At eight o’clock he takes the regional train to Herbesthal, easily catches the Copenhagen-Brussels Express at nine, and at eleven reaches the Brussels-North train station. The train to Paris doesn’t leave until the next morning. He wanders the streets, trying to keep his head down; around noon he checks into a somewhat nicer hotel, where he stays, or rather hides out, until tomorrow. He is able to smooth over his lack of a visa with American cigarettes. Carl sold his Linhof and gave him five hundred marks, which he exchanged for dollars at a bank in Cologne when he was there for his last meeting with Dörsam. A lot of money, but it won’t be enough for the whole trip. Dörsam advised him to sign on as a sailor on the ship to Buenos Aires.

In the morning he takes the overcrowded train to Paris. French soldiers stand in the aisles. He sits by the window and watches the villages and fields fly past, all for the last time, his last days in Europe, his homeland—but it means nothing to him. Carl and Edith, and also Täubchen and little Paul, they’re what matters to him.

Shortly before they reach the border a conductor starts to question him about his missing visa. Josef doesn’t dare offer him cigarettes—there are too many eyes on them. Instead he says he came from London; nobody mentioned anything about a visa. The conductor nods. “Next time, then.” He can sense the tension leaving his fellow passengers as they go back to their newspapers and books with a little sigh.

The French border guard doesn’t speak any English and simply stamps his ticket.

That evening, Paris, Gare du Nord. An unfriendly hustle and bustle, masses of people, a sea of suitcases, wrinkled suits, hundreds of languages.

He buys his ticket for Le Havre, then a postcard with the Eiffel Tower on it. He addresses it to Edith and limits himself to writing,

All the best from Paris.

But at least it’s something. He spends the night at a small overpriced inn. He’s been on the road for two days at this point, and as he sips weak coffee in the morning he peers into faces just as exhausted and poorly shaven as his. And still there is something that he scarcely wants to admit to himself: a feeling of euphoria and an almost religious sense of comfort and protection. But he’s not quite ready to trust this condition. He knows it from New York. For years he deluded himself into thinking he was in that city’s care, like Thoreau in the woods, and in the end all it gave him was a kick in the ass.