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apart from Jörg and Andreas they had all lowered their heads—some had also closed their eyes. Jörg’s lips moved as if he were joining in or saying his own secular, revolutionary grace.
    “ ‘For evening is on its way’—does that mean that the Christians needed God more by night than by day? I’m not like that—I need help by day more than by night,” Andreas said with mocking interest as soon as Karin was finished. His mockery suited him, it suited his gauntness, the angularity of his movements, his bald head and cold gaze. “And why ‘and the day has declined’? Isn’t evening being on its way and the day having declined one and the same thing?”
    “That’s what lawyers are like—they twist and turn your words in their mouths.” Ulrich laughed. “But quite honestly, Karin, doesn’t it ever get too much for you? Singing, praying, preaching, saying pious, clever things about everyone and everything? I know it’s your job—my job sometimes gets too much for me as well.”
    “Your first meal in freedom—what do you think?” Christiane gave Jörg a friendly nudge with her elbow.
    “Your first meal in freedom—a meal with grace.” Andreas wouldn’t let go. “What do you think about that?”
    “It isn’t my first meal in freedom. We ate this morning on the autobahn and in Berlin at lunchtime.”
    “That’s why we didn’t get here till this evening,” Christiane explained. “I thought Jörg should get a bit of city air. His release came as such a surprise that they couldn’t run the usual program. They took him out a bit the day before yesterday—that was it. No proper dayrelease, no open prison. But do start—what are you waiting for?” She pushed the bowl of potato salad toward Karin, and the bowl of sausages toward Andreas.
    “Thanks.” Karin took the bowl. “I don’t want to leave you without an answer. The hustle often gets too much for me, and not only because I’m actually rather slow. When I’m rushed, singing, praying and preaching don’t really come from the heart any longer, they become a job that I have to do. That doesn’t do God justice, and it does me no good.”
    “I call that a good answer.” Ulrich nodded and put some potato salad on his plate. Pushing the bowl toward Ilse, he turned to Jörg. “I don’t even need to ask you.”
    Annoyed, Jörg looked at Ulrich, then Christiane, then again at Ulrich. “What …”
    “Whether it was ever too much for you. What was actually the worst thing about jail? That you weren’t rushed, that you had too much time and not enough to do? That you were always in the same place? The other inmates? The food? No alcohol? No women? You were in solitary, I read somewhere, and you didn’t have to work—that’s half the battle, isn’t it?”
    Jörg struggled for an answer while already talking with his hands. Christiane intervened. “I don’t think those are questions that should be asked right now. Let him settle in before you give him the third degree.”
    “Christiane, the eternal big sister. You know the first thing I remembered when your invitation arrived? How I met you both more than thirty years ago, you always by his side, always with one eye on what he happened to be doing. At first I thought you were a couple,before I worked out that you were the big sister looking after her little brother. Let’s leave him aside for now. Karin has told us what things are like for her as a bishop. I’d be happy to tell you how my life with the labs is going, if you’d like to hear it, and he can tell us about his life in jail.”
    Ilse and Henner looked at each other. Ulrich’s tone lightened. But in his words, as in Christiane’s, there was a certain sharpness, as if they were both fighting a restrained battle. What were they fighting for?
    “You don’t want to hear anything about solitary confinement—none of you want to hear anything about that. And sleep deprivation and force-feeding and the insults and the