Suddenly, my knees turned to water, as I heard the clicking of boots against the tiling of the entrance. I had hardly time to recollect my wits before the door opened and Lieutenant Hanfstaengl, clad in a striking uniform, entered the room. I don't know whether I blanched or purpled, but I do remember changing color and stammering out some excuses in a voice that I had so wanted to sound firm, and which was barely audible.

I must have been a pitiful sight, for he burst out laughing (he seemed much less formidable after that). «Yes,» he said, «your cat visits me quite often. You sce, I do have a friend in this house after all.»>

He spoke French amazingly well, with hardly a trace of an accent. I had never really observed him very closely; now, he seemed so very unlike those blond head-shaven giants that I ran up against in the streets and subways every day. His tall frame was trim and slender, his eyes were the blue of the sea as blue almost as the ink which was the rage in school then, and his carefully combed hair was as brown as my own. He looked about thirty years old.

Seeing that I was about to flee, he stopped me. «Now that you're here,»> he said, won't you stay a moment and let us get acquainted?»

Considering the situation I was in, I could hardly refuse. I turned down the cigarette he offered me, but couldn't resist the piece of chocolate.

He wanted to know what I did with myself all day, so I explained to him. that I was attending high school in Paris; I had just started my third year.

He in turn told me about himself. He had been a journalist in civil life, working for the art department of a big Munich newspaper. As an officer, he had participated in the battles against Poland, Belgium and finally France, where his fluent knowledge of the language had secured him an enviable position with the Bureau of Information.

«I had studied in Paris,» he said, «quite a few years ago, and I'm so happy to be back. An extraordinary city, Paris!» He handed me another piece of chocolate and went on. «This was your room, wasn't it? You see, I've changed very little in it, just added a few personal things: Some books, my radio, and the pictures of my loved ones. This,» he explained, pointing, «is my mother. The soldier he used to be my secretary on the paper is my best friend. Right now, he's in Warsaw; he didn't have my kind of luck.»>

I felt ill at ease. Knowing my parents would be back soon, I could just imagine their horror if they found me in the room which, according to mother, needed disinfecting, listening to Lieutenant Hanfstaengl's life story and cramming down German chocolate.

Finally he let me go, but added: «You must come back and see me, I'd enjoy talking to you. I'm in every night: I go out so seldom. We can listen to music, and maybe you might need some help with your German home work.»

Again he smiled. I thought in all fairness that he was most likeable. I could hardly refuse him my hand when he offered me his, and when he asked, «We're friends now, aren't we?» I simply hadn't the courage to say no.

The two of us became conspirators even before we became friends, for I said nothing to my parents about our meeting. Still, I did not comply with his request to visit him again. He symbolized for me too strongly the regime against which I felt rising from all sides, more and more blindly as the days went on, the hatred of an entire nation.

That first winter under the occupation was a bitter one; it dawned on the mattachine REVIEW

French people that their trials were going to be prolonged and painful. Monotonously, depressingly, the months crawled by.

At last, on a bright summer day, when the weather alone was enough to rekindle some optimism in the heart, events took a sudden turn for the better; Hitler's army had attacked the Soviet Union. Strangers smiled at one another in the street; dozens of comforting tales were whispered from ear to ear, all concluding that «he» was no stronger than Napoleon. French hopes turned to the East.

Vacation time was meanwhile approaching, and my parents, unwilling to leave our house once more to the caprices of the occupation, decided to send me by myself up to my mother's sister. She owned a large estate in Sologne, deep in the woodland where, in the absence of any entertainment, I was sure to benefit from a consistent diet of overeating.

If some of our actions seem impulsive and incomprehensible to us, it may be because we are not conscious of the slow evolution of our being which has been leading up to them for a long long time. When on the eve of my departure I suddenly decided to say goodbye to the Lieutenant, it seemed as senseless to me as throwing myself into the waters of the Seine; still, I wonder even now whether it was only shyness that had made my heart pound so loudly when I knocked on the door of his room.

He did not seem the least bit surprised. «It was wise of you,» he said, «to have taken time out for thought before coming back. Of course it did take you a little bit long, but I always knew you'd make it in the end.» Then, and without any transition, «My name's Erik. What's yours?»

At that sensitive age, when I wanted so badly to be taken for a man, the use of the familiar by an older person would annoy me terribly; yet coming from him, it pleased me.

It was in the course of that evening that everything which had separated us, everything which had prevented me from coming back sooner, appeared suddenly devoid of all importance. As I sat watching him, listening to him, the truth dawned on me at last: I wanted, I needed his friendship; I longed to gain it and keep it, no matter who or what.

When it was time to say goodbye, he stood holding my hand in his. «We're going to see a great deal of each other, aren't we,» he asked, «when you come back in October? But, he added, «there's one rule we must observe: You and I must never speak of the war. We shall pretend that the war does not exist.» My vacation was boring beyond words. In spite of my aunt and uncle's prodigious efforts to make their home and grounds attractive, I had soon exhausted the charms of the forest which I considered morose and far too quiet. Need I add that already there was someone I missed?

I wrote my parents a month before I was due back, reminding them that I was about to enter senior high school, and suggesting that, for the sake of enabling me to prepare a careful schedule, I return earlier. Delighted with my unaccustomed zeal, they consented.

The trip seemed interminable and when I arrived home at last, our meager little garden looked lovelier to me than the big forest.

That evening, I knocked on Erik's door.

Happiness is difficult to describe, but I shall never forget how happy the months were that followed, how the loneliness of an only child had suddenly been dispelled by this so unexpected and clandestine friendship.