.
To the mini-skirted customs official who with sibyl-dove eyes honed in on me
in the interminable line of travelers in transit, I told the entire truth,
confined within a plywood separé-confessional: I said I have a son who
studies Russian and German and that Bonjours les ami, a four-volume French
course, was for my wife; I was ready to concede more: that I knew it had
been Rosa Luxemburg to launch the slogan "socialism or barbarism," and that
I could make up an impressive madrigal on the same; but I was sweating
as I searched my pockets in vain for the bill from the Operncafé; and then
suddenly you were there, even dragging in the kids, marvelous and marveling;
(we ordered you out with the same harsh gestures, my uniformed Beatrice of
democracy and myself); but the irreparable had already been consummated for me
there at the border between the two Berlins: forty-one-year-old seduced
by a police officer.
