I walked across Karlsplatz and the Ring. On Schwarzenberg Strasse I stepped into a Hungarian bar called Czardasfurstin to figure out my next move. There was a band with a zither. I ordered coffee and cake and tried to think through the sentimental, melancholy music. I realized I needed to find somewhere I could stay the night, no questions asked. And I told myself there was only one place I knew where a bed could be had as easily as coffee and cake. A place where money was all that mattered. I was taking a bit of a risk going back there after only a couple of years. But I hadn’t much choice. For me, risk was now something unavoidable, like old age—if I was lucky—and death, if I wasn’t. I went to the Oriental, on Petersplatz.

With its dimly lighted booths, scantily clad girls, sarcastic orchestra, pimps, and prostitutes, the Oriental was strongly reminiscent of some of the old clubs I’d known in Berlin during the decadent dog days of the Weimar Republic. It was said that the Oriental had been a great favorite with Vienna’s Nazi Bonzen—the bigwigs who ran the city. Now it was a favorite with black-marketeers and Vienna’s burgeoning intelligence community. As well as the Egyptian Night Cabaret—an excuse for a lot of girls to dress like slave girls, which is to say they wore very little at all—there was a casino. Where there is a casino there is always plenty of easy money. And where there is easy money there are snappers. When I had last been there the girls had been amateurs—widows and orphans doing it for cigarettes and chocolate, or just to make ends meet. I’d had a thing with a girl there. I couldn’t remember her name. Things had changed a lot since 1947. The girls in the Oriental were hard-faced professionals who were interested only in one thing: cash. To that extent, only the atmosphere seemed authentically oriental.

I stepped down a curving stairway into the club, where the orchestra was playing some American tunes, such as “Time Out for Tears” and “I Want to Cry.” They must have heard I was coming. American servicemen were not allowed in the Oriental, but, of course, out of uniform and with plenty of money in their pockets, it was hard to keep them out. Which was why, from time to time, the place got raided by the IP. But usually not until much later on, by which time I hoped I would be gone. I sat down in a booth, ordered a bottle of cognac, some eggs, and a packet of Luckies and, confident that very soon I would find a bed for the night, I tried to make some sense of everything that had occurred that day. Of everything that had happened to me since my arrival in Vienna. And even earlier than that.