By 9:00, the older librarians had linked arms and were dancing around the bonfire. The blaze roared, ran ten feet high. The songs were incomprehensible, but the singing was joyous, raucous, slightly dangerous and sentimental. Maria from Katowice filled us in. “They’re singing the Communist Youth songs they learned at summer camp.” No longer Communists (at least not overtly) and certainly no longer youths. There was nothing for it but for us to stand at the edge of the firelight, beers in hand, still holding the long sticks we’d used to roast our sausages, and cheer them on. It was the last night of the gathering of former Soviet bloc medical librarians –