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"Take it easy, will you?" Cray spoke through clenched teeth. "This isn't as much fun as it looks."

"Do you want me to sew you up?" The lady was cheery. "Or are you going to walk around with holes in your arm?" She pricked his skin again, then pulled the needle through, the thread trailing behind.

Cray grimaced. He was sitting at the woman's feet, leaning back against her overstuffed chair. She was bent over him, legs to one side, the needle gleaming in her hand. The bulb of a gooseneck lamp was bent almost to Cray's shoulder. She worked quickly, professionally.

"Are you going to tell me how you got these holes in your arm?" She tugged at the thread, closing the wound. "A bayonet."

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with bayonets?" Cray glanced over his shoulder at her. She smiled with strong yellow teeth. The skin of her face was sallow, and was wrinkled like an elephant's leg. Her hair was too black — badly dyed — and pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck and secured by a red ribbon. She wore a shawl over a red print dress with ruffles at the neck. Her eyes were daylight blue and bright with humor. She was enjoying her work. On a lamp table next to the woman was a black Bakelite radio from which came a Deutschlandsender broadcast of Wagner.

The American said, "You're pretty good with a needle, ma'am."

"I don't want you to think I was always a seamstress, young man." She again slid the needle into his skin. "I didn't always make my living sewing the Klamotten."

"I don't know that word, ma'am."

"It's Berlin slang for clothes." She narrowed her eyes at her needle, wiping off a drop of blood between her fingers. "I once had a home on the Graf Spec Strasse, and I was a friend of the Casardis and Fürsten- bergs, the della Portas and Meinsdorps."

"Never heard of them." Cray winced. "Take it easy, will you? You're killing me here."

"But when the bombs came, my friends all boarded up their windows and left the city. Some to Rome, some to country villas. Our family has been a bit embarrassed for a generation, if I may say, and I don't own a country retreat." Her words were becoming clipped as anger rose at the unfairness of it all. "When my house was destroyed—it was sucked off its foundation by a bomb blast — I found this apartment in Bleibtreustrasse. And now I take in alterations and repairs." She yanked the thread through Cray's skin.

Cray yelped, "Kindly don't take it out on me."

"Before my society disintegrated, I was known for my table and my wit. Now I'm known for my sewing." She stabbed him again.

Cray sucked wind through his teeth.

"What are all these purple punctures? Must be a hundred of them. And these stitch scars?"

"A dog."

"Just one dog made all these teeth marks ? Did you just stand there and let the dog eat you?"

"It was three dogs. The stitches are where they tore away the skin. I've got more on my buttocks, not that I'm likely to show you."

"Not that I'm likely to ask."

"You probably were going to ask," Cray said. "I've heard things about you countesses."

She giggled. "And I've heard things about you young Americans."

"They are all true."

After a moment she said, "You must despise dogs now."

"Not at all," he replied. "Those long little dogs you have around here, the ones that look like sausages."

"They are called Tekels. The British call them 'dachshunds.'"

"Little salt and pepper. They wouldn't be too bad. Served with some rice or potatoes."

"Oh, you." She slapped his shoulder

The small room was cluttered with mementos from her prior station and evidence of her new one. In one corner was a Louis Quinze armchair. On a fern stand near the chair was a bronze bust of the Roi Soleil. Four Dresden china parrots lined the top of a bookshelf, and on a pedestal table were two Augsburg silver candleholders and a candle- snuffer. These suggestions of the Grande Epoque were surrounded by the more common paraphernalia of the seamstress. A treadle sewing machine was under a framed portrait of Martin Luther