He got into the tram and sat down in the only vacant seat, close to the door. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a whole cigarette, which he had overlooked before, and was absent-mindedly about to light it when someone said, ‘This isn’t a smokers’ coach, young man! You should have gone to the last coach for that!’

The coarse voice seemed familiar. He raised his eyes and saw the same squat woman with the moustache and the hairy mole sitting opposite him and looking straight at him with her mean eyes. Gurdweill was flooded with rage. At the same time he felt his stomach contract, as if he had swallowed something particularly disgusting. He was about to jump off, when the tram started moving and he was forced to stay where he was. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and put it back in his pocket. Then he sat back, deliberately assuming a pose of ease, crossing his legs, and started staring intently at the mole on the woman’s chin. After he had stared at it for a few moments, his rage subsided. There were three hairs sprouting from the mole, one of which was white and the other two black. He counted them a few times and could not find more than three, only one of which was white. But they were all thick and hard as wire — this was obvious at first sight and required no further examination. ‘It would be interesting to see her face,’ reflected Gurdweill with a certain satisfaction, ‘if someone were to unexpectedly take hold of one of those hairs with a tweezer, or simply between his fingers’ — and he felt a kind of tremor in the fingers of his right hand — ‘the white one, or one of the black ones, and pull it out!’ Gurdweill glanced at the woman’s eyes as if to see the effect that the imaginary attack would have on her. ‘Almost certainly,’ he continued his train of thought, ‘if all three were suddenly pulled out at once, she would feel not only physical pain, but even a twinge of grief, as at the loss of some limb. At first she might even see herself as uglier without them, until she reconciled herself to their absence …’

‘Tickets, please!’ cried the conductor, interrupting Gurdweill’s reverie.

Outside, darkness was beginning to fall, and the streetlamps went on. The tram stopped and the woman opposite stood up. Before she got off, she sent Gurdweill a parting glance full of hostility. He looked through the window to see if it was still raining, but the pane was so steamed up that he couldn’t see a thing. Not long afterwards the tram stopped at the Ring, the last stop, and evening came down on the city.

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