“Oberst. I am happy—” her voice breaks. Genuinely. Her head inclines across his desk no longer than is necessary to thank, to declare her passivity. The hell she’s happy.

He nods, angles his beard at a chair. This, then, is the Golden Bitch of Blicero’s last letters from Holland. Enzian formed no image of her then, too taken up, too gagged with sorrow at what was happening to Weissmann. She seemed then only one of the expected forms of horror that must be populating his world. But, ethnic when he least wants to be, Enzian came after a while to think of her as the great Kalahari rock painting of the White Woman, white from the waist down, carrying bow and arrows, trailed by her black handmaiden through an erratic space, stone and deep, figures of all sizes moving to and fro… .

But here is the true Golden Bitch. He’s surprised at how young and slender she is—a paleness as of having begun to leak away from this world, likely to vanish entirely at any too-reckless grab. She knows her own precarious thinness, her leukemia of soul, and she teases with it. You must want her, but never indicate it—not by eyes or move—or she will clarify, dead gone as smoke above a trail moving into the desert, and you’ll never have the chance again.

“You must have seen him more recently than I.” He speaks quietly. She is surprised at his politeness. Disappointed: she was expecting more force. Her lip has begun to lift. “How did he seem?”

“Alone.” Her brusque and sideways nod. Gazing back at him with the best neutrality she can be sure of in the circs. She means, You were not with him, when he needed you.

“He was always alone.”

She understands then that it isn’t timidity, she was wrong. It is decency. The man wants to be decent. He leaves himself open. (So does she, but only because everything that might hurt has long been numbed out. There’s small risk for Katje.) But Enzian risks what former lovers risk whenever the Beloved is present, in fact or in word: deepest possibilities for shame, for sense of loss renewed, for humiliation and mockery. Shall she mock? Has he made that too easy—and then, turning, counted on her for fair play? Can she be as honest as he, without risking too much? “He was dying,” she tells him, “he looked very old. I don’t even know if he left Holland alive.”

“He—” and this hesitation may be (a) in consideration of her feelings, or (b) for reasons of Schwarzkommando security, or (c) both of the above… but then, hell, the Principle of Maximizing Risk takes over again: “he got as far as the Lüneberg Heath. If you didn’t know, you ought to.”

“You’ve been looking for him.”

“Yes. So has Slothrop been, though I don’t think Slothrop knows that.”

“Slothrop and I—” she looks around the room, her eyes skitter off metal surfaces, papers, facets of salt, cannot come to rest anywhere. As if making a desperate surprise confession: “Everything is so remote now. I don’t really know why they sent me out here. I don’t know any more who Slothrop really was. There’s a failure in the light. I can’t see. It’s all going away from me… .”