The grave worms creep through the tremendous Fürth courthouse, crawl through the labyrinth of its corridors, through the chasms of its stairwells, crawl in and out of its thousands of honeycomb cells, creep up the waxed lace-boots and into the machine-gun muzzles and under the grim chin straps and into the nostrils of the massive GIs standing guard at every corridor corner, outside every door, behind which something important might happen: “Our boys—we’re so proud of them. American boys are not like others—only American boys have mothers—that’s why they kicked the shit out of the goddamn Nazis . . .”

and that’s why the Fräuleins suck their cocks dry. When darkness comes, the streetwalkers ripple out from Fürth to Nuremberg, throng about the railroad station (which still reeks of fire and decay and wet rust), hurry around the old city wall, the garbage-filled moat. No poor lightbulb glows on the shredded ivy of the tumbledown stone wall. There’s smooching and hootchy-kootching in the dark. Sometimes a match flares up and the night sends forth a Rembrandtesque blackamoor’s skull with a Camel in his kisser. Then someone whispers in the dark: “Sir, sir, listen, sir. My sister—sixteen years old . . .”

But we scoot past in beat-up jeeps, whoosh through the figures, our headlights hurling them into the background of the witch-hunt. The driver’s silhouette is like cast iron, a black, helmet-crowned wedge pushing them apart. He steers the light beams with one finger, his right arm embracing the seat at his side, his left foot propped on the clapped-down windshield, his right foot pressing on the gas . . .

we streak with the gale toward sparkling lights, a Christmas wonder candle: in a flood of neon, the Grand Hotel Excelsior rises from the German rubble-night like a mescaline vision. In the lightbulb Alhambra of the entrance, the doorman, the big fat uncle of Papa Czar, in a sky-blue admiral’s uniform, woven into the spaghetti tangle of his silver fourragères, assisted by iron men with machine guns, bayonets sticking out like flowers . . . They check the guests’ passes; he pushes them through the revolving door, bowing and scraping. “Good evening, sir! How are you tonight, sir? . . .”

Inside, fashionable thronging and jostling at the bar. Athletic backs in olive-brown uniform jackets, rugby-player legs in officer’s pinks, bare female shoulders, Chanel No. 5 from the PX in their armpits, Kleenex-cleansed necks under the touched-up hairlines: “I want you to promise me a job in Subsequent Procedures, darling—or where else should I go when this mess is over and they’re all hanged? . . .”