Marseille was a hive of deserters, outcasts, artists, philosophers, and criminals. Arrivals swelled daily. No raid, no decree, no threat of internment could keep them from coming. They came because it was the last French port from which ships were still sailing. The city was the bottleneck through which all had to pass. Conversations invariably revolved around the same themes: passports, visas, travel permits, bonds, port authority stamps, certificates, currencies, and lists. Each one of these themes had endless variations: real, substitute, and counterfeit passports; entry, exit, and transit visas; refugee, customs, health, and discharge certificates; old, new, and counterfeit currencies; police lists, passenger lists, prefectural lists. Everyone guarded their papers as if their lives depended on them, which was indeed the case, and all the while the authorities invented cleverer ways to sort, classify, register, and stamp us like sheep in an abattoir. One spent hours in a café hoping for some morsel of useful information, but rumors flew about so wildly it was impossible to distinguish truth from fiction. A whole day could be spent in a waiting room, the air thick with exhaustion, only for someone behind a counter to tell you to return the next day, the next week, or even, as August came around and government offices began to close for the summer holidays, the next month. Applicants would fill out endless forms, whisper among themselves, doze, or rehearse their stories for their interviews. A single slip-up—eleven photographs instead of twelve, for instance—and the entire chain of documents, each one with its own expiry date, could unravel.

At the Hôtel Splendide I found Fritz standing in the lobby one morning soon after my arrival and, though it had only been a couple of months since I’d last seen him at the station in Paris, we hugged as if reuniting after a long estrangement. Fritz told me Arthur was also in town, and the three of us went for a drink. It was a non-alcohol day, according to the wartime regulations, but the bartender added some schnapps to our chicory coffees.

“Whatever happened to that girlfriend of yours?” asked Arthur.

“She decided to stay in Paris,” I replied.

“Ah,” they both said, nodding their heads knowingly, and she was never mentioned again. Such stories were common.