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THE OPERNPLATZ, BERLIN, GERMANY

They meant the fire to blaze, to consume, to crackle its way into the night with a ferocity to match their beliefs.

They meant it to roar, louder than the so-called fire incantations of the thousands of gathered students, louder than the words Goebbels shouted into his microphone about how this new Reich would be a phoenix rising from the ashes of these defeatist books.

God had other ideas. God and the very nature of the kindling.

Books didn’t like to burn. Ilse laughed when he attributed likes and dislikes to books, but it was true.

Part of their nature. Their paper wasn’t dry kindling, it was pressed with ink and made from pulp not devised for flammability, covered with cloth.

And the older books, like the ones on the cart behind him?

The ones with leather bindings and gold lettering? The ones on parchment ?

Those resisted burning like the pyres of martyrs receiving salvation from on high. They would only smolder, more likely to go out than to catch.

These students had it all wrong—backward. Books didn’t burn. Books ignited . They lit the burning in others. Not with paper and match. With ideas.

But then, that was their very argument.

A misting rain continued to obscure his view out the window, and he watched the scene blur.

Black umbrellas crowded the square, but closer to the struggling pyre they vanished.

The students closest to the fire burned brighter than the books, ignoring the elements.

They were making a statement, and nothing could stop them.

His deepest fear. His deepest dread. Nothing could stop them.

He’d thought it impossible. Ludicrous. Germany, his beloved fatherland, had so much beauty and culture and brilliance in its history, in its potential.

He knew it because he’d read all these books those students were burning.

He knew the minds his ancestors had possessed, the collective knowledge passed down.

It was beautiful. It was good. It was fair.

But it hadn’t stopped resentments from smoldering ever since the war when he was a child.

It hadn’t stopped the impossible from happening last year, after Hitler was elected.

It hadn’t stopped the Nazis from dismissing everyone of Jewish heritage from their positions.

It hadn’t stopped the nightmare from smoldering on from there.

The ache in his chest hadn’t let up since. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It could only grow worse with each book added to the “banned” list.

An arm slipped around his waist, and he didn’t need to look down to recognize Ilse. Her sigh was sweet and small and as aching as the hole gaping ever larger inside him. She rested her head against his shoulder. “You saved many of them.”

“Books? Yes.” He nodded toward the misted panes of glass. “But what of them? What of all those people?”

Her arm held him tight. “We could leave. Like the others. Go to France or England or America.”

If it were only about the words, the paper, the ink, the bindings, maybe he would. If the books were his only concern, he could preserve them elsewhere—that was the beauty of books. One could never destroy them all. One could only make a weak-flamed statement with a few.

But it wasn’t only the books. It was the generation so quick to denounce them. “I can’t, Ilse. I can’t abandon them.”

She knew it, but still she sighed again.

“What then? Will you stay and fight? Be a voice of reason in the madness? It’ll get you sacked, at best. Arrested, quite possibly.

And what of me then? What of us ?” She moved her other arm, and even in the darkness he knew what she would be doing.

A new move, but one that had already become familiar.

She pressed a hand to her stomach, protective and awed, over the little life growing within.

It was his turn to sigh. “When I was eight, when we first moved onto Sonntagstra?e, there were a few bullies that liked to torment Rolf. They would make fun of his lisp. Have I told you this story before?”

His wife shook her head against his shoulder, and he could feel her smiling. “No, but I can imagine where it’s going, knowing how protective you were of your brother. You confronted them?”

She knew him well. He smiled a grim smile, no brighter than the half-hearted bonfire outside. “I tried. But I was eight, small for my age. They were...I don’t know. Ten? Twelve? I got a bloodied nose, two black eyes, and a cracked rib for my gallantry.”

“Aw,” she crooned at him, running a hand up his rib cage. “My poor knight! What did you do? Or your parents?”

The flames in the square struggled, leapt when more kerosine was splashed onto them, painting oranges and yellows on the rain-blurred windowpane. His students shouted, arms pumping the air. As if they could bully away the ideas they found so offensive.

“My father sat me down, after Mutti had patched me up. He praised my bravery, my courage. My desire to protect the innocent, no matter the cost to myself.”

Ilse breathed a laugh. “That sounds like him.”

“Mm. And then he looked me in the eye and told me what I lacked was discernment. I had failed to consider that I was outnumbered five to one, and that I was fighting well above my weight-class. I had failed to take into consideration that the fight was doomed. Lost causes are all well and good, he said. But sometimes we must bide our time. Grow. Let them grow softer, kinder, wiser themselves. Or at least wait for help to arrive. Otherwise we find ourselves unable to fight at all, because we’ve been defeated too thoroughly. ”

“Choose your battles,” she said on a low exhale.

“And bide your time. Not for revenge—but for the chance to build friends instead of enemies. That’s what he told me that day. That the only way to defeat a bully was to win him over. The only way to truly defend what you believe is to make your enemy believe it too. Make him your friend.”

“And did it work? With those bullies?”

At the thought of Erik, he wanted to smile. At the sight of the brighter-now fire, he couldn’t. “One of them. The ringleader. The others drifted away when he changed. It’s ideas that win, Ilse. Ideas that always win. We just need to bide our time, until they’re ready to listen again.”

“But from here? Darling, they’re mad, it’s all mad.”

It was. But that only reminded him of something his godfather had said a few years ago, before his opinions had forced him from Germany. “It’s as Josef said. Madness can never be cured from the outside. It can only be healed from within.”

“Josef left , my love.”

“Josef gave up. Consigned them to their madness.” He shook his head, almost wishing he could do the same. But deep down, he was still that eight-year-old boy, ready to take on five neighborhood bullies just to keep them from taunting his brother. “I can’t do that.”

As if to mock him, the flames reached higher through the night.