we had minders and drivers, a promoter to guide you through their city. We had a working reason to linger, to enter the backstage rooms and bars, to learn a little of another life. Books are my escorts now. I laze in the apartment with Isherwood, sink a beer with Fallada, swollen red hands trembling on his prescription hunt, even share the cold in those first great pages with Leamas at the checkpoint hut. These visions of the city seem true as the thoughts of what I did yesterday, the places visited. But book memories are fixed and locked in print, whereas the next corner turn or swinging bar door grants future secrets. Read all you want, but keep riding the rails.
