After the meal, little Siegfried Fischer, no older than five, walks around the table and tugs Werner’s sleeve and hands him a photograph he has torn from a newspaper. In the picture, six fighter-bombers float above a mountain range of clouds. Spangles of sun are frozen midglide across the airplanes’ fuselages. The scarves of the pilots stretch backward. Siegfried Fischer says, “You’ll show them, won’t you?” His face is fierce with belief; it seems to draw a circle around all the hours Werner has spent at Children’s House, hoping for something more. “I will,” Werner says. The eyes of all the
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