Out beyond the glass of the big windows, the day was brightening.

—does it seem so glassy because it follows so many icy nights? The star-spangled winter nights beyond the frost flower– encrusted windows of Uncle Ferdinand’s konak in Bessarabia, the ornamentation on the Saracen arches, topped with rustling palm fronds. When the reflections from the open fireplace dance on them they sparkle as if displayed on black basalt. The flames are also reflected in my operetta-ready cavalry boots. The old servant who claims to have known me as a child has polished them to a shine, for only thus am I allowed to present myself to Uncle Ferdinand. He treats me like family (just as he would any guest in his house, by the way). In his salon he receives only guests he can treat like family. He counts me, the son of a whore, as a member of his household like his dogs, his horses, and his long-established staff of servants. His sharp eyes would notice if instead of wearing shiny boots I had painted my ankles with shoe polish—

—and the nights in Bucharest under a fleece of snow, Stella and me on the Şoseaua Kiseleff, in the car with the motor running and clinched in a kiss as desperate as if it were the last before parting forever . . . (and before long it would be so: soon we would never see each other again)—

—and suddenly, there’s a hard rap on the window, a flashlight beam stabs into the car—and I panic. Thank God I’m not in uniform. I know it’s the police. They lie in wait to ambush couples and can only be dissuaded from charging you with a public display of immorality with much pleading and more baksheesh—as a soldier, I’d be in for it and if they ask to see our papers, Stella’s reputation would hang in the balance. The wife of a diplomat is easy to blackmail . . .

—And the nights of thin snow in Berlin with the wind whistling through the gaps between buildings and in the evaporating darkness, the sirens began their angry howl and soon the pale tentacles of the searchlights probed the black sky, crisscrossing and joining together at a single point and the clattering salvos of antiaircraft fire and the first bombs exploding and the edge of the sky beginning to redden—

and the nights of biting frost in Witte’s bombed-out villa on the Elbchaussee and me holding Christa in my arms to warm her up—Christa, whom I loved and who couldn’t make much of my love because she was so cold and hungry—

many, many such nights have clarified the day out there and cleared the lots so the city might rise anew in concrete and steel and glass. . .

“. . . all of that used to be residential neighborhoods, mostly working class, you know?—so to that extent, just between you and me, the Allies did us a favor—I mean, as our friend Baron von Rönnekamp so rightly put it, if we hadn’t been able to start over again with a tabula rasa, we’d never have been able to carry out reconstruction so successfully—well, here you are at last! Man, is it possible that half a day has to pass before somebody scares up a pail in this cathouse? Carlotta, child, take down a memo right now that sales should send around a note to all our affiliates to always have a bucket and a washable piece of material on hand for the laundering demonstration—apropos: have you got a piece of material on you too?”