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spring. The weather blew hard across the Métro staircase, wind and rain and fog with a taste of factory smoke. Morath held his overcoat closed and walked next to the buildings. Down a dark street, down another, then a sharp left and a blinking blue neon sign,
Balalaika.
The Cossack doorman, with sheepskin vest and fierce mustache, peered out from the shelter of the doorway, in his hand a black umbrella in the final hours of life on a windy night.
    The doorman growled good evening, Russian accent thick and melodramatic. “Welcome, sir, to Balalaika, the show is now just starting.”
    Inside, thick air; cigarettes glowed in the darkness. Red plush walls and a stunning hatcheck girl. Morath gave her a generous tip and kept his coat. Here, too, they wore their decorations. The maitre d’, six and a half feet tall with a sash and high boots, had a bronze medal pinned to his blouse, earned in service as mercenary and palace guardsman to King Zog of Albania.
    Morath went to the bar and sat at the far end. From there he caught a glimpse of the stage. The Gypsy trio was sawing away in sentimental agonies, a dancer in sheer pantaloons and halter showed, in the blue klieg lights, just exactly what her faithless lover was giving up, while her partner stood to one side, hands clasped in fruitless longing, a red lightbulb in his pants going on and off in time to the music.
    The barman came over, Morath ordered a Polish vodka, and, when it arrived, offered the barman a cigarette and lit it for him. He was a short, compact man with narrow eyes deeply lined at the corners, from laughing, maybe, or squinting into the distance. Beneath his red jacket he wore a shirt washed so often it was the pastel of an unknown color.
    “Are you Boris?” Morath said.
    “Now and then.”
    “Well, Boris, I have a friend . . .” A little cloud of irony hung over the phrase and the barman smiled appreciatively. “He was in trouble, he came to you for help.”
    “When was that?”
    “Last year, around this time. His girlfriend needed a doctor.”
    The barman shrugged. A thousand customers, a thousand stories. “I can’t say I remember.”
    Morath understood, a bad memory was a good idea. “Now, it’s another friend. A different kind of problem.”
    “Yes?”
    “A passport problem.”
    The barman used his rag to wipe down the zinc surface, then paused, and had a good look at Morath. “Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking.”
    “Budapest.”
    “Emigré?”
    “Not really. I came here after the war. I’m in business here.”
    “You were in the war?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where was that?”
    “Galicia. Up into Volhynia for a time . . .”
    “Then back to Galicia.” The barman was laughing as he finished Morath’s sentence. “Oh yes,” he said, “
that
shithouse.”
    “You were there?”
    “Mm. Likely we shot at each other. Then, fall of ’17, my regiment took a walk. Same again?”
    “Please.”
    The clear liquor came exactly to the rim.
    “Will you join me?”
    The barman poured himself a vodka and raised his glass. “To poor shooting, I guess.” He drank in the Russian manner—with grace, but all gone.
    From the nightclub tables, rhythmic clapping, growing louder as the patrons grew bolder, some of them yelling “Hey!” on the beat. The male dancer, squatting on the stage with his arms folded across his chest, was kicking his legs out.
    “Passports,” the barman said, suddenly gloomy. “You can get into real trouble, fooling with that. They lock you up, here, if they catch you. It goes on, of course, mostly among the refugees, the Jews and the political exiles. Once you get run out of Germany, you aren’t legal anywhere, unless you’ve got a visa. That takes time, and money—you can’t afford to be in a hurry. But you are—with the Gestapo after you, you have to do whatever it takes. So you sneak out. Now, you’re a ‘Stateless Person.’ You slip into Czechoslovakia or Switzerland, hide out for a week if