and emerge into the sunlight 
when it was over, one way or another.
   Frau Nusbaum, however, wept when she read  the 
telegram.  She had not seriously contemplated his 
departure.  She had not imagined the war could so 
swiftly touch their lives or break  their  little 
friendship, she said.  Why, it had not even begun 
yet and here he was making ready for departure to 
a strange city.  She could not accept it.
   She paused abruptly, looking at him,  a  soft, 
moist smile upon her face.  Schulz shuddered  in-
wardly.  Thank God,  he  thought, taking  out his 
watch to look at the time.  Thank  God  today  is 
Wednesday.
   'Do you know what I shall do, Herr Schulz?  It 
has just entered my mind to do it.'  She came and 
stood in front of him, looking down into his eyes 
for she was taller than  he  -  and  considerably 
wider. She placed the fat palm of each fat little 
hand on his  lapels and  spoke  softly.  'Do  you 
realize - oh, I'm sure you do,  you naughty man - 
you will not be here on  Saturday?  I shall break 
my  rules, Herr Schulz. Today must be counted ex-
ceptional. I know you would not dare to ask,  but
-  yes, this once, you shall have the keys to the  
playroom  on a  Wednesday.'
   Schulz managed to suppress a sigh.
   'And,' she went on,  'as  a  special  treat  I 
think we may even entertain the idea  of  opening
the attic.'