LET ME TELL YOU the story of my friend, Anton Zwiebel.

You will soon realize that any story about Anton Zwiebel is also a story about me, Gustav Perle. In fact, I can’t imagine how I could set down any account of Anton Zwiebel’s life that didn’t include me. I am at the heart of Anton Zwiebel’s life and he is at the heart of mine.

We were both born in 1942, during the Second World War, but we were born in Switzerland, where the war didn’t trespass. A little later, in 1947, when we attended kindergarten in Zorin, the village where we lived, we began learning about the war and how, beyond our country, there was this other, destroyed world, which the teachers found it difficult to talk about. We were shown pictures of ruined cities. I recall that in one of these pictures a white dog was sitting all alone among the rubble, and the sight of this abandoned dog made me feel lonely, as though I, and not the dog, were the creature sitting there.

Did you know that the word Zwiebel means onion? Herr Zwiebel translates as “Mr. Onion.” In the kindergarten days, the other kids used to laugh at Anton because he had this name, Zwiebel, but I didn’t laugh; I felt sympathetic toward him. I think my mother had already taught me to show compassion toward others, because she was such a kind and understanding woman. When I first invited Anton Zwiebel home for coffee and Mutti’s cinnamon cake, my mother took his hand in hers and led him out into the yard, where our flowering cherry tree was so weighed down with white blossom that its lower branches almost touched the stones beneath. Anton Zwiebel began stamping up and down, up and down, up and down in a little, crazy dance of wonderment. Later, after we’d had the coffee and the cinnamon cake, my mother said: “I like this boy, Gustav. I hope he will be your friend.”

I HAVE TO MOVE FORWARD NOW. I know it can be annoying, in stories, to be suddenly told that twenty years have passed. You can’t stop yourself from wondering what happened in all that time the author has chosen not to talk about. But let me reassure you that nothing out of the ordinary happened to Anton Zwiebel and me. We went through school. We played table tennis. We learned to skate. No tragedy came our way. I entered catering school and then acquired a job as the assistant manager of a Gasthaus in the spa town of Matzlingen. Anton became a piano teacher at a small school, also in Matzlingen. We continued to see each other almost every day.