“Hannah,” I say, “I am going to happen to the guys who did this. I am very, very going to happen to them indeed. I would like to talk to you about that. And then I will go away and whatever else I do I will not come here again.”

She nods once, sharp, and pours the schnapps.

—

It is almost morning when I leave Hannah’s apartment and no we do not have sex what is wrong with you? But all the same, I have been out late so it is just natural that I go and buy another cigar. I walk through the empty streets to the cigar shop and wait on the doorstep like a hobo, which they do not allow here, so I take care to stand like a rich party boy instead. Eventually the little guy comes and if he thinks it is weird that I am here before he opens he does not say so. If he can smell the schnapps he does not say that either. Instead he takes my money and he says is today the day. I ask him what I want to ask and I say that it is, and he does not say anything else.

The cigar has a weird orange tint woven into the paper and the tobacco smells almost like fresh water it is so pure. It is a vastly expensive cigar. I stand there and think for a while about tobacco and how strange it is that Switzerland is one of the last places in Europe where they still sort of go for it.

“You smell of death,” the little guy says and I don’t say anything because I do. He says: “More today even than before.”

“I guess you would know. Caporal-Chef.”

Little guy snorts and says yes, he would know.

Caporal-Chef in the legion back when and so they were all together and it was this little man’s job to keep them alive and point them in the right direction. Hans Eiger and all his friends including Frankie Leclerc. Caporal-Chef Aaron from Addis, whose mother was Beta Israel, looking after the squad so white they gotta throw shade. Hashtag. Caporal-Chef Aaron who has a mezuzah on his door frame and family in Addis and Istanbul and Eilat and Eiger must walk past it without paying attention every single time he comes in.

He must know and yet he doesn’t even consider it something that matters because he is an old white guy in an old white country and things have always been this way.

Little guy goes to the counter and into the baggie with the cigar he puts a single memory stick poking out the back half of a plastic cow. Figure there was at one time a front half also but it is gone now. I do not know because he does not supply any detail and he does not need to. It is a gift.