I was sitting there pondering the meaning of it all and wondering what I was going to do about it when the doorbell rang. The sound split the stillness of the room like a scream; I jumped and Caesar bounded to his feet howling like the hound of the Baskervilles as he plunged toward the front door. A crash from the hall marked his progress; it also marked the demise of my favorite Chinese vase.

I kept the chain in place when I opened the door. It had stopped snowing and the wind was rising. Schmidt’s mustache flapped wildly in the breeze.

“Abend,” he said brightly.

“What are you doing here at this hour?”

“It is only ten o’clock. You have not gone to bed.”

“I was just about to.”

Schmidt stamped his feet and hugged himself, pantomiming incipient freezing to death. “Let me in.”

“By the hair of your chinny chin chin,” I muttered. “Oh, hell. Come in.”

Schmidt led the way to the living room, shedding his hat, coat, scarf, and gloves as he went. I picked up the coat, hat, scarf, and one of the gloves, and pried the other one out of Caesar’s mouth.

Already comfortably settled on the couch, Schmidt awaited my attentions. “Coffee?” he said in contemptuous disbelief, indicating the pot.

“What did you expect, Napoleon brandy?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Schmidt.

“No brandy, Schmidt.”

“Beer, then.”

“No beer. You are not spending the night and I am not going to drive you home and you are not leaving my house in a state of vulgar inebriation.”

Schmidt sighed. “Coffee.”

“Coffee,” I agreed.

When I came back from the kitchen with a fresh pot and an extra cup, Schmidt was looking at the snapshots. His mustache was twitching with pleasure. Schmidt loves looking at snapshots. He also loves having his picture taken. If he is anywhere in the vicinity when a photographer is at work, the finished product will have Schmidt or part of him somewhere in the background.

“You have not shown me these,” he said indignantly.

“I had forgotten about them.” I sat down on the couch beside him. “I took them at the ISSAMA meetings last winter.”

“I had deduced as much,” said Schmidt, contemplating a photo of Tony, who was pointing, in the idiotic way people do, at the Zugspitze. “It is not good of Tony. He looks drunk.”

“It was cold. That’s why his nose is so red.”

“Ha,” said Schmidt skeptically. “Oho, here is Elise. I have not seen her for two years. She should not make her hair that strange shade of pink.”

So it went, with Schmidt making catty remarks about his friends. Schmidt knows everybody and he adores conferences; he had been sick in bed with flu that year, or he would have insisted on going along. I expected his encyclopedic memory would falter when it came to Jan, but I was in error.

“Perlmutter,” he announced. “Bode Museum, East Berlin.”

“Very good, Schmidt.”

“I have an excellent memory for faces,” Schmidt said, twirling his mustache complacently. “I have met this Perlmutter only once, but never do I forget a face. It was in Dresden; he studied then under Kammer. Young, he is, but brilliant, it is said. Hmmm. Now who…”