By May, I was in the Obersalzberg, photographing the advance to Hitler’s mountain retreat. Velázquez was right about one thing; I had not been faithful, either to him or to his memory. Even before his death, I had picked up a lover or two, as the occasion presented itself. I had also struck up a friendship with a certain American general—four stars and married, another breach of the rules, but this fellow was an incorrigible philanderer so I felt I was not corrupting anybody, and anyway the wife had made her bargain long ago. This energetic and purely physical affair proved fruitful for my career. No longer was I given stupid assignments to photograph the revival of the Paris fashion houses in the wake of liberation; here I was on top of the world, the very front lines of the front lines as American troops liberated all the wine in Hitler’s cellar, to say nothing of the silver. I don’t know, maybe you’ve seen a few of those snaps yourself. One of them won the Pulitzer a year back.

Anyway, as I said, I was in the mountains of southern Germany when news of victory reached me. The Fascists had been defeated at last! Japan remained, of course, but everybody knew that was only a matter of time and blood. I took some dutiful shots of the jubilation among the GIs, and then I requisitioned a Jeep and drove into Berchtesgaden and drank myself senseless on the cheap local liquor.

By the end of the evening, I was addressing the empty bottle, which had become Velázquez in my mind. I told him I was awfully sorry about the general and the UPI reporter after Dachau and that sweet, virile, ecstatic GI from St. Louis in the back hallway of the tavern just now, and I assured him that he, Velázquez, had been a better lover than all three of them together (although that idea was also tempting). I said we’ve done it, we’ve beat the Fascists, we’ve got your revenge on Hitler for Guernica and Madrid and your parents and your sister and the girl you should have married. You would feel so vindicated! You would maybe wrangle a pass in the next month or so and come to visit me, and we would not leave our room for two days, and maybe, in the joy of that moment, victory and reunion and postcoital gratitude, when you sometimes confuse the intense, satisfied lust you’re feeling for true love, I might have made the mistake of saying yes, yes, I will marry you, Velázquez, I will become your wife and have your children and live a quiet little life with you in some quiet little house in some quiet little village in the country. I would have promised you this and maybe I would have done it too. Or maybe not. We’ll never know for certain.