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pomaded, swarthy . . . and slippery! . . . with the charm of a jaguar, fanged smiles, cousins of Nasser, Laval, Mendès, Youssef . . . "Come right in, dear patrons!" and those magnates, you should have seen the barrels full of foreign currency! . . . the Simplon bazaar open for business . . . the real thing! a Bukhara rug: ten pounds of "Schlacht Bank" ° weighed out! . . . swept in! . . . tomorrow you'll see the same people in the bazaars of the Kremlin, Russia, or the White House, U.S.A., in the middle of another war! . . . ten twenty Hiroshimas a day, boom boom , sound and fury, that's all! . . . those hideous clashes, love taps, nothing at all . . . who cares as long as Mercury gets his own! . . . that's what counts! . . . in the Russian labor camps, in Buchenwald, in the darkest dungeons, or under the atomic ashes, Mercury is right there! Find his little temple . . . and you'll be all right. . . life goes on . . . So does Nasser and his canal! . . . and marmalade! . . . and genuine Rostov sturgeon! . . . and if you please, don't let the last remaining parachute get any ideas about dropping anything but a good big case of Chianti, plus glasses and beveled mirrors, "pure Venice," better than best! nylon underthings "Valenciennes style"! . . . for die "Kommissar" ladles! . . . ah, those perfumed idols, surfeited with tortures, yawning at the gallows . . . last parachute, remember those "ratafla-nylon" blouses! . . . don't make me say it again! . . . forget about those boring contraptions for pulverizing five provinces! so packed with neutrons that you'll never find Saint-Lazare Station again! . . . or a stray locomotive bolt! . . . enough of your nonsense!
    Take it from me . . . at the Simplon Hotel in Baden-Baden there was everything you needed to get along very nicely . . . Not just people from the Ruhr Koncerns and the Central-Europe-Balkan banks, there were slightly wounded generals from every front, especially at the table of Cabinet Minister Schlemann, representing the Chancellery . . . believe me, those folks wanted for nothing . . . choice food not to mention the plots, conspiracies, and timetables . . . you'll say I'm making it up . . . not at all! . . . faithful chronicler! . . . of course you had to be there . . . the circumstances, not everybody's luck . . . the end of the meals, flushed with roasts, heavy secrets, burgundy . . . irresistible menus!. . . delicacies from start to finish, from the hors d'oeuvres to the strawberries and whipped cream . . . melba? . . . syrup? . . . more?. . . less? . . . lemon peel? . . . and all those waiters, so attentive, listening and taking note, hesitations, ja , and sighs . . . the finest flower of the espionage networks, Commie, Fifi, Geheimdienst , Wilhelmstrasse, tutti-frutti . . . every feed bag! . . . as handy at tending four "mikes" at once as at serving pheasant, lobster with two sauces, and celery with one-hand! at the same time! to twelve customers . . . supple, silent, precise) . . . a lot of them had waited on Pétain, on Goering at the Ritz in Paris . . . and not just Hermann! all the high Nazi dignitaries and the Baroness de Rothschild . . . Let the ragged, crackbrained, down-at-heel racists! . . . no matter where, no matter how, the élite is always the élite . . . have the meetings, the shit! the motions, the shouting, the raised fists, the lowered fists, the thumbs upside down! That stuff is for the rank-and-file! Let the scum get down on their knees, down on their faces! To the shithouse! . . . A waiter at the White House, the Kremlin, Vichy, or the Simplon has a way of passing the hors d'oeuvres . . . unmistakable . . . red cabbage or cauliflower, "borsht" or pot-au-feu, your "rank-and-file gangsters" will always fart the same way, it's dismal . . . even on beaujolais or vodka! . . . their whole digestion is different: Windsor, Kremlin, Elysée! . . . what does the Huma ,° the "intelligentsia" of the wretched of the earth, want? . . . its fervent dream?