‘Please join us nevertheless, Herr Gurdweill,’ Vrubiczek seconded his wife’s invitation. ‘You can’t refuse. The stomach is elastic; it stretches like leather soaked in water. In any case you won’t get much. I’ve already eaten most of it myself.’

Gurdweill was persuaded to eat with them. They were already on the meat course, but Frau Vrubiczek brought him a bowl of soup from the kitchen.

Afterwards Vrubiczek took the napkin from his knees, wiped his heavy, grey-streaked moustache, and asked, ‘How are you, my dear fellow? And how’s your old lady?’

‘Fine, fine! Thea’s in a sanatorium.’ The last sentence escaped him against his will, and he regretted it immediately.

‘What did you say? A sanatorium?’ exclaimed Vrubiczek, full of concern. ‘How can you be so calm about it? What’s the matter with her?’

‘Nothing serious. A little operation with no risk involved. Already successfully performed, by the way.’

Frau Vrubiczek, coming back into the room from the kitchen, was horrified to hear the word ‘operation’. Nothing in the world alarmed her so much as the thought of an operation, however minor. There was no doubt in her mind that she would rather die than allow anyone to operate on her.

‘What did you say? An operation?’ she cried from the doorway, in evident alarm. ‘Who’s had an operation? Where?’

‘My wife,’ replied Gurdweill. ‘There’s no danger.’

‘Where? Where?’ the old woman pressed.

‘On … on …’ Gurdweill stammered, blushing, ‘on her nose, of course. Where else would they operate on a healthy woman like her? They took out her adenoids.’

‘But she had an operation on her adenoids last summer, didn’t she?’ asked Vrubiczek. ‘Does that mean that they grow again?’

‘In the summer they operated on one side, and now they’ve operated on the other. Presumably it was necessary — Dozent Schramek is an expert on adenoids; he said that if they didn’t operate at once it would grow so big that it would block up her whole nose. Ha-ha-ha — those adenoids are devilish creatures, it seems!’

And for a moment they all saw a loathsome, purplish-black creature, about the size of a bean, swelling immensely inside the dark cavity of an imaginary, free-floating nose.

The old woman sighed deeply. ‘Operations, operations — the worst thing in the world. I think that if I was told I had to have an operation I would die of fright before I reached the operating table. And then again: can you trust the doctor? He’s only human, after all! They’re always making mistakes and cutting out the wrong thing, perfectly healthy organs! I’ve heard of a number of such cases. And sometimes they even do it on purpose, out of spite. What do they care? It’s all a game to them. Do they feel the pain?’