a Texas parrot shriek: “Aaoouuh! so you’re a colonel—don’t tell meee!” And whiskey, bourbon, vodka, dry martinis, Bloody Marys, bloody chips, and fucking salted almonds. “Come on, have one more on me!” and a fanfare from beneath: the floor show is surging, the rumba booming. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, our greatest hit, Miss Rachel Shefczuk of the Frankfurt Stork Club in her dance of the seven veils!” Tipped breasts brought into form by uplifted arms, Grete Wiesenthal leaps ending in a split, the white crotch cracks on the dance floor, a Stars and Stripes reporter snaps flashbulb shots . . . a look around: journalist mugs in officer’s uniforms, Jewish court stenographers, female interpreters, the black-haired girl from the ghetto doesn’t seem to be here. Wonder if anything else is happening—but first something to eat . . .

The snack bar is on the first floor, the big windows look out on the sidewalk, the room is filled with barrels of lemur food, just help yourself. Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fuckburgers with mustard, with horseradish, with ketchup, with Tabasco sauce. Beer, tannic Chianti, Coca-Cola, orange juice, grapefruit juice, tomato juice. White bread, black bread, gray bread, milk for teetotalers, apples, pears, oranges, bananas, Japanese dwarf mandarins (canned), Chinese lichee nuts (canned) . . . Gray blobs in the blackness of the windowpanes: Nurembergers standing outside, staring in, hollow-cheeked, round eyed, wide-mouthed, gaping at this fairy-tale abundance. This can’t be real, there’s no such thing, this is verre eglomisé. They stare without expression, without greed, without envy. This is so opulent that it’s beyond their grasp. Movie splendor. The Indian Tomb, The Treasure of the Silver Lake, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. You can look at it and not even dream about it, there’s no such thing, you can’t believe that so much food can just be sitting there, all you have to do is dive in and stuff your mouth—it’s humbug, a daydream . . .

and every half hour, one of our boys comes along—oh aren’t they wonderful—with a helmet and chin strap and chewing gum between his molars, he sticks his machine-gun muzzle into their backs and pushes them away—wiping the blackboard of the windows like a big, wet sponge.

The street is empty. Beyond it, shredded ivy hangs on the tumbledown city walls. Where do they go when they are shooed away from here? Not over there? Not in there, behind that wall? . . .

I’ve been there, I’ve ventured fifty or sixty feet into the necropolis of a smashed Nuremberg—and have fled back as though from a plunge into the deep, found refuge for my soul in the sparkling neon lighting of the Grand Hotel Excelsior, with whiskey, bourbon, floor shows, and Texas parrot shrieks . . .