I was shown to a bedroom with a broken shutter, a threadbare rug, and a brass bed with a mattress as thin as a slice of rye bread and about as comfortable. Through the grimy, cobwebbed window I looked out onto a little garden overgrown with jasmine, ferns, and vines. There was a small fountain that hadn’t worked in a while: a cat had littered several kittens in it, right underneath a copper waterspout that was as green as the cat’s eyes. But it wasn’t all bad news. At least I had my own bathroom. The bathtub was full of old books, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take a bath in it. I like to read when I’m in the bath.

Another German was already staying there. His face was red and puffy and there were bags under his eyes like a naval cook’s hammock. His hair was the color of straw and about as tidy, and his body was thin and scarred with what looked like bullet holes. These were easy to see, because he wore his malodorous remnant of a dressing gown off one shoulder, like a toga. On his legs were varicose veins as big as fossilized lizards. He seemed a stoic sort, who probably slept in a barrel, but for the pint of liquor in his dressing-gown pocket and the monocle in his eye, which added a jaunty, polished touch. It looked like a sprig of parsley on a cowpat.

Fuldner introduced him as Fernando Eifler but I didn’t suppose that was his real name. The three of us smiled politely but we were all possessed of the same thought: that if we stayed in the safe house long enough, we would end up like Fernando Eifler.

“I say, do any of you chaps have a cigarette?” asked Eifler. “I seem to have run out.”