He found the two bottles, handed one to me, kept one for himself. We did not have glasses and made do without. We opened the bottles, offered the inevitable toasts in Lettish to the speedy liberation of Latvia from the yoke of Soviet domination and, that bit of formality safely out of the way, drank deeply from the bottles.

We put a good dent in both bottles before any real conversation got going. The moon was almost full, and we sat drinking in the moonlight and listening to the sounds of joy filtering through the night air from the campfire. Letts are good at having a good time, and the bunch around the campfire seemed to be doing just that. Letts are also accomplished at touching the very nadir of depression, and Karlis was drifting to that very point.

I have a touch of the chameleon about me. Had I stayed at the campfire, I would have joined in the fun. Now, in the moonlight with Karlis’s cognac in me, I shared his mood. I became quite maudlin and ultimately I dragged out the charcoal sketch of my son Todor and showed it to Karlis.

“My son,” I announced. “Is he not beautiful?”

“He is.”

“And I have never seen him.”

“How can this be?”

“He is in Macedonia,” I said. “In Yugoslavia. And I have never returned since the night of his conception.”

Karlis stared at me and at the picture, then at me again. And then, quite suddenly, he began to cry. He cried with his whole body, of which there was a great deal. His massive chest heaved with great sobs, and I remained respectfully silent until he managed to regain control of himself.

And ultimately, his voice choked with emotion, he said, “Evan, you and I, we are more than fellow soldiers, we are more than comrades fighting together for a great cause. We are brothers.”