Josef wondered if it was the same for him in his dealings with Schmuederrich. It wasn’t a love affair in his case, but he was too willing to indulge him. He thought of their meetings in the Rotesandbar, the alcohol and Schmuederrich’s way of talking to you like he’d known you forever. Schmuederrich’s body exuded something both intimate and overwhelming that you instinctively wanted to steer clear of, like the odor from inside an apartment that had drifted out onto the landing—and yet, just as instinctively, you admonished yourself to stay and put up with it.

When he was alone again he opened the window and leaned his forehead against the wooden casing. Max had hinted at horrible things: he shouldn’t be surprised if he noticed in the coming days that he was being followed. It was for his own good, a kind of protection. They were making sure he wasn’t being followed by the wrong people.

In his head he kept track of the other people on the street. He was on the lookout for men until it became clear to him that the people watching him could also be women. But then again, white women didn’t come to Harlem. And so he only watched for white men. Would they stop, would they actually look up at him, standing in the window, would they be waiting somewhere, would they wait in a car? Would particular men start popping up again and again, maybe even faces he knew from somewhere else? If they actually wanted to stay on his heels, they would have to keep watch outside, otherwise it wouldn’t work. He never noticed anything.

He waited. He smoked. Then he took the dog for a walk across the glass- and tin-can-strewn field by the river, headed for the bridge abutment, which he hid himself behind for a while; he could no longer take a single normal step. He watched for movement in the area around the river—they must have given up by now. He took sudden detours. He avoided his usual routes, walked over the bridge straight into the Bronx. He stuck close to the brownstones, and once, when a Negro couple stepped out of a building and the door stayed open a crack, he slipped inside. Music playing on the radio behind every apartment door, and still his heartbeat was louder. He went all the way up to the roof, the strange building under his feet like an animal he’d bagged on a hunt.