"--oh. Yes. You can tell me about it."

"Tell me. Memories... faded."

She's never been. She's never lived anywhere but a city, she doesn't, she can't-- "It's-- big. So, so big, as big as the sky. And quiet. No people, no crowds, no motors. There's--" what do savannahs have, fuck, "space to run."

The lion looks at her and makes a happy sigh and listens.

Meanwhile--

Oscar asks around, but it turns out that having a bunch of contacts who are Wobblies and anarchists does remarkably little to help with your shop being closed by the government. But he does have at least one conspicuously rich contact. It's humiliating but he's going to see if Sano is at his office. He still has the black liao on him and absurd thoughts of surreptitiously returning it.

Sano's secretary asks him politely to wait and says that Sano will be right with him. She does not provide him with a book to read.

I mean, he figured.

About twenty minutes later, the secretary invites Oscar in.

Sano is walking with a noticeable limp.

That's not good. At least he doesn't appear to know Oscar stole from him-- thank God.

"Hello, Mister Sano," Oscar says. "I hate to drop in unexpectedly but I have bad news."

"Oh?" Sano says politely. 

"My shop's been shut down. For 'obscene material'."

"What a tremendous loss to literature."

"I don't even know what to feel. I don't know how to say this but the Forward never made a lot of money. And-- I'm going to need some way of supporting my family. Paying legal fees."

Sano nods. "And you're asking me for help."

"Yes. I've asked my other contacts but they're-- well, they're not on your level financially. I think at this point we're just sending around the same 10 pounds." He smiles weakly.

"It does concern me that a bookshop of such a high caliber was closed for what I must assume are nakedly political reasons."

"You assume correctly." He's always avoided political talk with Sano but it's hard to step into the Forward without noticing what type of newsletter they stock. "...You probably know what happened before."

"Refamiliarize me?"

"A few years ago they came after me for being excessively German," Oscar says. "Also, an anarchist. The official charge was selling stolen books. You can decide if that's worth two years in prison.'

"Did you sell stolen books?"

"I was new to bookselling at the time and misjudged one of my distributors... I've been more cautious since then." Is Sano missing the part where Oscar spent two years in prison.

"I must admit, Mr. Latz, I myself am deeply opposed to the anarchist philosophy. I serve my emperor; I live and die at his pleasure."

Oh. Um.

He'd always judged Sano as artistically conservative, maybe socially conservative, but not a fervent supporter of the Japanese emperor. The imaginary Hannah in Oscar's mind is furious.

"And yet law must be tempered with mercy. The British approach to obscenity is absurd; the Japanese do no such regulation banning entire areas of human life from artistic investigation. And if you wish to arrest people for anarchism simply criminalize anarchism. Do not arrest anarchists for things you turn a blind eye towards in the politically orthodox."