Because I know this and because I have kids, I take great care not to argue with strangers, as they could be my boss’s friends. So I let myself be jostled a bit on the tram and don’t make a fuss when someone tramples on my toes.

But that evening I couldn’t have cared less. Wasn’t I going to make that cheese dream come true?

I felt my gaze had already become steadier and I dug my hands into my pockets with an insouciance that had been utterly alien to me only half an hour before.

Back home I sat down at the table as usual and had supper without breathing a word about the opportunity that had presented itself to me. I had to smile inwardly when I saw how my wife buttered and cut the bread with her customary thrift. But then again, she could hardly suspect that, the next day, she might find herself to be a merchant’s wife.

I ate like I always do, neither more nor less, neither more quickly nor more slowly. In brief, I ate like a man resigned to seeing his thirty-year bondage to the General Marine and Shipbuilding Company prolonged by an unspecified number of years.

And yet my wife asked me what the matter was.

“What makes you think something’s the matter?” I retorted.

After that I began checking my two children’s homework.

I discovered a glaring error in a French past participle and corrected it with so much flair and friendliness that my son looked at me in astonishment.

“Why do you look at me like that, Jan?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” the boy said, laughing, casting a knowing glance in my wife’s direction.

So he’d noticed something too. And there was I thinking I was a master at hiding my feelings. That was something I’d have to learn then, because it would no doubt come in handy in the world of business. And if my face is such an open book, it must regularly look like thunder during the weekly journal parlé.

In my view the marital bed is by far the best place to discuss serious matters. At least there you’re alone with your spouse. The blankets muffle your voices, the darkness stimulates reflection, and because you can’t see one another, you’re unaffected by your opponent’s emotions. It’s where you can say things you don’t dare mention out in the open. So it was there that, after a preliminary silence and lying comfortably on my right side, I told my wife I was going to become a merchant.