Nothing beats going to bed dead and waking up alive. - R. Garcia y Robertson

Dieter had the true Gypsy contempt for governments, plunging their people into one holocaust after another, calling each new disaster leadership. Or statescraft.

Smack, crack, crank, speed, booze, acid, has, bhang, poppies, and belladonna; none of the above (or all of them taken at once) had even half the addictive power of gaming.

He took her upstairs to Guido’s big tiled shower. “I will show you the greatest luxury of this century—it almost makes up for the two World Wars.” Turning on the hot water, he sprinkled bath herbs on the tiles. The stall filled with scented steam. Slowly, he undressed her. Kathe’s skin was stark white under the electric light, smelling of excitement and caked with dirt; in the whole time they had been together, Kathe had bathed only once, in the cold waters of the Rhine.
He positioned her under the hot cascade from the shower nozzle, her bare hips pressed against the hard warm tiles, her feet braced in the corners of the stall. Dieter scrubbed both their bodies with spiced soap—his hands slid down her breasts and between her legs. Kathe realized that the sixteenth century had a lot to discover about sex and cleanliness.