PRAGUE--The Swiss man's hair is teased and shiny. His skin is green and smooth. His eyes protrude a bit, as if they are detachable. He tells me, in a deep, strange voice, that he has just lost one thousand "ferking" dollars.

He goes next door, unlocks something from our hostel's locker, and returns, saying that during his stay here he has gotten sick, heard of troubling news from home, and now, on top of it all, lost this ferking thousand dollars. He paces for a time and then asks me if he may light a cigarette.

"I don't mind, but I think they do."

"Who is they?"

"The hostel."

He scowls, turns and inspects the corridor outside for the tobacco gestapo and then wanders down the hall, grumbling. From the bedroom I hear his lighter crackle, followed by a slow wheeze. I really didn't mind.

* * *

I never caught this green gentleman's name, but last night, after he returned from his cig, I would end up seeing photos of his wife and children and hearing of his four-month stretch of poverty and homelessness in India.

First things first: the "ferking dollars": He had lost this money by leaving his jacket, full of crisp Swiss legal tender, unattended in a coffee shop, across from some friendly stranger who had moments earlier struck up a casual conversation from another table. Our green friend took off to the bathroom for a moment and returned to a missing stranger and missing francs.

"It is my fault-- I have been traveling for tin yeers," he moaned in a distinctive European drawl, "but I still get robbed like a ferking teenager!!!"

Up until this exchange I had been suspicious of green Swiss: he appeared strange and acted strangely. For my first two days spent in Prague I hadn't seen him exit the room except to shower, which would leave his lower half precariously wrapped in a towel for hours afterward. (I suppose this was due to his feeling ill.) He was constantly on his computer, listening to 'Jean Geanie' on his headphones over and over again. He would speak quietly on a headset. He looked suspect. He was green. So I was prepared for this robbery-story to be some elaborate, green scheme.

But it wasn't. He didn't ask for any money and didn't pull anything weird; instead we swapped stories of our travel-related robberies and near-misses. My best involved a gang of nefarious Roma children who gnawed at my limbs in a deserted mall in Skopje. (They only made off with a cell phone battery. Punks couldn't even shake me down.) His best, a drama dating back to the early eighties, was much more harrowing.

In 1981 he had arrived in Bombay with the intention of staying for two years. After lugging all of his belongings into his new apartment, he hopped into the shower:

"The very first day, I walk into shower with soap and towel...when I walk out of shower, all I had was ferking soap and ferking towel."

Someone broke into his apartment and made off with everything he owned while it was still packed up. He was sans property--Proudhon, if "property is theft," what does that make theft of property?--but more importanty, sans passport. Sans travelers checks. Sans cash. The embassies, Swiss and US, were simply dismissive, and he was thrown about from the police to the embassies in an endless volley. He ended up with a flimsy virgin passport with no entrance stamp, which meant he couldn't even leave India. Whoever stole all this wasn't cashing the travelers checks, so he couldn't claim that money. The thief didn't cash them for about four months.

So, for the next four months, the green Swiss was on the street. Begging in the street, sleeping in the street. He had arrived in Bombay with everything and within hours was condemned to tramp-life.

"These times in life, you know, it shows you hunger! I mean...I had been hungry before, but that is no hunger. These times in life, you learn hunger."

In the end he ended up piecing together a fake passport through the services of black marketeers in Goa. He arrived in Switzerland thinner and sadder.

I enjoyed the green Swissman's delivery throughout these stories of SNAFUs abroad, but his best words came after he began speaking of his wife.

"How can this beautiful thing deal with a man so stupid? How can she deal with a man who is always traveling...and traveling so stupidly?"

I was a bit suprised to hear that he had a wife, and, without sounding rude, even more suprised to see how beautiful she was. But he was obviously in awe, himself. And speaking of their children, all four of them, had him beaming. But as he told me of his family he returned again and again to that feeling of inadequacy: he truly couldn't understand why a woman like his wife would marry a man like him. He said he had so, so many foibles; I wasn't sure if he was referencing things like the precarious towel usage and the 'Jean Geanie' marathons. So I remained quiet.

For a moment there was silence, and in the silence I considered how many men think about their love in this way, and how many never even consider their luck. Are the latter gents the happy men? For the men like green Swiss, it can be exhausting, waiting on that other shoe. Waiting to be found out.  For such men, beautiful things will always feel stolen, and they're certain word will get around of their theft.

So it comes back to matters of theft. The stranger who made off with the ferking francs probably didn't feel anxious about the sweaty money in his clutches; but the green Swiss, and those of us like him, will always remain anxious when clutching something beautiful. Perhaps it was this unpleasant thought, lodged in both of our minds, that sustained the silence.

Eventually he let out a sigh, one of fatigue and of relief. He threw his hands up and said:

"But you know...everyone is an asshole in some way. I just...I just don't hide my asshole."

An honest and unaffected sentiment. And, if I may say, very eloquenty put.