Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom remembered for the smashing of shop windows and the burning of stores, enters the novel through a story told about the boxer Max Schmeling. In the account, the violence marks the moment when Schmeling’s Jewish wife, Anny, and her Jewish trainer were sent to safety in the United States, and when the champion put his career and life in Germany at stake to challenge their exclusion.

Recounted in a boxing gym

The episode is not presented as a scene witnessed directly by the protagonist. Pirulo tells it to his disciple Adrián Gallardo Ortega after bringing up Spanish police officers who had come with the Nazis and trained at the neighboring gym. Two of those officers, Pirulo says, went pale and fell silent when he raised the subject; afterward, the one closest to him confided the story. The layered telling connects the German pogrom to the uneasy presence of collaboration close to home, while keeping the historical violence in the form of a remembered anecdote.

Anny, her trainer, and Schmeling’s ultimatum

Pirulo explains that Anny was Jewish and had become a film star in Germany. When the Nazis began persecuting Jews, Max Schmeling managed to send her to the United States with her trainer, who was Jewish as well. He later demanded that the authorities allow his wife to return to Germany and live with him, warning that otherwise they would lose their world champion. He was prepared to leave for America and continue boxing as an American. His fame thus became leverage: rather than treating his success as separate from the danger facing his family, he made his continued presence in Germany conditional on her return.

The story’s effect on Adrián

Pirulo offers the episode as a lesson to Adrián: reaching the top does not require becoming a cruel person. A champion can care for others and take risks on their behalf. Adrián does not forget the story, but, as he leaves the restaurant, pushes it into the back of his mind. The next day, on the train to Miranda, his immediate concern is that he has no photograph of Alfonso Navarro and no way to find one. The contrast between Pirulo’s moral example and Adrián’s consuming pursuit of Navarro gives the recollection its narrative force: it briefly makes ethical courage imaginable, even as Adrián turns away from it to follow his own purpose.