Frau Diller Quotes

He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Frau Diller's. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped.

Rudy Steiner slept. Mama and Papa slept. Frau Holtzapfel, Frau Diller. Tommy Müller. All sleeping. All dying.

He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Frau Diller’s. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped.

She remained on the steps, waiting for Papa, watching the stray ash and the corpse of collected books. Everything was sad. Orange and red embers looked like rejected candy, and most of the crowd had vanished. She’d seen Frau Diller leave (very satisfied) and Pfiffikus (white hair, a Nazi uniform, the same dilapidated shoes, and a triumphant whistle). Now there was nothing but cleaning up, and soon, no one would ever imagine it had happened. But you could smell it.

The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn't quite managed. At first, the drops were cool. I felt them on my hands as I walked down from Frau Diller's, in the middle of the road. Above me, I could hear them. Through the overcast sky, I looked up and saw the tin-can planes. I watched their stomachs open and drop the bombs casually out. ... The bombs came down and soon the clouds would bake and the cold raindrops would turn to ash. Hot snowflakes would shower to the ground.