We entered a bar. Brogan ordered ginger ale; I, bourbon. When we went out again, it was still just as cold. We entered another bar and began chatting. After the invasion, he had spent a few months in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Ardennes and he asked me a lot of questions about France, the war, the Occupation, Paris. I, in turn, questioned him. He seemed happy having someone listening to him but embarrassed talking about himself. He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time. He was born in South Chicago, the offspring of a Finnish grocer and a Hungarian Jewish mother. He was twenty when the great depression struck and for several years he lived the life of a hobo, crossing America hidden in freight cars, in turn peddler, dishwasher, waiter, masseur, ditch digger, bricklayer, salesman, and, when necessary, burglar. In some forgotten roadside lunchroom in Arizona where he earned a living washing glasses, he had written a short story which a leftist magazine accepted for publication. Then he wrote others. Ever since the success of his first novel, his publishers had been giving him an allowance which permitted him to live.