In December 1932, two weeks after meeting Sofie at the Eldorado, Bertie remains interested in her after a successful first date. However, his attempts to see her again have been repeatedly complicated by her cancellations. Because she always reschedules, he remains hopeful but confused. At the Institut where he works, Bertie discusses plans for the annual New Year’s Eve (Silvester) party with his boss, Doktor Magnus Hirschfeld. He also asks for help obtaining a “transvestite passport” for a future trip to New York with his friend Gert.

On his way home, Bertie is caught in a violent street clash between Nazi brownshirts and Communist protestors. When the brownshirts open fire on the crowd, Bertie flees. Hiding in an alley, he is shocked to see Sofie among the running Communists. He pulls her into the alley, and she confesses her involvement, though she is not a registered party member.

Fearing she has been recognized, Bertie decides it is safest for her to stay at his apartment. There, they share traumatic personal stories: Sofie recounts the drowning death of her nephew, and Bertie reveals that his father died in the War when he was 16 and his mother from the flu a few months later. Hirschfeld subsequently gave the orphaned Bertie a place to live at the Institut and a job, and Bertie now considers Hirschfeld, Gert, and his other friends to be his true family. They agree to share his bed for comfort, with Sofie asking Bertie to hold her without intending for sexual contact; this begins a nightly habit that will last for the next 13 years into the present.

The narrative returns to Ulm in 1945, four days after the last encounter with the American officer. Bertie continues to teach Karl how to perform masculinity. Karl continues to be frustrated with the lessons and explains that because he is attracted exclusively to men, he believes he will always have to choose between hiding part of himself and living in fear. The conversation triggers Bertie’s own guilt and unresolved feelings about his friend Gert. He admits that he is attracted to men and nearly reveals that he once fell in love with a man before stopping himself. Karl admits that, despite everything he is struggling with, he is grateful for the kindness Bertie and Sofie have shown him.

American soldiers, led by Officer Ward, arrive and force Bertie, Sofie, and other townspeople to march to Oberer Kuhberg, a former Nazi camp. There, they are made to view an exhibition of artifacts and photos documenting the atrocities of the Holocaust three times as part of their “reparations.” While many of the other Germans in the group are dismissive, Bertie is horrified. At a table of prisoners’ personal effects, he recognizes what he believes is Gert’s favorite flat-cap and discovers a woodchip caught inside it. Overcome with grief, Bertie vomits and collapses. When they return home, he confronts Karl violently, demanding to know what happened to Gert. Karl, unresisting, only confirms that Bertie “already know[s]”, leaving the question open.

Bertie sits outside for hours, consumed by survivor’s guilt. He feels he was a selfish friend to Gert and the others who did not survive. He struggles to understand why he survived when so many of his friends did not and feels pressured to do something extraordinary to justify being spared.

When he comes inside, Karl confronts him, asserting that Bertie has long suspected Gert was dead and that his grief is compounded by guilt for having given up hope years ago. Karl suggests that Bertie “resents” him for surviving when Gert did not, which Bertie initially denies before questioning his own feelings. Karl tells Bertie that neither survival nor death reflects a person’s strength or worth and that surviving is neither a matter of fate nor luck; instead, “[a]ll it is, is horrible” (122). Having said this, Karl declares he is ready to tell his own story.

In a long monologue, Karl recounts the eleven years he spent in Nazi custody. At 16, he was violently seized by SS men during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 and transported via cattle train to the Dachau concentration camp. He describes the brutal intake process and how he was assigned a black triangle but housed with prisoners marked with pink triangles. He admits to having possibly seen Gert there, noting how afraid he seemed. SS officers selected Karl to be “pipel,” a boy kept by an SS officer, after he was sexually assaulted by one. Karl realized that he would be afforded extra food and protection from the worst labor by voluntarily doing so. As he grew older, he was forced into a series of brothels for officers, soldiers, and eventually other prisoners. The Nazis attempted to impregnate Karl and others like him as a supposed form of “rehabilitation,” not realizing that most of them could not become pregnant because of previous sterilization or infertility from camp conditions.

When the Allies liberated the camp, Karl had spent five months and 19 days in the brothel, only 11 days short of the six-month point at which he believes he would have been executed. However, he watched as the liberators began re-imprisoning homosexuals and others to serve out sentences under existing German law. Terrified, Karl ran. He wandered aimlessly until he collapsed from starvation on Bertie and Sofie’s farm. He tells them he needed someone to finally know what happened to him.

Woken in the night by the sound of a piano, Bertie and Sofie find Karl downstairs. He explains he couldn’t sleep and needed a distraction from his thoughts. Sofie offers to teach him how to play and shows him the melody for “Das Lila Lied,” specifying it was created by Kurt Schwabach and Mischa Spoliansky in honor of Dr. Hirschfeld. Karl laments that he never got to experience that community’s joy because his parents rejected him. The three of them then sing the song together in a moment of shared grief and defiance.

Before dawn, after Sofie and Karl have gone to bed, Bertie leaves the house and walks through Ulm to Oberer Kuhberg. He arrives at the site where tables are set up for reparations, noting that the process is not yet over for the city’s residents. Bertie approaches the personal-effects table, takes Gert’s flat-cap, and puts it in his jacket. Before leaving, he rearranges the remaining items to hide the empty space and then walks back home.

Bertie and Sofie attend the grand Silvester party at the Institut. While the party is a success, Bertie reflects on the recent government closure of their community’s clubs, regretting he never said a final goodbye to the Eldorado. Gert arrives and introduces his American partner, Roy. The group partakes in party traditions, including the fortune-telling game of bleigießen. Gert’s lead charm forms a cross, a bad omen, but Bertie reinterprets it as a dagger signifying victory to ease his friend’s mind. Bertie privately warns Roy not to hurt Gert, and Roy gives his sincere assurance. 

After celebrating the new year, the group joins the crowd in singing “Das Lila Lied” before the four go upstairs to watch city’s fireworks from a balcony. As Berliners celebrate noisily in the streets, the narration reveals that this will be the last time Bertie remembers their community making such noise before the years of death, hiding, mourning, and suppression that follow. It also returns to Gert’s bleigießen shape, identifying it as a cross rather than the dagger Bertie had claimed and stating that “crosses meant death” (141). Bertie nevertheless continues celebrating with Sofie, Gert, and Roy as the music rises from the Institut below them.

Sleepless and distraught, Bertie hides the tattered cap he took. He begins questioning whether the cap truly belonged to Gert and allows himself to imagine that Gert might still have survived. While looking through an old photo album, he is struck by a repressed thought: The Institut’s eugenics department and the Titus Pearls—testosterone pellets patented by Hirschfeld—were used in Nazi experiments, leaving him feeling complicit. 

Later, Bertie continues Karl’s lessons, this time working on his voice. He suddenly remembers a photo of Gert proudly displaying his American passport and realizes they could use it as a model to forge their own passports. Initially, Sofie and Karl are skeptical, but Bertie proposes using old office supplies from his satchel, patterned paper from the album, and erases carved to imitate the American citizenship stamp. Karl, having seen Nazi passports during his time with SS officers, agrees he can replicate the Nazi passport cover design from memory. Despite the immense risks of being caught and imprisoned, they decide that forging the documents at least offers them a chance to escape. The group divides the tasks, committing to creating the forgeries within four days to catch a ferry to Amsterdam and escape.

After Sofie gives Karl another piano lesson, the three secretly work on forging passports. They are interrupted by a visit from Officer Ward. He confronts Bertie and Sofie with birth and marriage records proving that they are too young to be the real Goss and Ina Baumann. He demands to know what happened to the actual couple and accuses them of murder. As Ward grows more aggressive, Bertie desperately claims they are Jewish people who were in hiding. Ward demands that Bertie prove he is circumcised.

The tense standoff is broken by Karl, who enters pretending to be their newly arrived nephew. Speaking fluent English, Karl fabricates a detailed story, identifying Bertie and Sofie as Jacob and Sarah Friedman and himself as Karl Friedman, Jews from Teltow near Berlin who were sheltered by the Baumanns before the couple died naturally. Although Ward remains suspicious, he cannot disprove the story and leaves. The family knows he is not convinced and see him lingering outside, leaving them in a more precarious and dangerous situation than before.