There was one girl in particular, Irmela Schaper, a signals officer with the German naval auxiliary, of whom I was very fond. I had recently remarried, but that didn’t make much difference to either Irmela or me since the city was more or less encircled by the Red Army and it was obvious to both of us that we were probably going to be killed. Irmela was a local girl. Her father worked for Raiffeisen Bank on Sträsemanstrasse not very far away from naval headquarters in the old seaport. I worked in the basement of what had been the post office close to Paradeplatz and we first met in a tobacconist’s on Steindamm a short way north of there. We’d both heard that the cigarette ration had arrived in the city and went there simultaneously, only I got there first and bought the last packet. Not that these were much of a smoke, just a roll of cardboard and a few centimeters of inferior tobacco. It’s hard to credit what we used to smoke back then. Anyway, she looked very smart in her double-breasted naval uniform, blond and buxom, which is just the way I like them, and as soon as I saw her I offered to share this last packet with her. I’m telling you all this because Irmela is the key to the whole story of what happened with Harold Heinz Hebel, or Captain Harold Hennig as he then called himself. But you’ll have to let me tell this story in my own way; I’m not a professional like you, Mr. Maugham; you’d probably tell me to start more fashionably in the middle instead of at the beginning. Well, maybe I can still do that.

—

Ten each,” I said to her, filling my cigarette case and then handing her the packet.

“That’s very gallant of you,” she said, and let me light one for her. She smoked it like a schoolgirl, hardly sucking the stuff in at all, and it made me smile, a little, but not so much that she might have thought I was laughing at her; that would have been impolite and foolish. Most women like to believe they’re sophisticated, even when you’re pleased that they’re not.

“Don’t be fooled. My armor is all rusted up and we had to eat my trusty white steed before he starved. If I tried to bow I’d probably fall flat on my face. Since the RAF left town my sense of balance isn’t so good. My ears still feel like there’s a brass band just around the corner.”

“You mean there isn’t? These days I don’t hear so well myself. In fact, I may never sleep through a thunderstorm again without thinking Thor is an English bomb aimer in a Lancaster.”