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It wasn't long before Archimboldi's fourth book arrived at the publishing house. It was called Rivers of Europe, although it was really about only one river, the Dnieper. One might say the Dnieper was the protagonist and the other rivers were the chorus. Mr. Bubis read the book in one sitting, in h…

The baroness, meanwhile, as if to counterbalance Archimboldi's forced travels, told him about her own journeys, all planned and desired and therefore happy, exotic trips to Bulgaria and Turkey and Montenegro and receptions at the German embassies of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and she confessed tha…

He had no faith that Bittner, who surely knew nothing about literature, would publish his novel. He was nervous and lost his appetite. He hardly read at all and the little he did read disturbed him so much that no sooner did he begin a book than he had to shut it, because he would start to shake an…

One morning Reiter and Ingeborg made love. The girl was feverish and her legs, under her nightdress, seemed to Reiter the most beautiful legs he had seen in his life. Ingeborg had just turned twenty and Reiter was twenty-six. From then on they began to fuck every day. Reiter liked to do it sitting …

At night, before he went to work, Reiter checked to make sure Ingeborg had everything she needed so she wouldn't have to go down the stairs to the street with just a candle to light her way, although in his heart he knew that Ingeborg (and he too) lacked so many things that his precautions were poi…