Tom, an impeccably dressed twenty-year-old in a blue-gray suit, had shoved his straw hat back and was smoking Russian cigarettes. He was not very tall, but his mustache had begun to grow out thick and dark, darker than his hair and eyelashes. With one  eyebrow raised slightly as always, he gazed out across the clouds of dust  and passing roadside trees.

Tony said, “I’ve never  been so happy to go to Travemünde  in all my life – for all kinds of reasons. Don’t make fun of me, Tom. I wish I could leave a certain set of gold muttonchops several miles further behind me. And it will be a whole new Travemünde, right on Front Row with the Schwartzkopfs. I won’t pay any attention to the social whirl at the spa. I know all that quite well enough already. And I’m not in the mood for it anyway. Besides, it’s all so public, and there’s certainly nothing shy about the man. Just watch, he’ll pop up one day right beside me, smiling his gracious smile.”

Tom threw his cigarette away and took another from his case, its lid decoratively inlaid with a scene  of wolves attacking a troika – the gift of one of the consul’s Russian clients. Tom had a passion for these little strong cigarettes with a yellow mouthpiece; he smoked one after another and had the bad habit of inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs and slowly letting it cascade out as he spoke.