"Excuse me sir, but do you have a light?" I turned, and beside me stood a young lad. He wore no hat or coat, but he carried himself erect and was healthy and husky. His black hair was curled and it tossed in the breeze. He did not smile yet his face reflected friendliness. I was sorry that I did not have a light to offer him, so I explained that I did not smoke.

No word was spoken, but when we started to walk again, it was together. He did not look directly at me and I did not look directly at him, yet before very many steps we each had examined the other carefully from head to toe. As we passed a bombed out building the lad let his glance wander into its darkness for a minute, a long minute.

We approached a small cafe, and I invited him to join me in a glass of beer. Instead he drank a cup of black coffee and then another. His name was Harry. I did not ask him direct questions, but I did encourage him to talk.

Harry was twenty-two years old; twenty-two dark years of war and its aftermath were all that he knew. A childhood without sunlight. An adolescence on the streets. The growing-up years that became fleeing-years; fleeing from the Russians, living in dirty barracks rooms, on farms, in hobo camps. Being part of a generation that shared everything they had, because there was nothing but the common burden.

I looked at this lad who sat before me. He had done some little thing of no consequence and been given two months in jail. He was unshaven, unkempt, and hay was clinging to his clothing. Although he did not tell me, I knew he had recently been sleeping in a barn. I looked directly at Harry. His dark eyes held perhaps many secrets, but there was also a sensitiveness there that is rare, an understanding that escapes precise definition by word.

I ordered brandy, and this time Harry drank with me. I purchased some cigarettes for the lad, and he smoked. Suddenly he grasped my hand across the table, held it as though he did not want to leave go, and said softly. "Sometimes I have wanted to have a friend, a good friend, a lasting friend, so bad. . ." He did not continue, and I thought perhaps there was the suggestion of a tear in the corner of his eye.

Harry wished to leave the warm cafe, so we began to walk. We returned to the bombed out building that we had passed earlier. Four broken walls with the moonless dark autumn sky for a ceiling. It was cold and I shivered. We spoke quietly about unimportant things. Harry shivered too, and suddenly he clung to me and this time from the corners of his eyes I could plainly see the unashamed tears in the moonlight. We were there for what seemed only an instant, and then the silence was broken by a clock in the distance striking three o'clock. We were not cold, but it is not only from cold that one shivers.

When we shook hands on parting we each felt something that was not a part of us before. We were to meet again in two days, on Sunday; and we promised each other we would be friends, warm friends, always.

I never saw Harry again. Over and over again I recalled each word he had said to me. His promises, his endearments, dwelling on them and seeking strength from them, hoping I could hear them from him again.

Time has passed. Even though our meeting was so brief, so small out of a lifetime, on cool autumn dawns the memory is so real I can almost touch him, feel his breath. I shut my eyes tightly sometimes, and say his name aloud. Harry. Still I find only the memory, and no one is there.

Translated from the German by Fred Frisbie

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