When, back from Hungary, I told her about the atrocities of Nyíregyháza (the Third Armored Corps had retaken the city from the Russians at the end of October, and had found women of all ages raped, parents nailed alive to doors in front of their mutilated children; and these had been Hungarians, not Germans), she looked at me for a long time, then said gently: “And in Russia, was it very different?” I didn’t say anything. I looked at the extraordinarily thin wrists her sleeves revealed; I could easily have looped my thumb and index finger around them. “I know their revenge will be terrible,”
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