He slouched down in the screening room seat, his thoughts drifting to memory. The sunshine of Hollywood, the palm trees like a child’s drawing of what a tree should look like, the flowers like bright soft wounds, achingly beautiful . . . and, of course, the money. Even though he had gotten just a taste of that, the little bit that the powerful ones such as Herr David Wise doled out to their faithful underlings, it had still translated to that pretty cottage in the hills, and a car with a driver from the studio, and restaurant meals where the bill never came, just more strangely weak American coffee, poured by a smiling waiter from a silver pot. He sighed, feeling an ache of longing in his heart. Beyond the walls of the screening room – and a cramped little space it was, a far cry from the airy, cushioned spaces he had gotten used to at the Wise Studios – were all the rest of the buildings of the UFA complex, and beyond that was the suburb of Neubabelsburg, and beyond that, the city of Berlin.
