Rice, fish, natto and green tea are exchanged for bread rolls and coffee, kasutera cakes, smoked ham, cheese cut from large, waxy blocks. Almost all of it was bought from the German delicatessen on the Ginza. Now, without any discussion between them, they have stopped going there. Was it the fall of France? The bombing of the English cities? The rumours (they are barely more than that, little muffled stories carried in the remnants of the liberal press) of what, under the smoke of war, might be happening to the European Jews? So they have lost the peppercorn salami, the Jarlsberg, the paper-thin slices of Black Forest ham. Even the last of the coffee, Lohmeyer’s house blend, black as loam, has been abandoned, and today they are drinking another coffee, a lesser coffee, taken from a case with army markings in the back of the blue Nissan. There is no cause to complain, however. Having coffee at all makes them more fortunate than most, and kasutera cakes are still only ten sen a piece, sometimes less.
