He undressed and followed her into the cold water in his underwear. Worse than the cold was the soft, slimy silt of the riverbed that surged up between his toes. He dove under and enjoyed the firm embrace of the water. He swam a few strokes, saw the shimmering surface above him and below him a murky gray. When he came back to the surface, he was far from the bank, ducks swimming around him, self-contained in their smooth plumage, like little boats.

Princess barked. He could sense her fear. He swam over to her, and together they went back to the shore. He didn’t have a towel with him, and so he dried himself off with his shirt and buttoned his suit jacket over his bare chest. Let people think what they wanted about him.

Back at the apartment he turned the radio on, smoked a Bremaria Brinkmann that Max had left behind while Glenn Miller’s “Oh, Baby” played, and enjoyed the feel of the salt water on his body, the smell of algae and oil, of silt and earth. Crumbling bits of dirt were spread out on the wooden floor; he had left his shoes on. Work at the print shop didn’t start until noon, so now he folded open the New York Times, searched for the name, read that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was his favorite opera and that he expected international Jewry to bear all costs for the emigration of their own people from Germany. In an article on the same page he read that both Cuba and Florida had refused a ship with over nine hundred refugees and sent it back to Germany. He put the paper away and stared into space.

Now the radio was playing Emily Post, speaking about “America and its etiquette”: A man was to take his hat off when a woman stepped into the elevator with him, because the elevator was the equivalent of a room. In the hallway however, which was more like a street, he might put his hat back on. He turned to the next station to hear more music.

The buzzer rang. He quickly put on a T-shirt and answered.

Someone was coming up the stairs, slower than usual. It was Schmuederrich. Panting, he stomped past him into the living room and looked around. Beads of sweat on his forehead.

“What’s this, you’re alone? Figured I’d meet your little girlfriend here. You’re still together, aren’t you? Will you make me some coffee?”

Schmuederrich’s body seemed to take up the whole room. His broad neck and the black chest hairs curling out from his collar took up Josef’s entire field of vision. He went into the kitchen, put some water on to boil, and tried to understand the situation. “Milk?” he called out.

“And sugar,” Schmuederrich called back.