One night they cross a bridge over the Dnieper with the domes and blooming trees of Kiev looming ahead and ash blowing everywhere and prostitutes bundled in the alleys. In a café, they sit two tables down from an infantryman not much older than Werner. He stares into a newspaper with twitching eyeballs and sips coffee and looks deeply surprised. Astonished. Werner cannot stop studying him. Finally Neumann One leans over. “Know why he looks like that?” Werner shakes his head. “Frostbite took his eyelids. Poor bastard.”
