Cologne, Germany

Before he began working at the bar Reiter had slept with other girls, at the Cologne or Solingen train stations or in Remscheid or Wuppertal, factory workers and peasants who liked it when men (so long as they looked healthy) came in their mouths.

“I’m not going to any hotel,” said Archimboldi, “I’m going back to Cologne. Please let me have my manuscript.”

So after three very instructive days, Archimboldi returned to Cologne on the night train.

The Cologne Cultural Center paid him for two public readings in two different city bookshops, whose owners, it must be said, knew Mr. Bubis personally.

Then they went on to discuss the new authors who were being published by Bubis and Bubis’s colleagues in Munich and Cologne and Frankfurt and Berlin, as well as the publishing houses firmly established in Zurich or Bern and those resurfacing in Vienna.

When they left the hospital they returned to Cologne by train.

On the way home Lotte asked to drive through Cologne and they went looking for the only address she had for her brother.