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being in truth not far from ones I’d felt myself when I was young. He was conscripted to the Volkssturm in February of the war’s last year. I have no idea what became of him.
    Now came the Gulf War and my betrayal of my trust and Khalil’s betrayal of me and the entry into my life of Nils Schreiber, the reporter from our city’s progressive daily to whom Khalil confided and who became my relentless Javert. I have nothing but favorable reviews to offer of Nils Schreiber. More in point, I fell in love with him, at an age when I had felt I was almost beyond that possibility. He seemed so superior to Khalil in every particular, moral, emotional, physical, even I would say his height, his eyes, his voice, that I began to wonder if I was seeing in myself some late-blooming racism. Not that I ever had the remotest hint of an affair with Nils Schreiber. He was surely an active and satisfied heterosexual, involved for a considerable period with a pretty American girl. Rather, I loved him at a distance which decreased while my love grew, as a fox might love an able hound. Finally he had all the pieces in place. He cornered me in a beach cottage in Sicily to which I had fled. I was not displeased to see him. Other than in social settings, it was the first time we had met. I complimented him on the many pieces of his which I had read with pleasure over the years. Many of these had dealt with his favorite issue and perhaps on occasion mine as well, the fate of the Jew in Germany. I offered him tea and a local liqueur, but he chose only the tea. We discussed also his friend David Fürst, who had the chutzpah – I suppose this is a not inappropriate use of that tired phrase – to have taken a coterie of rightwing hotheads under his wing. Only at length did we get down to the business which had brought Nils to me. He had his article and was ready to publish. I read it over while he sipped his tea. The details were correct as far as they went, which is to say, they showed no inkling of the lies of my “war record”; the entire tenor of the piece was rather of the hero of the Nazi-time who had a taken a fall from grace.
    Now by this time events had rather mitigated my crime. To protect his own reputation, Herbert Kaminski had reimbursed the reparation fund for whatever shortfall was involved. Because the war was over so quickly, the gas masks themselves still sat in a Berlin warehouse. With currency fluctuations, they had actually increased modestly in value. I had earned the Fund in the neighborhood of five percent by my “speculation in commodities,” and Herbert would be promptly repaid. Nils had discovered these facts, and they appeared in his article, but they did lead me to wonder what kind of scoop this reporter was left with.
    â€œDoes the piece have real news interest?” I asked, more out of a compulsive editorial motive than for self-protection.
    â€œI think so,” he said, his earnest gray eyes watching perhaps for my flinch. “The news interest is you. Your character. Why someone with a sterling reputation would risk all of it, even cheat, for a moral cause that nonetheless could be easily challenged.”
    â€œAnd your answer is…Khalil? But if that’s the answer, I’m quite the dupe, am I not? It’s what your article must inevitably imply.”
    â€œHe does seem, let’s say, unworthy of you.”
    â€œWell I assure you, Khalil has some very decent qualities. When he wishes to be, he can be warm and sincere. He appears to adore his new wife and family. He detests homosexuals, a fact which he’s often conveyed to me, along with the assurance that he’s not one himself.”
    â€œThen, why?”
    â€œYou see, Mr. Schreiber, I don’t wish to be humiliated. I may deserve to be humiliated, and so that part of me, that recognizes my worthiness for it, of course demands it. But at the same time I wish to be saved from