He knocks on a half-open iron door and hears a noise from within. The man behind the desk, his slick hair combed back, speaks a little English.

“I’m sorry. We need the freight note.” He knows voices like this, unyielding, final. At regular intervals an oscillating fan blows air past the sitting man and ruffles his hair.

“Can’t I just go and take a look myself?”

“There are hundreds of packages! And I can’t possibly let you in there. Surely you understand that.”

No, he doesn’t understand.

His clothing is in this package: two suits from Carl, a few shoes (which Edith traded a clock for), a comb, razors, towels, an alarm clock, a lamp, a travel typewriter, tools, mettwurst.

He roams the streets. He hears a lot of German, sees German businesses: Großman’s Bakery; W. Tolle Furs; Casa Schill Doll Repair; Dr. Dinkeldein, Dermatology; Adlerhorst Cervecería. Up to now he hasn’t spoken with any Germans here, although he can spot them. How? He just can. And so he walks past them and tries to seem Argentinian.

He should make himself useful, Dörsam had said.

In a German bookstore on Avenida Flores he floats among the tables like a ghost, worried the bespectacled young man will throw him out—him, the tramp. He shuffles over to a wall covered in notices. A Bach choir is seeking a tenor, a chess club has announced the dates for its next tournament, a German meetup at Restaurant ABC (he would meet Schmuederrich there, said Dörsam). No job postings. They seem to be above such things here, or they have a different system. His fingers trail over spines. “A Hamburg novel full of sun and longing for the wind and the sea.” And another: Daily Hygiene.

The door chime rings and two women step inside, break the uncomfortable silence between the bookseller and him, even if it’s only to say “Guten Tag” and to whisper something to each other every now and then.

He picks up a book by a French author, Nuremberg or the Promised Land, and reads on the back cover: “The Germans weren’t monsters, as Nuremberg would have you believe.”

A fly lands on his hand. He shakes it off and puts the book back.

The young man is standing in front of him. “Here, just came in.”