Nicolas frowned. ‘Nothing so far. But it looks like something’s burning on the next block. An automobile, maybe. Or a van.’

‘They’re burning a van on the next block?’

‘It’s hard to say. I can’t see anyone around.’

‘Not even a cop?’

Nicolas shook his head. They were both sensitive about the police, the Prokopious. In this neighbourhood, they were regularly shaken down and robbed, and the police patrols did very little to protect them. There were always plenty of police around at Thanksgiving, or at Christmas, when Nicolas gave away bottles of retsina and Keo brandy. But when the kids came around with their knives and their zip guns and raided the cash register, you could scream ‘Police!’ until you were purple in the face and nobody would come.

‘What do you think’s happening?’ asked Dolores. ‘All that glass breaking. It sounds like a war.’

‘Maybe it’s something to do with the food shortages.’

‘You mean that television programme? I don’t understand.’

Nicolas let the drapes fall back into place. His face was sweaty and serious. ‘You heard what they said on the news. They said keep calm, don’t try to stock up on more food than you need. But you think people are going to take any notice of that? They panic when there’s a shortage of gas. They panic when there’s a shortage of bread. In my opinion, that’s what they’re doing now. Panicking. Breaking into food stores, looking for supplies.’

Dolores said anxiously, ‘They’ll come here.’

Nicolas nodded. On the bedside table just behind Dolores’s black wavy hair, his luminous alarm clock read three in the morning, almost to the minute.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Dolores. Her question was punctuated by a loud crash from across the street, and the sound of a woman shouting. Nicolas turned and regarded the drapes as if he expected them to fly apart of their own accord.

‘I’ll call the police,’ he said.

‘The police? And what will they do?’

‘I’ll call Sergeant Kyprianides.’

‘You really think he’s going to worry? Just because he’s Greek? He’s as rotten as all the rest of them.’

Nicolas unbuttoned his striped pyjamas, peeled them off, and folded them up. He was a short, heavy man, with a girdle of fat around his hips. He found a clean pair of jockey shorts in the bureau drawer and then stepped into his pants. In the stained-pine wardrobe he found a clean red shirt.

‘I’m going downstairs,’ he said.

Dolores said, ‘What for? What can you do on your own?’ Nicolas pointed towards the window. ‘What for? Do you hear what they’re doing out there? You want the store wrecked?’