In the Garden of Beasts

Messersmith becomes ambassador to Austria. Dodd is glad he’ll be leaving. The US embassy throws a going-away party. Several of Martha’s paramours attend: “There was heat, champagne, passion, jealousy, and that background sense of something unpleasant building just over the horizon" (264).

Banker Wilhelm Regendanz and his lawyer son host a small party where SA chief Röhm and three adjutants meet French ambassador François-Poncet. The ambassador hopes Röhm will help him get an audience with Hitler, but nothing comes of it. The party becomes infamous because, of the seven diners, three months later “four had been murdered, one had fled the country under threat of death, and another had been imprisoned in a concentration camp" (267). 

A small group from Mildred’s salon heads north from Berlin to visit author Rudolf Ditzen, better known by his pseudonym, Hans Fallada. Boris drives; they enjoy the springtime countryside and stop at a small farm where Fallada, his wife, and small child reside. Fallada is one of a group of writers who, instead of leaving, elect to stay in Nazi Germany in a form of “inner emigration,” keeping their heads down and quietly writing.