At Oxford Gerd had been a part of the rowing club. He was first introduced to the sport as a child in Germany; his father, Curt, had kept a sailboat. Gerd would continue the tradition with his own kids. During one of Landau's early trips to visit the family, she went on one of these boating excursions. Beside the river Avon in nearby Stratford, the birthplace of Shakespeare, Gerd, Alison, and their three young children prepared to sail. Landau found herself suddenly feeling apprehensive: What if there was an accident? What if the kids fall in? But the family had a “life-jacket rule.” In the afternoon sun everyone put on their required safety gear—that is, everyone except Landau. “But I can swim,” she insisted. Without prompting, both Alison and her daughter Carrie separately brought up this memory. In Alison's telling, over the phone, Landau was anxious about the children. But, while we sat together at a café next to the Spree, the river that flows through the center of Berlin, Carrie stressed something else. What had stood out to her was Landau's refusal that day to care for her own safety.

This anecdote may well pinpoint many different aspects of Landau's person. Landau loved her family. She was also sensitive to children, as Alison recalled. At Spedding's home in Edinburgh, the same house Landau had visited during her trips to see the family, Naomi told me how Landau gazed on her as a child. She had a “loving, little smile.” Even though she never had her own, Landau seemed to intuit the needs of children and could be quite playful. As for her reaction to the family rule, the thing was, Landau could swim. She was a proud woman. And she was proud of that ability and would not disguise it. Not only that, Landau had overcome myriad obstacles and survived. She had been to sea during war. An afternoon rowing would have hardly seemed a personal threat after that long journey from England to the United States. She was also, yes, somewhat intractable. She did not follow suit when others might have. She did not follow suit when, maybe, she should have. She made her own plans and had her own mind. And her plans simply didn't include a life jacket.