I looked at it for a while, turning it over in my fingers.

“What do you think of it?” he asked.

“It’s a fake,” I said. “And not a very good fake. And another thing: the cross belt on the SS captain’s uniform is over the wrong shoulder. A fake is one thing. But an elementary mistake like that is something else.”

“You know about this stuff?”

“I thought it was illegal in Cuba,” I answered, hardly answering at all.

“The law forbids only the promotion of Nazi ideology,” he said. “Selling historic mementos is permitted.”

“Who buys this stuff?”

“Americans, mostly. A lot of sailors. Then there are also tourists who saw military service in Europe and want to obtain the souvenir they never managed to get when they were over there. Mostly it’s SS stuff they want. I guess there’s a certain gruesome fascination with the SS, for obvious reasons. I could sell any amount of SS stuff. For example, SS daggers are very popular as paper knives. Of course, collecting this sort of memorabilia doesn’t mean you sympathize with Nazism, or condone what happened. It happened, and it’s a part of history, and I don’t see anything wrong with being interested in that, to the extent of owning something that’s an almost living part of that history. How could I see anything wrong with it? I mean, I’m Polish. My name’s Szymon Woytak.”

He held out his hand, and I took it limply and without much enthusiasm for him or his peculiar trade. Through the shop window I could see a troupe of Chinese dancers. They’d removed their lion heads and paused for a cigarette, as if hardly aware of the evil spirits that dwelled within, otherwise they might have come through the door. Woytak picked up the Iron Cross I had asked to see. “How can you tell it’s a fake?” he asked, examining it closely.

“Simple. The fakes are made from one piece of metal. The originals were made of at least three pieces and soldered together. Another way to tell is to get a magnet and see if the cross really is made of iron. Fakes are made from a cheap alloy.”

“How do you know that?”