The two men were husky, picked for their brawn by the little man who sauntered into the room.

[T]he heavy-lipp'd slave is invited … the venerealee is invited, / There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

Miraculously, the Stasi's record of Garton Ash's years in Berlin remained intact, and in his extraordinary book The File he recalls going back to Berlin, sifting through the material, and piecing together those years for himself. The result is a palimpsest of memories, observations recorded by informants and agents, and the recollections in his own diaries at that time.

George was sitting in his shirt-sleeves among his pigeons; snow-white creatures that tooralooed and paced and ducketed on the gravel about his feet, while two of their fellows cooed love secrets into his ear.