We were in Buda when this story began. Definitely Buda and not Pest. I remember it all so clearly now. It’s all coming back to me. Buda is up the hill and Pest is across the river and after me and the barmaid from the beer hall got finished I went across the river and up the hill so I was definitely in Pest and going back to Buda, so that’s that sorted out.

Anyway, it’s a lovely town—or two lovely towns. Or it was, at any rate. God knows what it must be like now. Joining up with us might have been better than getting bent over the table to take it roughly up the chute from our heroic Aryan storm troopers but it comes to the same thing in the end. We signed up for a one-way ticket to hell, and they decided to come along for the ride, so some place in Budapest tonight there’s probably an old man like me, sitting in the dark and trying not to piss his pants as the bombs fall all around him. We should drink a toast, him and me. I’ve still got a little bit of sloe gin left in the bottom of the bottle. I was saving it up for my chest in the winter but, since I might not have a chest by the morning, there’s not much point.

So here’s to you, old man in Budapest (I should say here that I have been under the sink and got the bottle. It’s pretty sludgy, full of dusty bits of broken sloe berries and even a couple of leaves. I will strain it through my mustache). Here’s to you, old man in Budapest. You’re as shit-scared as I am and you didn’t want this war any more than I did so God bless you and see you safe through the night, old man in Budapest. Or old woman. There must be an old woman there too, under those bombs, and young women and little kids. God bless you all, you poor bastards.

Maybe she’s there. The barmaid. She would be getting on a bit now. Sixty or so, I suppose. Fifty anyway, which is old for a woman—especially in wartime.

I can’t remember her name and I’m not going to try. I don’t know if I even knew it. I bet I said, “What’s your name?” and she would’ve told me and I’d’ve said, “That’s a pretty name,” without even hearing it. If she’d asked me right there and then, that very second, what her name was, I couldn’t’ve told her.

I didn’t give that girl anything like the time and attention she deserved, but she wasn’t alone in that, poor kid. No, she was not alone in that. I suppose, given the circumstances and how it’s very likely that a ton weight of exploding iron is going to come through my roof any second, I suppose that is something I should repent. Well, I do repent it. I could’ve shown a great deal more care and respect in a lot of cases and, I have to acknowledge, if I’d’ve had a sister and somebody like me had come along then, in fairness, I would not have been pleased.

I was never cruel to anybody. I never made anybody any promises and, consequently, I never let anybody down. I was careful about that and, if anybody started building castles in the air and putting Otto Witte inside them, with his magnificent whiskers and his magnificent muscles and one magnificent muscle in particular, that was not my fault. This is not to excuse myself.

But that girl in the beer hall, that girl who might be sitting now, under a storm of bombs, right now, maybe with a pack of grandchildren round her knees (and, God forgive me, I’m not even going to think about the end of that sentence), that girl I did not give the attention she deserved. No, it was just down to the cellar, a quick kiss and a cuddle, “Oh, Otto, ain’t you strong!,” knickers down, up on a barrel and away we go!

Now, I was always careful. Nobody left the party until everybody got a dance, if you know what I mean, but I could’ve taken a bit more time and had a bit of a cuddle afterward. Girls do like a cuddle afterward. The fact is, there just wasn’t time. I had to get back up the hill for the next show and, anyway, her dad was coming down the stairs, yelling and screaming. I don’t know what he was saying. I could never make out a word of Hungarian—even written down it looks like an explosion in a sign-writers’ shop—but he did not sound happy so I buttoned my trousers quick smart, hauled myself up to the roof by my fingertips, swung my feet up to the cellar trapdoor, where the barrels came in, kicked it open and flew out on to the street. By God, I was fit then. Still am. I bet I could still do it now.