I had been brave, testing myself, to have come back to Germany for my year’s sabbatical from Columbia University. In earlier days I had come here—mostly to Hamburg in the north—to indulge my fetish for boys. The age of consent in Germany was fourteen, which suited me well, as a fourteen-year-old boy hit my sweet spot—a small boy of stature, preferably, who was perfectly formed, willowy, lithe, flexible, yielding, but who was sweet, only beginning to ponder his sexuality and preferences. But I was researching for my series of historical novels on the Völkerwanderang period, the “wandering of the peoples” period running roughly from 300 to 700 CE, when the Huns, Goths, and Vandals were flowing into Europe from the East. There was no better place to do that than here in Berlin.

I thought I was up to the challenge to curb my desire for fourteen-year-old boys. But perhaps I came here because I wanted to fail.

My days were spent in one of the reading rooms at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin on Potsdamer Strasse, researching the Völkerwanderang period. My evenings spun out at the flat I’d rented across the canal from the library on Flottwell Strasse, above a line of shops. It was a lonely—but I told myself a satisfying—life. To get from one to the other, a distance of several blocks, I usually walked through the Park am Karlsbad, which followed the line of a canal on its southern bank for nearly the whole distance of the walk.

I told myself I walked through the park, it being the most direct route, but not the only one I could have taken, to take in the beauty of nature. But I suspect I really did it for the temptation. The park was used by homeless men, many of them only boys. I was propositioned each time I walked through the park. I didn’t succumb to the temptation, priding myself on my ability to resist, but I didn’t stop putting myself in the position to be propositioned by young men—and boys—either. Somehow, they had perceived my sexual interests. I had reached my late thirties, but I hadn’t let either my looks or my body go. I had always had sufficient attraction in those areas to easily hook up. Perhaps it was the flash in my eyes when they appeared before me and made their pitch.

Although there were a few homeless women in the park, they generally didn’t approach me after my initial nonresponsiveness to them. Soon after I had established my twice-daily walk through the park pattern, the homeless women had stopped offering themselves to me—but the men and boys hadn’t.

On the day in question, the day my resolve desolved, Berlin was deep in winter. It had started to snow in the morning, while I was walking to the library. The snowfall initially was light, but it promised to pick up later in the day. I was wondering whether I would be walking home or taking a taxi because of the snow when I walked through a group of young men on the pathway. As usual, boys touched me on the sleeve and made suggestions to me, but, smiling, I passed through them, giving them a look of regretful demur. Perhaps my wistfulness at turning them down kept them hopeful and assuming that I did have some interest in man-on-man (or boy) action. One boy, though, a beautiful blond boy, stood at the edge of the group, smiling at me, but not offering himself. Because he wasn’t forward with me, he, of course, was the one I had in mind when I settled in my usual, out-of-the-way table in the research room of the Staatsbibliothek.

A stack of books, some in German, which I was able to read, and some in English were delivered to me, and I immersed myself in the forceful and violent entrance of the Vandals into Germany, following on the invasions of the Huns and Visigoths. My latest novel had been on the Visigoth onslaught and I was moving on to the Vandals. My novels were bloody, masculine battlefield thrillers of the period and had become quite popular, popular enough that I’d settled on that period for my writing career and had found a lucrative home at Columbia University.

I was so embedded in my fantasies of the Vandals and in imagining plots, characters, and plot twists that I didn’t realize for some time that I wasn’t alone at the table. I had picked such a remote spot in the room that was sectioned off by book shelves so that I usually would have the table to myself. But not today. I was surprised when I looked up to see a young boy—the blond I had passed and briefly had eye contact with in the Park am Karlsbad that morning—sitting across and down the table from me. He had his nose in a book. I couldn’t resist speaking to him and not because of his looks, age, or that I’d seen him with the soliciting homeless in the park that morning.

“Finden Sie dieses Buch wirklich interessant?—Do you really find that book interesting?” I asked. I could clearly see the title, “Theodulf, the Magnificent.”

“I speak English. You are an American, no?” he asked. His English was, in fact, very good. Better than my German was.

“Yes, I’m American. What made you pick that book to read?”

“I was looking down the shelves and it caught my eye,” he said. “My name is Theo, which, for Germans, is short for Theodulf, so I was drawn to this book.”

“Did you come in the library to read a book—that book—or to get warm?” I asked. I really wanted to ask if he’d come in to follow me. If so, he was more persistent and clever than his homeless friends in the park were. And I found him intriguing as well as arousing.

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know whether I’ll like the book. I just picked it up. But I don’t mind reading while I’m getting warm.”

“It’s rather a coincidence, you know,” I said.

“How so?” he asked.

“As it happens, I wrote that book.”

“I know,” he said, flashing me a winning smile. “Your photo is on the jacket. I read that far while I was standing at the shelf. I took the book from the shelf because of the title, but I kept it for reading because of your photo on the jacket, Mr. Winthrop.”

So, now he knew my name. He’d gotten that off the book too. Somehow that brought him closer to me.

“You came in because of the snow?” I asked. “Is it snowing harder out there?”

“Yes, the snow has picked up,” Theo said. But he didn’t press me further. “Bitte—please. Don’t let me stop you from your studies. I can move to another table if you wish.”

“No, please. Don’t move because of me. I’m flattered you’re reading my book. Please. Stay and continue reading.” I dove back into my studies, but the boy didn’t leave; he obviously was engrossed in reading my book, which provided a whole new sensation for me, not unpleasant in the least; and I was only able to give half attention to my studies for the next hour and a half.

It was nearly noon when I gave up. “It’s lunchtime, and I’m hungry,” I said. “I usually eat at Golvet, across the canal, on the eighth floor of a building on Potsdamer Strasse. Would you like to go there with me? I’d enjoy the company, and I’d like to know what you think of that book so far. It will, of course, be my treat.”

Somewhat to my surprise—but not really; I realized even then that he was on the make, which both flattered and aroused me—Theo agreed. The snow was still coming down and accumulating when we went to lunch. We spent a pleasant hour hovering over the section of the city below the expansive Tiergarten park of Theo at least pretending that “Theodulf, the Magnificent” was the most engrossing book he’d read in some time. I wondered how much reading a fourteen-year-old homeless boy—yes, I had managed to glean his age from him, although he would tell me no more about his circumstances—did, living rough in the Park am Karlsbad.

The snow was beginning to pile up as we walked back to the library and settled back into our reading. A little after 4:00 p.m., I stretched and said, “The snow must be quite deep out there now.” I hadn’t really managed any research at all. My afternoon had been taken up in fantasizing possibilities with the boy.

“I’m sure it is,” Theo said, looking up from his book.

“I see you’re not wearing boots.”

“No, I’m not.”

“It must be tough being in the park at night when it snows like this.”

“Yes, I’m sure it is,” he repeated.

What I got from that was that he hadn’t been living in the park long. He probably wasn’t aware yet how rough the life could be in the park at night in the winter. He was a lovely boy. It bothered me greatly that he’d be out there in the cold when I’d be just a few blocks away, warm in my quite large flat. I not only had two bedrooms and a nice, cozy study, but there was a servant’s room off the kitchen, with a full bath, that I wasn’t using.

I had so much and Theo had so little.

“If you want to keep reading that book, I, of course, have a copy in my flat,” I said. “The library won’t let you take that copy out and you can’t stay here in the night. My flat is on Flottwell Strasse, just a few blocks beyond the park from here. It’s cold and snowing. I have plenty of room. You could stay in my flat tonight. You could continue reading the book and telling me what you think about it. That would be very helpful to me. You could—”

“Yes, fine, I accept,” Theo said, flashing me a winning smile.

I didn’t fuck him as soon as the taxi had taken us back to my flat. I had told myself I didn’t intend on fucking him at all, and I managed to hold out all evening and past the time I settled him in the servant’s room and went to the master bedroom myself, to sleep all alone in my king-sized bed.

It wasn’t easy, though. As soon as we entered the flat, with him contemplating how nice and nicely furnished the apartment was—neither of which was something I’d chosen; the university had set it all up—I approached the delicate matter of what I perceived as his homelessness—and how I wanted to relate to him under the circumstances.

“Perhaps you’d like to take a shower. I could find a robe for you and put your clothes in the washer if you like.” I’d shown him where he had a room and bath he could use across the apartment from where I’d be sleeping.

He gave me a rather funny look, but said that would be fine with him. I left the room and waited for him to go into the bath, finding a robe of mine that had always been a bit too small for me and some briefs for him to wear while his clothes were being washed. When he came out of his room while I was in the kitchen alcove off the living and dining area, he was just in the robe. I didn’t realize that until after dinner when we’d both settled in the study, him to read my copy of “Theodulf, the Magnificent” and me to try to pretend that I was composing on the computer, that he wasn’t wearing the briefs. As he sat in a wing chair, facing me at the desk, he let the robe brush open. He was naked under the robe. His fourteen-year-old body was beautiful. His waist and hips were narrow, his cock and balls perfectly proportioned to his David-like body.

He wasn’t being very subtle. He knew I wanted to fuck him. Just as I wanted to do to the other homeless boys in the park I couldn’t stay away from, he was offering his nubile, small, perfect body to me. He wanted me to fuck him—at least he wanted to compensate me for bringing him in from the cold and feeding him.